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Wow great looking dash! Those gauges are amazing!

thanks, I'm surprised at how well this car cleans up after sitting in a field for God only knows how long. I just wish the speedometer didn't break on me. bummer....

I've asked around for another one. but if anyone has one...let me know. 55 jr speedo

here is a couple more pics of last night's progress. put the trim on and cleaned up the radio as best I could. of course the radio doesn't work....bench tested it...nothing but noise from the tubes, etc. but to be honest, with the way it looks I wouldn't trust it to not catch on fire and burn the car down.

I plan to just put it in place and not wire it up. I will run the wire for the dial indicator lamp over to one of the wires for the gauge lighting....this way it will turn on the lamp in the radio when the lights turn on in the dash. it'll play the part, but wont actually play radio stations.

I don't really see myself listening to AM radio while driving the car anyways.

If I want tunes in the future I'll put in a hidden radio and hide the speakers so nobody will be the wiser. but, I don't have a radio in my 70 dart and never miss it. I'd rather enjoy the ride and listen to the motor.

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Hank, I had planned on creating a new harness for my '55 as well. Laid out the old harness on a board and used nails to anchor each circuit. Priced everything necessary and realized I could purchase a "hot rod" harness cheaper. The harness I bought from snsclassics, is a 21 circuit, harness, with GXL rated wire. I figured I could either install it as is, or break it down into the components and cobble together a new 8 circuit harness. I have not yet installed it, but since I finally retired, I should have time to start back working on my Clipper.

Probably right about the radio and it may need work -- but it could surprise you. Assume you had an antenna connected. The radios are usually silent or only make a little static if tried without one. Doesn't look like there was a factory rear seat speaker so verify the chassis speaker wire is connected to the slide in terminal on the hidden side of output transformer. It sometimes gets hit and can easily be pulled loose when manipulating the chassis out of the car.

I thought about the hot rod wiring harness, but to be honest I would have no clue how to hook that up. with the original it would be a no brainer and everything would just be like original, down to the colors. I even already have harness tape I bought ages ago.

I know that KevinAz did the hot rod harness, but he had someone do it for him.

sometimes its hard for me to think outside the box and I need laid out instructions. if someone had done this already with the hot rod harness and documented it...I'd probably go that way. wiring has never been my forte, but I can follow directions pretty well.

I found all the wiring I would need in the proper form (gxl and txl either way) and color for under 100 bucks. just need to find all of the terminals that aren't the cheap crap Chinese ones.

I also found the bulb terminals, just use brass rivets of the right diameter. grind them down to size and crimp them on. I found a few forum posts on a mustang site where a guy did that with great results and super cheap.

I did call around to a few of the harness repo companies and they wanted anywhere from 600-1700 to do it. 600 was an estimate from one that had never done a Packard harness yet. that was just for the dash/engine harness. did not include the rear harness.


Thanks for the thoughts on the radio. I'll have to look to see what wire you are talking about. I know that I had the 3 prong wire plug in to the side of the speaker setup, but I didn't notice any other wires except the single power wire

I had the antennae plugged in and I stuffed a piece of wire in the end of it in a loop. then I ground the wire on the side of the antennae cable. it didn't help and I'm sure I didn't do it right.

but either way the radio, wiring, and the tubes etc....they are really shady looking and I wouldn't trust it to not spontaneously combust one day. its not worth AM radio. I'm also guessing its about 400-500 or more to send it off and have it repaired....again not worth it to me. the only noise I heard was from the back side where all the tubes, etc are. the speaker was completely silent.

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.

The usual culprits for a non-functioning tube type radio are the vibrator and the 0Z4 rectifier tube. These are both metal cans and located on the left side of the sub assembly with the speaker. The vibrator is the larger one and you should hear a hum from it when the radio is turned on.

Solid state replacements are available for both of these components (no hum from a solid state vibrator) The radio in my 49 Custom has been working fine for many years with a solid state vibrator. No experience with the 0Z4 replacement.

Hank -

I got the little brass buttons for the light socket wires from Rhode Island Wiring Service, they worked for all of my light assemblies. O_D directed me to that source. I used a crimper that just puts a dimple in the button to hold it to the wire, while keeping the shaft round. Might have to play with that to get it right. You could probably solder them on too.

riwire.com/Catalogs/sup/pages/washers.htm

Henry, nice job. I love the golden glow of the instruments when they are illuminated. Most pleasing effect.

(o{}o)

If you are getting a hum on the radio I bet you just need to replace the capacitors. I resurrected 2 radios from the dead doing that and diagnosing a bad vibrator on one. Again more for the challenge than anything.