Category Archives: Restoration

With the new speaker installed in the dash the next job was hooking up all the wiring. RetroSound makes this easier with a two part harness: they have a short harness that plugs into the radio and the main harness … Continue reading →

Once the filler plate was installed on the radio a bit of fiddling was needed to adjust the width and depth of the volume and tuner shafts. The RetroSound adjustable mounting brackets supported these adjustments, producing a good fit. Support … Continue reading →

A box from RetroSound showed up. Schlep it out to the workshop. Remove the old radio. Dig out the RetroSound bezel and carefully unwrap it. Do a trial fit to see if it goes in the dash cutout. It fits! … Continue reading →

There is another alternative for radios: RetroSound makes a line of modular radios designed to go in old cars. They do this by providing a radio body (which they call a motor), a set of bezels that contain the display … Continue reading →

If I want tunes in the Imperial the current radio has to go. There are several ways to do this. The cleanest approach would be to get another 1963 Imperial radio. A working one one be expensive. And this still … Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading →

With the jack ready to go there was a gas tank that needed to be dropped! It is a lot easier to handle an empty gas tank. And this replacement tank has a drain fitting. The gas gauge is reading … Continue reading →

At the end of the last post we had a pretty well destroyed dash vent with a broken off cobalt drill bit buried hopelessly deep into it. With nothing to lose we might as well destroy it further and see … Continue reading →

Step one is to remove at least one of the roll pins. Which are installed flush with the opening in the vent assembly. No way to grab onto the roll pins. Since roll pins are hollow, maybe thread something into … Continue reading →

Any 10 minute job is one broken bolt away from two days of hell. I’m not sure who originally made that observation, but there is a lot of truth to it. The Imperial has an interesting AC design. There are … Continue reading →