So a friend of mine just bought a '78 F250 custom in prestine condition, from a farmer in Wisconsin. I'm going to be helping him to "restore" it back to a well drivable truck, and I got a few stereo questions.

Truck came with a blown 8 track, and I wired in an aftermarket cassette deck his g/f's grandpa gave him. turns out, the cassette player is blown as well.

is there a dash kit out there to put in aftermarket HU in a truck this old? I was going to let him borrow my panasonic until he got the funds to buy on. but it will require some fabrication to the dash trim and the air/radio bracket.

so what options do we have?

 

No need for a dash kit, unless you install the aftermarket into an underdash shroud to prevent cutting the dash.

Pretty sure almost all cars 1980 or older use a shaft size radio, which is about an inch and a half or so smaller then a din head unit's 7 inch width.

The other option would to be to cut the dash to the size of a din radio. We've done this before, essentially what you do is trace the outline of the cage of the radio onto the dash, and then cut it out. We use an air saw for this. Your also not going to find a wire harness for it...so I recommend finding a normal and a reverse harness. Wire the reverse harness to the truck side, and the regular to the deck side. now you have a plug and play application which makes changing the stereo much easier. I LOVE doing this and putting ford harness's in older Chevys...

 

I think for now, we might just fab up something to put my old panasonic into. i found retro radio has a few options, but i don't think he wants to spend close to $300 right now. :o

thanks for you input sundevil!

 

i think retrosound makes CD players/ipod for older model trucks and cars. they look like a stock radio.

 

yeah, thats the company. dont know why i said retro radio. lol

 

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Metra+-+...0dash%20shroud

Check that out DD...

 

So you can put a normal single din h/u into that as well as a stock unit?

 

Stocker stays where it is, that shroud mounts under the dash.