Re: Henry's 55 Constellation

Posted by HH56 On 2015/10/27 11:03:17

You are right about AM radio. For sure not much is available out here unless you are into talk, religion or Spanish. Might be a country western station or two. It would be more a conversation or satisfaction piece to have it working or maybe get something like the RediRad to install with it and use an iPod. Even then it wouldn't be a window rattling stereo like young people seem to enjoy today. I say that because of a young guy that drives down my street that you can hear coming a block away.

IIRC, a year or two ago there was a European owner of a Clipper that was able to get a bezel and mount a modern repro style radio in the dash without doing any mods. Can't remember which of the radio places had something that fit but maybe someone else does. Obviously not original but didn't look too bad. If I were going to add modern think something like the Secretaudio setup would be the radio of choice.

No idea on price to fix the old but depending on what it needs you are probably in the ballpark.

Just make sure what you use for an antenna proper is only connecting to the center hole and isn't grounding to you or touching the chassis. Some have even used coat hangers stuck in the hole. The wire to the speaker is short but does stick up a bit so can get caught with fingers or something sticking out on the dash. The connection is in the space between the speaker and the transformer located right in the center of the chassis. A slide in connection on the inner side of the transformer. Poor connection at that slide plug results in static and no connection is silence. Seen a few radios where adding a rear speaker resulted in the connector getting bent and loose. Hard to work blindly under the dash just by feel to find the connector and make or change the connections.