Old car radio

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stan

stan

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Needed to do some work on the wiper motor (vacuum) on the 50 Plymouth, as some very need rain is coming, hopefully to put out these fires around here. To access and service the old vacuum motor..the radio need to come out.
Thought you boys would get a kick out of seeing the 10 lb thing. We've come a long way in auto sound systems since 1950

stan-2017101902075009319_1.jpg
 
Radio content

Being born in 1955, I missed the days when people could tune in to network radio shows. I enjoy listening to some old radio shows now, and it seems that NPR is about the only station I ever listen to. All the rest is either alt-right crap or bad music.

My first car was a 1951 Lincoln with a superheterodyne radio that sounded so beautiful. Those old radios have a 'roundness' that modern electronics can't duplicate.
 
Thanks for sharing this Stan. I’d forgotten how huge these old car radios were. Yours seems unique in that the speaker looks like its incorporated in to the radio. These old tube, car radios had a very rich, resonate sound. I loved the way they had to warmup and how the sound gradually became louder as they were doing so. I believe that this may have been what they were talking about in the lyrics of the song, “Coming To You From Out Of Nowhere”, because thats just what it seemed like with these old radios.
Eddie
 
I'll add the radio that belongs in my '50 GMC to this thread -- it has a sort of cartoon-ish (or would that be cartune-ish?) look when not installed.  The post for the detached knob needs to be replaced.  JB Weld to the rescue?

 

John, what model was your Lincoln?  We had a '51 Cosmopolitan until late 1960/early 1961.  My mom said it steered like a truck.  I do remember the radio in that car, along with the '57 Premier that replaced it, would buzz while driving parallel to fat power lines, or past certain neon signs, and of course it would lose the AM signal completely in an underpass or tunnel.

[this post was last edited: 10/19/2017-14:02]

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I have quite a few old car radios in my collection-oldest is ~1935 chevy.Most American radios switched to low voltage tubes/transistor audio output in 1957,but a 1959 Blaupunkt in collection is still vibrator type. Not sure,but I think 1961 chevy could be had with standard partly tube radio or deluxe "all transistor"radio option :)
 
Those two radios are compact compared to my 37 Chevy. The control head is in the dash with two cables running from that to the actual radio which is a large box mounted on the firewall. One half of the case is removable for access. It has a latch like those found on old lunch boxes. Below that also mounted on the firewall is a large speaker. Just think; in the 50s the all in one units shown above would have been considered quite an advance compared to the units from the 30s.
 
Hope you get some rain, Stan!

I'm curious if there's any indication of a manufacturer on the inside of your radio. I've read that Philco had most of the OEM market,for many years.

My 1964 Lincoln had an AM/FM all-transistor made by Bendix, surprisingly.

I've heard that Imperial in the late Fifties had the first all transistor radio, probably AM only.
 


Fun seeing these old car radios!

 

Those old radios have a 'roundness' that modern electronics can't duplicate.

 

Probably the tube sound. Some high end home solid state amplifiers have (to some degree) a tube sound. But at the low end, you don't have that sound.


 

My 1964 Lincoln had an AM/FM all-transistor made by Bendix, surprisingly.

 

I have a partly restored Bendix radio in storage. (Home radio, from the 1940s.) So the name was used on radios. I'm not sure if it's the same company that made appliances, though.
 
IIRC, I got an AM/FM radio for our '64 Continental but it didn't work and I never got it fixed.  We let it go along with the car when we sold it.  I'm not sure of the manufacturer, but I don't see why it would be anything other than a Bendix.

 

The really elaborate radio was the AM/FM version for the '65 Continental.  On that one, the selector buttons were all labeled for either band.  To program, you pulled out the button and gave it a twist so the desired band was facing up.  You could have all buttons set (twisted) for FM or all for AM.  There was no band switch.  When pushed inward, the buttons automatically changed the band according to whether AM or FM was facing up, and the band indicator on the dial would also change.   I got one of those sets for my dad's '65, and it was impressive.  I'm pretty sure it was a Bendix too. 

 

The most ridiculous thing about radio R&R on the '64 and '65 Continentals (I think '61-'63 may have had a different configuration) was that you had to start the process by removing the sun visors -- I am not kidding -- and then work your way down to the dash.  You had to dedicate a good chunk of time to complete the whole operation.
 
