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I will have to find the site I have saved. There is a guy out in Cali who is taking the stock packard radio and converting it to am/fm Satellite, Mp3. I have been thinking about doing it to one of the patricians.

Sounds like a nice little project. Is it going to require gutting the original radio? That seems to be one big thing that turns people away from any of the numerous AM/FM conversions.

Be nice if it could be done by adding some wires to appropriate points and bring those out to a plug. Build the mod in a separate enclosure and plugging it in would reroute the signals and disable the original circuitry. Unplug the module and radio would revert back so you were in stock operation.

ReadiRad is nice because it requires no mods. Believe it uses the antenna input but think it is only an input converter from line input to AM frequency and requires extra receivers for any of the things you are contemplating.

Howard,

That may be possible. I guess you could do it either way. My initial design is going to be a gut job since my radios are already DOA, and I just want to get the basic prototype working with the Packard controls. After I get all that figured out then I can figure out if it can colocate with the stock radio circuit.

Once I get more into the radio and see how the controls are wire up, then I will know what is possible. But technically you should be able to put a relay in the project that would cut the power to the existing guts when this is powered up. The trick would be to electrically isolate the two so there are no electrical/ground paths through the unused circuit, which could cause some with of feedback or a distortion in the control values.

But for people with DOA radios, or have converted to 12v, then this would be a much cheaper option that either repair or sending in out for conversion.

I know the volume and tone are pretty much POT controls, but I think the tuner is more than likely a coil & ferrite rod control to set the oscillation on the AM signal.

Since this is pretty much all solid state and microprocessor controlled circuitry, it should be pretty power efficient (3.3 & 5v). Only thing using any substantial power would be the AMP circuitry to drive the speaker(s).

If you're just talking about disabling the existing radio, but leaving everything in place, then that should easily be possible with very minor work. Probably use some T-Taps to slice into the existing control circuits. An external box could have the antenna jack and speaker outputs on it, so those could be left alone.

But I think there is plenty of room inside the radio can to house my circuitry and the existing stuff.

Sounds like you've given it some thought. The gut part on a working radio is what I think most would object to and seems to be the only thing all the conversion places want to do. Those probably all use a generic commercially available radio in a chip setup. I guess I can understand getting rid of all the excess to avoid future problems -- but once done, it is done forever. If the place that did the conversion is gone or unknown, in some cases as we have found on the forum, the radio is inoperative and unrepairable because of the unknown work or components after a car changed hands.


The T taps or IMO, better would be a cut and reroute thru a relay is kind of what I was thinking. You could keep the relay off and use the N.C. contacts to maintain the original circuit and no one would be the wiser as to a mods existence. Plug your module in -- wherever you decide to place it -- and the relay would switch and bring the tuning signals etc out the N.O. contacts to your board while disconnecting the signals from the old radio. Hopefully those not immediately needed components would just sit there and do nothing until the module was unplugged -- then you magically have an original radio again.

If the module failed and was on a plug then just unplugging it should restore original operation. Leave a little sticker inside detailing what the relay is for and how it operates. If the module quit then at least someone could unplug it to kill the relay & restore the circuits and the radio shouldn't be a total loss. The unknown part of relays, aside from crosspickup would be possibly the need for a dual contact setup so that when signals are switched out on the first, is a second needed to tie down a floating input or output somewhere.

Something like this?

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Thats an Aurora FM-1.

It's a proprietary chip set, and they only sell thru authorized dealers. Those dealers only do conversions if you send them your radio. Basically you can't buy the board yourself and install it on your own. So it cost $400+ so the basic conversion. If you want line-in (ipod, etc) or Bluetooth then it gets really expensive. I looked at that before I decided to roll my own.

They use some kind of interface as well to program the inputs and options. I going to build mine with open source parts, and some coding that runs on the microprocessor to tie everything together. It should cost dramatically less as you would install in yourself.

Will it work on a 6v positive ground OEM system? From what I have experienced fixing the old radio is pretty easy. Most work after replacing the capacitors and/or vibrator. Caps are around $20 and 6v vibrators are $30. Being able to hear FM or AUX input would be great but I would miss the vintage sound.

Kev- Im all for that, I await the results

not sure what you are trying to accomplish but the hardest part of fixing the radio is getting it out from under the dash.

The tubes used in the original radios are not hard to buy and not all that expensive.

I went to some trouble to restore the radio in my 54 Cavalier only to find there are no listenable AM stations in Phoenix AZ.

Jim