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Hello All,
I just discovered something about '57
Plymouth and Chrysler/Imperial search tuner radios. Do you or did you ever have
a '57 radio that plays just fine but the search function doesn't
work? Does it seem no matter what you do or who you send it to
they can't figure out what's wrong? Do you press the search button only to hear
the motor disengage as soon as you let go? Well, I think I have the answer. If
you pop the top cover off of the radio and look at the schematic inside it, what
does it say at the bottom? If it has the PHILCO part number for the schematic
and then says nothing it probably doesn't work. If it says revision A
after the part number , it also probably doesn't work. If you have one
the says REV B after the part number it probably does work. I discovered this
while making a radio out of junk parts.
I got bored and with a
couple of junk radios and decided to make a custom search tuner. I won't
bore everyone with the details though. I bought out a radio repair guys supply
of 30 or so '57-'61 Mopar radio collection. I checked through the radios to see
which were restorable and which were going to be parts donors. I have
about 8 '57 Imperial radios. When I checked them all out some of them had
working signal seeking functions, some didn't. I put the good ones aside and put
the bad ones in my "pile". I started building my custom radio two weeks ago.
After several hours of building I fired it up and the search tune function
didn't work. To say the least, I was pretty angry with the whole thing. I
happened to notice something. I have a '57 Plymouth 917 that had a
destroyed chassis a the search buttons all did the same thing as the others that
didn't work. I pulled all of my radios and began checking them. What I found out
was all the REV B radios had working search functions while the plain and REV A
radios didn't. So now I'm sharing this with you all to pose a question. Do any
of you have the plain or REV A radio that has a working search function? If so,
I'd LOVE to hear from you. It seems that only the REV B radios seem to work. I
remember Dave's radio was a REV B and turned out great. All of the A or plain
radios I've worked on never work right.
Now I pose another question, if
I sit down and give myself a headache to figure out what modifications need to
be made to bring it up to REV B specs, would any of you be interested in having
me convert them for you? Keep in mind, this will be a tedious process to map out
these two radios wire by wire, part by part but I'll do it for the love of the
forward look cars. I'd charge my standard repair fee to modify it. Now if your
radio needs more work that just the REV B modification, that will cost extra.
I'm thinking the standard repair fee X's 2 (unless you have a cool part I might
like to have).It might be sometime before I get around to doing this "map" as
I'm tied up with work now. I'll definitely have to sit down with this one. Also,
I'm not going to use any radio as a test subject. I'm going to modify my custom
radio do see if it can be done first. I will report back if I'm successful. It
might be several weeks before I get to this. Drop me a private e-mail if you
want me to keep you posted.
Also, if you think about it this
makes alot a sense for the '57 Mopar year. Although we hate to admit it, quality
control was at its worst that year for Ma Mopar. They rushed alot of things. In
'56 Motorola made the search radios. In '57 Mopar warmed over the '56 radios for
the Dodge and Desoto (with transistorized amplifiers) separately mounted. They
had new PHILCO radios for the Plymouth, Chrysler and Imperial. All three of
these had revisions to the schematics. If you look at the SAMS photofact for
these radios (they're the same radio with different tuner assemblies and
buttons), you'll drive yourself nuts trying to figure out what is suppose to be
there and what isn't. I think PHILCO really messed up on these and Mopar decided
to find a new manufacturer. For 1958 and beyond the Forward Look era,
Mopar used Bendix to manufacture their search tuners. If anybody knows any
different, please correct me. This is what I'm guessing through what I've
seen/done so far. Good talking with you all.
Take Care,
Frank
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