I had a problem getting the taillight on the right side to work, later finding out that the housing and socket were rusted/corroded to the point that they wouldn't even conduct electricity to make the light work. There's obviously two options, one is to buy a new taillight socket, which is a viable option as the parts aren't too expensive, or, improvise as we always do, and make things work with what we have available. Obviously we tend to always go for the latter. Luckily I had some light sockets on hand that were pulled from some other car or whatever, I don't remember where I got this stuff from. I ended up chopping out the old light socket from the housing then trimming the hole to allow for the replacement light socket to be put in place. Because I couldn't get the measurements down perfectly, the socket didn't sit snug so I had to add a piece of metal to act as a retaining bracket to hold the socket in place. With that all done, I was able to remount the taillight socket in the car and wire it all in, allowing me to finalize the taillight/turn signal/brake light circuit.
The next order of business was installing the retro radio that I had ordered for this car. The radio has a face that makes it look like something you'd see in an older car but it's a bluetooth connective media player that is low profile so it doesn't take up much space under the dash. I had already routed the constant and switched 12v power wires to the hole but still had to add speakers. Since I didn't want to clutter up the interior with more wires by installing speakers in the panel in the back seat area, I decided to install smaller speakers in the dash body in holes that grace either side of the larger hole that would be used for the defroster vent tube. I had a couple smaller speakers, one of them a 2 way and the other a regular speaker. I had to drill extra holes in the dash surface to allow me to use a couple screws to secure the speakers. With the speakers in place I was able to go ahead and wire in the plugs for the radio. With the wiring taken care of I was able to install the mounting body for the radio, which just uses some tabs on all four sides which are bent out to lock the housing in place. The hole isn't perfect so the housing has some play, but it won't just pop out at least. I plugged the wires up and locked the radio in place. It does seem to fit pretty good in the dash of this classic car interior. After going through the process for setting up the bluetooth connection to my phone, I had the radio successfully playing...through one speaker, the 2 way unit. The other speaker was trash. All this means is I'll have to replace that unit, but then again, I have to do some research to see what combination speaker/amplifier devices might be available that would allow me to install a setup where I could do away with even the small 2 way speaker and just have a nice boosted speaker in place somewhere under the dash that will do just as good a job of blasting out sounds as any 6x9 speaker. That way I can keep the under dash area a little cleaner without the addition of extra speakers. We'll see how we can arrange that.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
May 2023
|