Time to upgrade the Imperial radio. Before talking about the new radio and the overly complex installation process let’s take a minute to look at the “original” radio. Once again I would really like to know more about the history of this car!
The radio barely worked when I got the car and doesn’t work at all now. It’s worth spending a moment on how bad it is.
The Imperial has a custom dash cutout for the radio, so only the factory radio fits. Someone had drastically modified the radio. Some of the evidence was obvious – the wires coming out of the radio were modern wires with modern labels. But the extent of changes weren’t clear until examining the guts of the radio.
Start with the outside: The case has been cut in several places. No idea why. The factory antenna connector is empty. The actual antenna connection is an inch or so inside the case, accessed through a badly gouged hole in the case. Speaker and power wiring go through a hole in the case with no protection. Not a good starting point!
Inside the case gets even worse.
The factory circuit board has been replaced with something else – no idea where it came from or what the specs are. Even worse about 2/3 of this new circuit board has been cut away to provide clearance for the factory tuner and pushbutton assembly. This new circuit board is very crudely mounted to the case.
The tuner pushbuttons don’t do anything – their operating mechanisms have been removed. When I got the car the tuner knob would move over about half the radio band; now it doesn’t move at all.
The volume control is connected to the volume knob with a piece of rubber hose and hose clamps. Admittedly this is a flexible connection, but still…
I suspect that the original radio died and someone took a cheap aftermarket radio and hacked it up so that it “fit”. I’ll give them credit for creativity in concept and negative points for quality of execution. I’m impressed that they were able to make it work and appalled at how they did it.
There is nothing to salvage from this radio. The case has been cut up in multiple places. The remnants of factory components have been pretty well destroyed. About the only thing you can say for this radio is that it still does a good job of filling the hole in the dash!