My sisters '58 Impala had that Town & Country button with another big bar that clunked to one of 3 local stations with the first automatic seek the next station I ever saw. Now I got 9 zillion stations on seek all playing FM garbage. My '63 Rambler, first car, had an instant on transistor radio on AM but got great reception after dark for popular stations on the East Coast. Those were the days.
 
one year only transistor radios

the article linked in reply #11 was very interesting-Chrysler dropped their 1956 all transistor radio and GM also dropped their 1957 Cadillac all transistor after just one year partly because low voltage signal tubes had been introduced and eliminated the noisy(just a quiet hum actually) vibrator.I have one mechanical signal-seeking GM "wonder bar"radio in the collection:~1967 oldsmobile AM/FM mono-a big solenoid tensions the needle and a clockwork mechanism controls the speed, a small solenoid actuated pawl stops a gear when station sensed.A 1975 Chrysler seeker radio I saw once was motorized-tuning knob spun until station found.
 
Bendix

I knew that Bendix made home radios and maybe some early TVs, but thought they'd dropped out of the marketplace by the Sixties. My impression was that the Aviation Corporation (Avco) had sold its Bendix and Crosley divisions to Philco around 1956. But the Bendix Corporation was still doing other things and they must have kept their auto radio business.

Yeah, taking the Lincoln radios out was a job. The stainless trim pieces between the front doors and the windshield had to be unscrewed, too, IIRC. On the plus side, nobody ever stole your radio!
 
'Kennedy' Continentals

I always wanted one of those sixties Lincolns but never got one. I had the same girlfriend growing up for a bunch of years; her father owned 4 appliance stores. When I was in elementary school he had a '63 Continental, the shorter wheelbase with the curved side glass. Even to a kid like me, it seemed really small. I think it was the inward slope of the glass. When I went into junior high her father traded that one for a '65, gold with black vinyl roof. It seemed enormous inside, again because it had straight side glass and the roof was nearly a foot wider. That '65 had the AM/FM radio you speak of with the flippable buttons. Her mother got a beige '66 Cadillac Calais 4-door hardtop and it had the signal seeking radio. I wasn't old enough to drive yet, but as a passenger they were pure heaven. We had a lady down in the town where I grew up who drove nothing but purple Continentals for about 20 years; her husband was the president of one of the banks.
 
John

I never thought to look for a manufacture name. Since my repair on the wiper motor didn't work out, I'll be removing the radio again so I'll look and take pics of the guts.
The radio dose work and it dose take a few seconds to warm up, but I hardly ever use it.
The idea of having to remove the wiper motor again and re install... Well it's hell for me to work under a dash anymore.. but I can't ask a mechanic to work on a vacuum wiper motor! So I'll have my head in it at least once more.. Damn it!
 
Stan, let me/us know what you find out about your wiper motor.  The one on the GMC is sluggish at best, and the vacuum checks out OK.  I've had it apart a couple of times over the years and have lubed the paddle, but yeah, even with good clearance under the truck's spartan dash panel, it's still a PITA to work under there.  Even worse is accessing the linkage, which is where I think the current trouble lies in the Jimmy.  The motor works fine when disconnected from the linkage, but once it has work to do, it slows down or stops altogether mid-swipe.  I think that more than anything, the sluggishness results from lack of use.

 

 
 
Let's not forget about the foot-controlled scan function.  Our '57 Premiere had that feature and it took years for me to figure out how the radio (with a Town/Country switch as mentioned above) seemed to be tuning itself because Dad would never let on.  The scan was mainly used in outlying areas where few, if any stations could be pulled in, so it was a phenomenon I remember from childhood road trips.
 
Ralph

I'll let you know what I find out.
Your right.. The motor itself isn't too hard to remove, it's reattaching the linkage!
I finally took the cowl vent out so I could crawl on top of the car and work from the top down. In the past, I've taken the motor apart, but this time I didn't really want to... So I used a baby booger snatcher to add about a tsp of brake fluid in the vacuum hole while operating on the vacuum stroke. Felt like I had smooth operation. After attaching vacuum line, the motor worked, but not after attaching linkage.
So maybe I have a small vacuum leak? or maybe switching the arms of the linkage? If that doesn't work, then the motor has to come apart, and a new kit installed.
 
'57 Lincoln

That '57 Lincoln was the most amazing restyle of the year. It managed to look so ery different from the '56! When I was a little in the late 50's our next door neighbor had a 4-door in pink with a white roof. I was always captivated with those taillights--and of course they were at my level. I'll bet those lights are scarce as hen's teeth now because so many customizers used them.
 
