Stock radio with aux?

[gubni]

I prefer a stock radio. I have a 98 with cassette only. Is there a way to swap a newer radio that would have aux connector? If so from what?

 

[adsm08]

Ford never used a head unit with a 3.5mm aux jack in the head unit. They were always remote-mounted.

There was a write-up I saw somewhere, may have been here, about adding one to a Ford radio with a cassette deck. It required opening up the radio and soldering the wires for the jack to the cassette input circuits. It required having a tape adapter in so the radio would take the input, but it did work.

 

[adsm08]

http://www.instructables.com/id/MP3-player-quotinputquot-for-car-stereo/

 

[BlackBII]

I just added a Bluetooth receiver to my 1992 factory radio.

What you'll want to do is open the radio and find out which pre-amp chip you have, and then tap into either the AM ot Tape inputs. This way you just override the signal and can still use the bass/treble/fade settings.

Here's mine, though it's a '92 and the pre-amp chip is likely different than yours.

Finally got around to adding an aux input to my factory radio. I tried the Bluetooth board I bought, but kept having ground noise issues, so I just used an aux cable instead.

I soldered the left and right wires of the aux cable to the L and R #2 inputs(AM Radio) on the preamp chip and ground to ground. This way I still get to use the chips equalizer and balance settings. I desoldered the AM tuner connections so that I won't get any buzzing. So now if I want AUX, I set the radio to AM. FM Radio still works great.

Here's some pics and the data sheet of the chip in my radio. Note - The left and right are shown here as being soldered to the #3 inputs. I switched these later to the #2 inputs, overriding the AM signal.
My phone puts out too much voltage, so I'll have to add a 100k trimmer pot so I can tone it down, but my battery powered 3.5mm Bluetooth receiver works great.

1992 factory radio with added Bluetooth round 2.

I added a step down voltage converter and an isolated 12-5v converter.

This got rid of the ground loop noise.

 

[Skirbykat]

Why not just use a cassette adapter? Are they just a thing of the past?

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

 

[jimmyfloyd]

I just added a Bluetooth receiver to my 1992 factory radio.

What you'll want to do is open the radio and find out which pre-amp chip you have, and then tap into either the AM ot Tape inputs. This way you jut override the signal and can still use the bass/treble/fade settings.

Here's mine, though it's a '92 and the pre-amp chip is likely different than yours.

Do you have a writeup on this? I kinda want to do this to my other car, and have not seen the extra receivers before.

 

[adsm08]

Why not just use a cassette adapter? Are they just a thing of the past?

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

They, um, what's the word.....

Suck.

Even when they were main stream I had a lot of reliability issues with them. Where I work now they are still the single most audio accessory that gets brought back as defective. Sound fidelity wasn't great either.

 

[BlackBII]

Do you have a writeup on this? I kinda want to do this to my other car, and have not seen the extra receivers before.

I don't have a write-up on it. Every application will be different so it would be hard to make a catch all write-up.

Basically, you want to tap into the pre-amp chips' inputs and add your audio source there. I used a simple bluetooth receiver that is powered by 5 volts DC and outputs a Left, Right and Ground. I soldered these to the AM pre-amp pins so that when I put the radio on AM, the signal coming from my bluetooth receiver is sent through the pre-amp, amp and then speakers.

The first thing you'd need to do is find out which pre-amp chip your radio has and then find the data sheet for it. This will tell you which pins to use, and the input voltage.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

This is fascinating, very tempted to find a period premium radio for my Ranger now...

I had a cassette adapter back in the day, worked fine aside from the squeaking in between songs. I had the fancy "car ready" or something like that discman which came with a remote control too.

 

[BlackBII]

This is fascinating, very tempted to find a period premium radio for my Ranger now...

I had a cassette adapter back in the day, worked fine aside from the squeaking in between songs. I had the fancy "car ready" or something like that discman which came with a remote control too.

I believe the part number for the '85 trucks is 19A241. I haven't opened one of these, and so I am not sure if they have a pre-amp chip like the newer ones have. They are likely not digital at all.

The later trucks(86/88 and later?) used 19B131 and 19B132, which do have the pre-amp chip.

Here's one:

Ebay Link

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

I believe the part number for the '85 trucks is 19A241. I haven't opened one of these, and so I am not sure if they have a pre-amp chip like the newer ones have. They are likely not digital at all.

The later trucks(86/88 and later?) used 19B131 and 19B132, which do have the pre-amp chip.

Here's one:

Ebay Link

That is just like the one I pulled out of mine in 2001 aside from I think the knobs were different and mine wasn't a premium originally (so no fade with only the two dash speakers) I was thinking of the later ones with the equalizer for this adventure.

I like my Sirius and USB though...