The Stovebolt Forums Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay The Radio Bench Radio??????

You can buy a "hidden radio" that you can mount practically anywhere, even under your seat.
You will need to buy a 6 Volt to 12 Volt converter if your truck is 6 volts.
It comes with a battery operated remote control and BT built-in to the unit.
I suppose you could link it to your SMID (social media insanity device) but I wouldn't do it.
These old trucks need both hands on the steering wheel and eyes looking out the windshield.

I got one of these
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B087FWD6C4/ref=dp_iou_view_item?ie=UTF8&th=1
I have the three knob version, with power/volume, bass, and treble. It's the size of a pack of playing cards, and I zip-tied it to the bottom of my dash. I have a pair of 4" speakers mounted in a $6 plastic ammo box from Northern Tool that is stuck up in the stock speaker location. It is Bluetooth or aux-in only, so I play it off my phone or iPod. It sounds decent, but I can't hear it well at speed. I intend to redo my exhaust soon and getting the glass pack muffler out from under my feet, and end of the pipe out to the back bumper, I'm hoping some of the noise in the cab will go away. I'm also considering making a wood speaker box since I think it would sound better than the plastic ammo box. If your truck is on the quieter side, this may work for you and not cost too much.

Eric what do you use to power this gizmo do you use the 6 volts from the truck battery ?looks interesting for the price .

Yeah, I like the look of that too. Mount it in the glove box and have it paired to the bluetooth.

12 volts in mine. It uses one of those plugs like in the picture- I don't think it came with the plug- I think I salvaged one off an AC/DC converter for an old portable DVD player or something, or I may have bought a plug and hooked the wires up to it, I can't remember. It's powered off the post on the ammeter and grounded to the dash. I suspect it has a slight draw even when it's off, but that type of plug is easy to pull out and leave hanging for days I'm not driving, and put back in when I take the truck out. I guess I could wire it off the ignition switch to take care of the draw issue, but then I couldn't turn the radio on with the key off.

Line the inside of the plastic box with carpet foam and it will improve the sound!

I may give this a try ,I think it would work on the 6 volt system .

Near the power input on the case of the unit and in a couple of other images/diagrams and spec lists on the page it says DC 9-24 V, but I also see one part of the page that says 5-24 V so I guess it's worth a shot and you can buy a voltage converter of some type later if it won't work on 6.

Also, adding poly-fil (super cheap stuff used for stuffing pillows) is a GREAT way to improve the sound of any sealed or ported speaker enclosure. It also fools the speaker into thinking the enclosure is larger than it is. Improves frequency response and deadens the resonance of the enclosure, "tightening" up the entire frequency range. Fill the enclosure with poly-fil very loosely, you don't want it packed in there tight!

NorthCoast3800, if you get no joy with the maker of your radio, please don't junk it. Instead, please me know what happens (PM me or send email to jon_goodman@yahoo.com). I can't promise anything, but we may be able to consider some alternatives. Way too many capacitors and IC chips are coming from China during the global electronic component shortage. Some are not too bad and some are downright dangerous. And as you would expect, the least expensive ones are the worst by far. I've seen some that failed in less than 1 year and I just had to replace 2 capacitors in a computer power supply. One of them literally exploded. Not something you want happening in a metal box which converts 110 AC to 3.3v, 5 v and 12 v DC.