Remember old car radios-they had GREAT sensitivity.Used them in the house-connected to an old EICO 12V "battery Eleiminator" supply.The radios I liked best had the vibrator power supplies and the 6X5 or 0Z4 rectifier tubes.I had a Cadillac radio that had a PP 6V6 output stage-sounded GREAT when connected to a good speaker-was a good DX radio.These got lost in a flood-Bought them for a buck each in the late 60's from a place called "Jalopy Jungle" in Rapid City S.Dak.Learned a lot of electronics from those old radios-the hybrid and early SS radios weren't as good as those old all tubed ones.Had a few hybrid radios-RF sections tube-the tubes would work off the 12V no vibrator step up supply-the output stage for the speaker was SS.A hybrid radio makes a loud thump when turned on-after the RF tubes warm up-then you hear the station.
 
Stan,

I have that exact same radio in my '50 Plymouth Special Deluxe. I bought it used and not working in the 90's, and replaced the vibrator as well as all the capacitors. It works now, but I think I may have gotten the values of some of the square caps off when I replaced them with cylindrical ones.

IF you could please take some detailed photos of the existing components under the tube section, with shots of all the caps, esp the square ones, and post it here or email it to me, I'd be extremely grateful. It could help me identify now which caps are off and need to be fixed.

The radio works OK but the volume is fairly low, and some stations don't come in too well.

Thanks in advance!
 
The reason many car radios had better reception back in the tube days is most used 262mhz if stages plus a tuned rf stage on the tuning capacitor. It made them much more sensitive and they had tighter tuning and close channel rejection so they picked up just the channel you were trying to hear. I used and still have a mid 60s Zenith small plastic table AM radio that has 6 tubes and that third tuned rf stage on the tuning variable capacitor. It also had a big 6x9 speaker and a modern ferrite rod antenna built in that was directional so I could turn the radio to pull in weak signals. I used to shoot skip with it and it was better then a few dedicated short wave radios I had and could really pick weak signals out of the mud.
There was a reason back in the day Zenith radios were very sought after and old ones are collectable. They sounded great and usually had a better tuning system with all the latest advances except for dedicated high end military and short wave radios where cost was no object.
 
Oh yes-the 262Khz IF in those old radios-you remined me of that.I was working with those something like over 40 yrs ago!Kinda wished I had one of those radios today!In time on my DX radio took out the vibrator and just ran the thing off a large 6V surplus filament transformer-IMPROVEMENT-no more vibrator noise!
 
Thanks, Stan.

The problem I ran into was reading the values on the square capacitors correctly. And the place I was going to for help (Al Lasher's electronics in Berkeley) was no help in that. They just kind of thought it was a joke, I guess. Anyway, I read the color codes as I would have on a cylindrical cap, but I later learned (from the internet, years later) that I'd gotten things off by perhaps a factor of ten. Or, who knows?

Here's a reference. What I'm talking about are the three dot and six dot capacitors. These look like little dominos and apparently have a rather arcane coding scheme. The colors are the familiar BBROYGBVGW format, but the arrangement and what the values actually mean (percent? farads? watts? volts?) is a bit strange.

Unfortunately I didn't take photos before I replaced them. I probably kept the old ones (somewhere!) but I have no idea today which ones on the circuitry need to be replaced with correct values.

This is a photo from the link below:

R_and_C-C_C.jpg
</img>

http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/funwithtubes/How_To-Reading_Codes.html
 
PS-I didn't bother to rebuild my vacuum wiper motor. I bought a rebuilt one from a place I found in Hemmings. It works pretty good. Although come to think of it, I may have reassembled the rubber flapper valves in the vacuum pump under the gas pump incorrectly. But the wipers work fine everywhere but going uphill at slower speeds. Typical, I understand. One of these days I'll pull the gas/vacuum pump and see if I can get it to work better. I may also have purchases a vacuum motor rebuild kit; where it is today would take a lot of searching. One thing I learned: these little vacuum motors are deceptively powerful. Don't get your fingers in the way of the levers and linkages!
 
vacuum wipers

The amazing thing to me is how long vacuum wipers existed here in the US. Chrysler went to electric wipers on all their brands in 1950; for most of their cars, though, they were single-speed and people didn't like that. But Ford kept them in at least some cars (including Lincoln) through at least 1960! At one point in college I had a stripper '61 Biscayne wagon that was really a stripper. It even had the recirculating heater instead of the fresh air one. And it had one speed wipers--but they were electric.

And American Motors used them at least through 1969 on some models! When I was a kid in the 60's my father had a 1960 Rambler Classic wagon for his 'work' commuting car. It had vacuum wipers and I remember them slowing down just when you'd need them the most. My mother had a '60 Bonneville and it had at least two speeds, and they were 'clap-hands' wipers that met in the middle.
 

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