Trying to tackle some long-overdue things in my MG...
A few years back, I sourced a very nice Motorola AM/FM push button radio. It may be a few years newer than my car, but is reasonably period correct. After I went through it, cleaned it up, and did some light restoration work it came to life and sounded great at least in my bench testing.
In the car is a bit of a different story, though. Basically, when I bought the car, it had a CD player in the dash along with two 6x9 4Ω oval speakers in the rear bulkhead(a common but somewhat controversial mounting). The modern radio drove those okay, but it had other big issues(like a completely burned out LCD display) and just looked out of place in the car. I yanked that radio and just ran a factory-style blanking plate for a while.
The push to put a radio in came a bit from my wife, who enjoys riding in the car a lot more if there's SOMETHING there, and the period radio was my compromise. Before this is all said and done I may end up spending the big bucks on one of the modern vintage-looking radios, but I'm trying to make this work for now.
My vintage Motorola(mono, so only a single output channel) calls for a maximum 8Ω output. It did okay running a single 4Ω speaker, but of course I didn't really want to tax it. I wired the trunk speakers in series, which also works okay but turning the volume up enough with the engine running to reasonably able to hear it gives some serious distortion. It especially doesn't help that if the top is down, it more or less covers the speakers, and there's also no speaker box around them.
These cars did not come with a factory radio, but it was a dealer option. For the 68-80 models, it was kind of up to the dealer as to where to install the speakers. Some did it where mine are, some put them on the doors, and some under the dash. I have fairly new door cards that have perforations in the masonite for speakers, but I really don't want to make a big hole in these nice, barely used cards.
Ideally, I'd like to mount under the dash, but I'm at a complete loss as to what to even look for. Ideally I'd like one one on each side, but I don't know how practical that is for the radio I have driving this.
Could I expect reasonable results if I used two 4Ω speakers in series as I'm doing now?
I know very little about car audio, so may be overthinking this way TOO much, but alternatively would it maybe be a good idea to fit some sort of amplifier to drive two separate speakers? Perhaps even combine that with the ones already there?
I'd appreciate thoughts as to how to get something useable out of this. I don't expect Hi-fi sound, just something that I can hear...
A few years back, I sourced a very nice Motorola AM/FM push button radio. It may be a few years newer than my car, but is reasonably period correct. After I went through it, cleaned it up, and did some light restoration work it came to life and sounded great at least in my bench testing.
In the car is a bit of a different story, though. Basically, when I bought the car, it had a CD player in the dash along with two 6x9 4Ω oval speakers in the rear bulkhead(a common but somewhat controversial mounting). The modern radio drove those okay, but it had other big issues(like a completely burned out LCD display) and just looked out of place in the car. I yanked that radio and just ran a factory-style blanking plate for a while.
The push to put a radio in came a bit from my wife, who enjoys riding in the car a lot more if there's SOMETHING there, and the period radio was my compromise. Before this is all said and done I may end up spending the big bucks on one of the modern vintage-looking radios, but I'm trying to make this work for now.
My vintage Motorola(mono, so only a single output channel) calls for a maximum 8Ω output. It did okay running a single 4Ω speaker, but of course I didn't really want to tax it. I wired the trunk speakers in series, which also works okay but turning the volume up enough with the engine running to reasonably able to hear it gives some serious distortion. It especially doesn't help that if the top is down, it more or less covers the speakers, and there's also no speaker box around them.
These cars did not come with a factory radio, but it was a dealer option. For the 68-80 models, it was kind of up to the dealer as to where to install the speakers. Some did it where mine are, some put them on the doors, and some under the dash. I have fairly new door cards that have perforations in the masonite for speakers, but I really don't want to make a big hole in these nice, barely used cards.
Ideally, I'd like to mount under the dash, but I'm at a complete loss as to what to even look for. Ideally I'd like one one on each side, but I don't know how practical that is for the radio I have driving this.
Could I expect reasonable results if I used two 4Ω speakers in series as I'm doing now?
I know very little about car audio, so may be overthinking this way TOO much, but alternatively would it maybe be a good idea to fit some sort of amplifier to drive two separate speakers? Perhaps even combine that with the ones already there?
I'd appreciate thoughts as to how to get something useable out of this. I don't expect Hi-fi sound, just something that I can hear...
