The car came "fitted" with an eighties two-knob shaft (or spindle) cassette player, but it was not hooked up. The car also had no aerial installed and no power connections for a radio. Having had a rummage around the net I was relieved to find that it I wouldn't be butchering the dash if I wanted to fit a more conventional single din unit.
I was adamant that I didn't want to put a CD player in the car, partly as it didn't seem appropriate and I was worried about the clearance issues behind the dash. I spoke to a local car audio centre about the repair of a vintage radio cassette. They outwardly refused to go near one, and instead tried to sell me a Parrot kit for iPod or modern Alpine unit. I've got a modern Alpine CD/iPod unit in my Fiat. Its a great unit but I still didn't think it would be right for a 70's MG.
I managed to get my hands on a mid 90's Alpine cassette deck. It had been in my dads MX5 for a few years but the cassette deck had never been used. Not quite period, but certainly closer to period than a CD player! Advantages over a period unit included auto reverse tape deck, digital tuner and a reasonable amount of power for speakers.
Other things I needed of course were speakers and an aerial. Other things I was certain of; I didn't want to cut holes in the mint door cards to install speakers or drill a whole in the wing for an aerial. So having had a bit of a Google I found a subtle windscreen aerial, retro looking speaker pods and some simple Blaupunkt speakers.
Once evening after getting the car home I went out to my lock up armed with the radio, speakers and aerial, along with some automotive wiring, crimps, heat shrink and fuses. A few hours later I had a working radio cassette, aerial and speakers. Speakers were loosely position behind the front seats however I intend to find somewhere more permanent to put them, such as the front foot wells. The aerial was attached to the top corner of the windscreen. Power for the antenna was fed from the remote power output of the radio via an ISO loom.
Reception from the aerial isn't that great, it picks up the main BBC radio stations with a few crackles in certain places. Doesn't bug me too much, my plan is to listen to tapes mainly!
At some point I will revisit the wiring of the radio and tidy it up. A lot of the under dash wiring is incredibly messy (from previous owners?) and visible below the dash, so I will look into tidying that up as well.
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| MGB dashboard after radio cassette was fitted. The dashboard currently hides a lot of messy wiring! |
Anyways, next job the following weekend was to give it a proper clean, get the dust off the car!
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