By Ross Shwyhart

Odie and the Amazing Technicolor Radio or how I moved into the hi-tech world of car stereo.

For me cars and music go together. I think it all started when I was growing up and the car commercials on TV all had the top of the line hard tops or convertibles with a handsome couple driving down some isolated road with music to fit the mood in the background while the pitch man told of the virtues of owning such a wonderful piece of machinery. As I grew older I developed a taste for instrumentals that way I could visualize whatever car I wanted to put to the music and the handsome couple was me and some beautiful woman!

The first car that my family had with a radio in it was a 1946 Packard. It was a tube type and took forever for the tube to warm up so you could hear music and no matter how much I pleaded with my dad I could never hear Hot Rod Lincoln more than once.

Now where I come from the radio has 2 knobs. The big one on the left makes the music louder and the big one on the right picks what kind of music you listen to. None of these little bitty buttons labeled SEEK, SCAN, FM1, FM2 etc. In the early sixties the choices in radios were pretty much AM with or without push buttons for setting your favorite stations. I can remember hitting the big time by getting a rear seat speaker installed in one of my cars. That way when the current lady of mine and I were out parked we didn’t have to have The Beatles in the front seat with us.

Since that time there has been quite a march of progress in the car radio. AM/FM, Four tracks, eight tracks, cassettes, and now CD’s. I was never taken with the four or eight tracks so I went for cassettes. What a big step it was to finally get the tape player put into the radio! Remember those knee knocker tape players that you hung under the dash?

When I re-did my Mustangs I put CD’s in them. A single play in the white one and CD changer in the convertible. Someone else did the installation on both of them so I just got to put the CD in the slot and enjoy the music. This brings us to Odie and the amazing Technicolor radio.

Odie (my white Mazda pick up) [YES I do name my cars!] had a nice factory radio. AM/FM cassette with lots of little buttons half of which I never did figure out what they did. Since Odie is quieter than some of the Lincolns that I remember from the sixties and having a large library of CD’s it only seemed right to upgrade Odie to a CD too. Now the first thing I did was take a cartridge for my other CD changer down to the store so I could get a changer that used the same one. Nothing would be worse than loading up some CD’s for a nice cruise and finding out that you loaded the wrong cartridge. After finally getting the sales person to see why and what I wanted I made my choice. No easy task given the sheer number of radios on the market today.

"Do you want us to install your stereo?" he asked. Before I knew what was happening a big kid/little kid battle had developed. Big kid "No, I’ll do it myself." Little kid "Yes, have them do it you know how these kind of things go! That way we can have tunes right NOW!" Well, the big kid won out so I came home with my new radio in 2 boxes.

Once I got home I opened the boxes and got out all of the instructions. Three books worth. Yeah, I know that’s not the guy way to do things but then I do stop and ask for directions when I’m lost too!

Yikes! The books are bigger than the radio. What gives? I have a major problem with things where the instruction manual is bigger than they are. Upon looking through the books I discovered that these instructions were no different than the instructions for most everything you buy these days. Some of the stuff they tell you not to do with things amazes me. If you are dumb enough to do it then I look on it as a form of positive birth control - one less stupid person to have to deal with! The world would be a better place if Ralph Nader would have stuck to his law books and let the rest of us find out for ourselves that it hurts when you hit your finger with a hammer or not to take Deep Heat internally!

After I read through the instructions I realized that the if you left out the Nader-ese and cut out the stuff printed in Spanish, French, German, and several other languages that the installation instructions were only one page long! Hummm!! This was too easy!

In the old days you better figure on the better part of a day to install a new radio. There were dashes to cut, speaker holes to make, and wires to run and hook up. To do a nice job required gutting the entire interior of the car and then putting it all back together and hoping that you didn’t miss something along the way and have to take it all apart again!

Since Odie already had 4 speakers installed this looked like it was going to be easy. Wrong!! The first thing I found was that these new radios are what they call a DIN mount. They don’t work like the old ones where you pull off the knobs and loosen a couple of nuts and the radio slips out. They require a special tool to release them. I called the store to see if I could get one. No, but if I would come down they would set my radio free for me. So after a trip back to the dealer to have them release the radio I was ready to install my new radio.

All I had to do was mount the adapter box for the radio into the dash and following the instructions that came with the adapter cable I hooked up the wires and plugged the cable into the connector on the wiring harness in Odie. Could this be all there was to this?! No cutting, no cussing, no stiff neck from being on your back up under the dash for 3 hours! This was too easy! I had everything done in an hour! It was now time for the moment of truth.

I went into the house and got a CD. I had picked up an el cheapo CD just in case something was not right with the unit. So armed with my bargain CD I went back out to the truck. Turn on the key. Nothing!! Where’s the ON/OFF knob? Oh, I see it! It’s that little blue triangle?! Ok we have radio. Wow! This thing has colors and letters where the dial on an old radio used to be! Now for the final test. I slip the CD into the slot. The radio sucks it in! Wow! We have music. COOL! Now how do I get the CD out?! A search of all the little buttons does not show one labeled EJECT!

I’ve had the unit in Odie for about a week now and I’m starting to like Mozart’s Wind Serenade. Maybe if I get time I can see where it is in one of the 3 books that came with the radio that shows where the EJECT button is!

In the mean time I have to finish this article and get Zoe

( the white hatchback) and Jennifer (the convertible) ready for Roundup. Then there’s the club meeting, a night at the races........... Maybe I’ll have to hire a day laborer to read the books so he or she can show me where the button to EJECT the CD is! I guess if I get tired of Wolfgang I can always push the little blue button and turn off the radio!

The Abbey show was really nice. We had a 12 car caravan to Canon City plus 2 members from the Front Range Mustang Club, The Dores and The Zwarts. Thanks to Al & Sue Alberg, Dick & Debbie Collins, Bob Goward & Mary Davis, Stew Harding, Ron & Sheri Kay, Jay & Jan Lindley, Richard Massey, and my sister Sally Michael who showed her ’75 Olds for the first time.

My apologies to Pat & Kris Chambers for over looking the fact that they won an award at the Pueblo show. And belated congratulations to Jo for winning with her convertible.

Ross d

Individual point competition is based on the drivers best results from six of the ten events (RMMR event counts as a double point event).

Note :

1. PPIR is located between Colorado Springs and Pueblo off of I-25.
2. Second Creek raceway is located off of Tower Road just north and west of the DIA airport.
3. CMC’s Parachute event is a street autocross run in Parachute, CO.

Top Driver Points after three events:

RMM’s own Sara Sugrue with 2831 out of a possible 3000 points.

I am looking forward to seeing you all out exercising your Ponies again this year. If you have any questions on the events please feel free to call me, Hap Schadler, at 303-973-7635.

For a complete summary of each event and specific results, please visit our web site at www.Mustangers.com.

At Bandimere raceway.

Payment of Dues

WebSite: www.protsys.com/rmmr