Discrete Radio Upgrade

[Willhelm]

Finally recieved my Pyle PLR14mpf. I choose it because it was pretty inexpensive and I WANTED an old school, minimalist, appearance. I'm not interested in putting a bulls-eye on my dash besides which I like the austere looks of the stock beetle.

I purchased an original stock radio face plate from the classifieds and received it out of Georgia. The plan is to modify it to fit my new radio. Background left: the stock AM radio. Foreground left: the new radio's face plate (which will become rendered useless). At right: new radio roughly fitted to a stock face plate. It looks like this will work.

Collected up my parts and took them into work. I made two alignment pins quick and dirty on one of the lathes at work.

In this photo I have installed the alignment pins between the two face plates. I now have a template to machine out the old face plate to accept the new radio.

The two nested face plates loaded in a vice with an end mill at the ready.

Making it happen. I had to be really careful locating the edges but went by eye and then made the traverse cuts which remain straight as the mill bed is moved. I am basically cutting around the four sides here. The center portion will drop out.

The two nested face plates fresh out of the vice. Notice the two windows now match.

The face plates pulled apart, pins removed. At the bottom you can see the center portion removed from the old face plate. My friend Ellen encouraged me to follow through with somehow saving the Volkwagen text.

I did some work to remove the Volkswagen badge and got it squared up. This was a mock up I did to see how things would fit and look. Pleased.

This evening I used some silicone to bond the lettering to it's new location. It's not really glue but I think it's a really good choice here. It's really tough to pull this stuff apart and it's a little bit flexible so it should survive the installation and any heat/cold flexing. I ended up redoing this and moving it just a little to the right. I know, I know, but it's right smack dab in front of people on the dash board

I had a moment of abject reasoning and realized it would be a good idea to remove this fuse at the rear or the radio. Once installed this will be obscured by the fresh air box. I don't want to be taking the airbox out to replace a stupid fuse. I'm going to pick up a fused power source on the fuse block proper.

I don't have it installed yet but I've got everything ready to go. The new radio upper, the stock radio lower. I think I pulled of a pretty tasteful upgrade. San disk, USB, and FM.

[PaRacer]

Great job! Looks excellent! How do the unit's boxes comare? (not much extra room back there because of the wipers)

[69 Jim]

Excellent look.

Damn, that sells for less than 25 bucks?

[CarlIseminger]

I like this!

I had a Pyle for about 1 day installed. The radio "box" is much less than the original radio. And therefore, the radio is far lighter too. Slips right in. But I fried the radio after the first bumpy ride. The RCA plugs are "uncapped" and when driving, they jiggled loose and hit the fuze box. Touched a live wire. ZEERKKK. Who knew? Dummy me, I should have made sure they were capped, but I never had a radio with the RCA plugs loose like that.

[Willhelm]

Thanks for the heads up Carl. I'll get those insulated when I finish here before I forget. PaRacer, I have the radio in place and took some pics. I'm not buttoned up yet but this is pretty much the deal. On a '72 super at least, the dimensions are a total non issue.

I'll be getting it secured tightly and wired in a day or so. I read some mixed reviews of this unit this morning. We'll see.

[CarlIseminger]

I don't have a pic of the radio with the knobs on, but this is what my install looks like.

I ended up with the Dual XC4100. I had purchased this first before I found the Pyle, so had it in my "stash". But the Pyle looked better and I liked the USB and SDCard slots better than the tape player. But the Dual, I can hook my MP3 player up to with the jack on the front.

I had to do a little shaving of the face plate for it to fit inside the dash ring. But next time, I just might go the route of opening up the radio face plate.

Thanks for the ideas!

[Willhelm]

I got those jacks capped off just in case. No sense in running a risk like that no matter how remote the chance. I pushed some little rubber boots over the jacks and doubled up the leads with a zip tie to stop them swinging around. I also picked up my 12v off the fuse box. Ignition on, radio works, ignition off radio is off. Fuse in radio on, fuse out radio off.

I used the inboard most fuse. Anybody know off hand what that system is?

[Willhelm]

I wanted to write a brief wrap up. I finished getting this put in and buttoned up. For the price, I think it's satisfactory. The digital fittings for the san disk and thumb drive are a pretty nice feature although control is limited. FF or RWD, no random play or folder search.

Although there is some illumination the radio bands do not really light well.

Also as I read in a review my unit also makes a faint clicking audible only when nothing is feeding through for amplification (no music, radio silence, etc.). For the most part for the money it's acceptable. Just a no frills source of music. There is a time and place for high fidelity but inside my Beetle isn't it. I like listening to the motor too much.

Before trimming the hot glue:

[CarlIseminger]

That looks nice. Can I ask why you used the hot glue? I would think that the radio/dash plate would hold the radio in place just like it did the original radio.

[Willhelm]

The stock radio actually has a couple spring loaded tabs behind the dash which keeps things snug and in place. The new radio chassis is plain-jane and passes through freely. I have a nice fit but no mechanical attachment other than the ground strap in back. I chose hot glue for it's particular qualities. If it is left relatively undisturbed it bonds and holds fast, but if I ever choose or can afford a stock AM/FM, I will be able to break it free and peel out the hot glue no permanent damage done. The excess trimmed off pretty well, I ran out of sunny days to get a nicely lit finished photo.

[CarlIseminger]

I understand now. My Pyle came with an install kit and one of the items was a metal plate that I could put on the front of the radio before I pushed it out the hole. Then the face plate made sort of a "sandwich" on the dash face to hold that end of the radio and then the support strap on the back.

Amazing what we can come up with to make our mods work.

[6BUG3]

and here i thought I had searched all the threads before opening a new one. but i missed yours. thanks for linking, I'll be doing this.

[Willhelm]

If you plan on this particular radio just understand that it has quirks. The one issue that troubled me at first was the L to R fader. It will go from full L to balanced to full R. Three distinct positions, no fade.

Read a couple reviews, maybe the issues have been corrected. I don't require gadgetry and prefer simple. For me it works and can be reversed with no harm done.

[6BUG3]

[Willhelm]

Understood. If you run to one speaker you should go with a "duel voice coil" speaker to handle both channels.

[Willhelm]

I finally have a photo of the finished installation. Beautiful spring day today.

[GüteAndTite]

[Willhelm]

Valid points. The original knobs would have been really nice but it wasn't a direct swap. I'm OK with it though, there are bigger fish to fry while I work out other more important deficient areas. Great tip on the fade control. I'm done here and don't want to take stuff back apart (again) but I know others have used this radio so that might be helpful to them. The Pyle logo sucks but I decided to leave well enough alone rather than making a mess of things. It could be painted out but I'm not sure if that would look nicer or just worse. Thanks for your input.

[tundrawolf]

Dude, you have a mill, you self promoter you? That's totally not fair!

P.S. I never thought I'd see a head that combined technology from the 20's (Capacitor tuned radio) with the ability to play songs from a SD card/ USB. How strange for me to see that.

[erfani69beetle]

nice! very creative and some clean work.