wireing cd changer into 8 track player

[Dave84]

I want to have my 8 track sterio in the car but it i want to listen to cd's, is there anyway i can wire a cd changer into my 8 track player, so to keep that nestalgic look

[87vicFIVEO]

You can get an FM transmiter for a portible cd player (or mp3 player) you just tune your radio to an unused frequency (it's selectible) and your good to go. You can buy them from Best Buy or somewhere like that (for Ipod). I'm pretty sure that's the only way.


8 Track Tapes I own

The Clash- Combat Rock

Kraftwerk- I like to compute

Kudos for hanging on to that thing...great

[Nathan in MI]

If you don't care about having the OEM radio operable you could just have it in there as a dummy (i.e., not wired up). Then put a different radio somewhere else where it isn't obvious. Just a thought...

[87vicFIVEO]

If you don't care about having the OEM radio operable you could just have it in there as a dummy (i.e., not wired up). Then put a different radio somewhere else where it isn't obvious. Just a thought...

That would work but keep in mind that our cars have a floating ground speaker wiring system. Another words the speakers ground to chassis instead of back to the head unit (stupid 80's cost saving measure) so if you wire in a new unit wire it directly to your speakers instead of through the factory harness.

[Nathan in MI]

So do the speakers just have a short length of wire that goes directly to ground? Weird... I guess you could still do it that way; all you'd have to do is wire one side of the output from the radio to ground.

[87vicFIVEO]

If you look at your factory radio wiring set up you will see that the speakers dont gorund back to the source ford grounds them to the chassis to save 5 cents. I've been told my numerous car audio shops that it is a good idea to run your own speaker wire when adding high fidelity audio to an 80's box.

[1987cp]

Yeah, it's not much trouble and not very expensive to run real speaker wire when installing better speakers. Besides, I had such an awful time trying to sort out that floating-ground thing on the speaker system when testing out my Jensen cassette deck, which uses one ground for the right channel and a separate one for left, but the left and right grounds are shared by front and rear. I gave up and just ran wires directly to the speakers.

I did try out one of those funky old cassette-to-8-track adapters, but either it or the 8-track was out of whack because the cassettes didn't play at quite the right speed. I always meant to try that out with the CD-to-cassette adapter just to see if it worked at all, but my original 8-track was having issues staying powered on, so I went ahead and swapped it out.

A pal of mine did just as Nate suggested a couple years ago on a '68 fastback; he put a new Alpine head unit in the little cubbyhole area above the console that was operable with a remote, and while the in-dash CD then couldn't be accessed with the dash assembled, he put a six-disk changer in the truck. And the original AM stereo stayed in the dash for that concours look. Premium tunes in a stock-looking car, just by fabricating a couple of brackets.

I'm not sure where we'd hide a head unit on a box, perhaps in the glove compartment like ricers do with their TVs?

[gadget73]

So do the speakers just have a short length of wire that goes directly to ground? Weird... I guess you could still do it that way; all you'd have to do is wire one side of the output from the radio to ground.

They don't go straight to ground. Its sort of wierd, there is a common ground for the two rear speakers, and a common ground for the fronts, both of which tie together at the radio and go to chassis ground. The bother of splicing into the factory wiring harness to add the dedicated ground is probably not worth the hassle. Its a lot easier to just run fresh wire which hasn't been subjected to 20 years of atmosphere to degrade the wire.

[DarkKnight]

Good Info here :-P on 80's ford audio Design's :-P

[87vicFIVEO]

They don't go straight to ground. Its sort of wierd, there is a common ground for the two rear speakers, and a common ground for the fronts, both of which tie together at the radio and go to chassis ground. The bother of splicing into the factory wiring harness to add the dedicated ground is probably not worth the hassle. Its a lot easier to just run fresh wire which hasn't been subjected to 20 years of atmosphere to degrade the wire.

Couldn't have said it better my self! Although after market heads will work with the floating ground setup they sound alot better (in phase) if you run new speaker wires.

[gadget73]

Somewhere on here I posted the wiring schematic for the early style stereos. No idea what thread, but the pics are here if anyone wants to dig in to them.

http://lunar.gadget73.com/images/schematic/conventional.jpg

Basic wiring style is similar on early premium sound, just there is an amp in there. Same common ground mess though.