<VV> stock 1961 owners

[Tony Underwood]

At 05:11 hours 05/12/2006, vairdan at localnet.com wrote:


>  Still looking for someone to prove me wrong on the whole pushbutton
>radio thing.  I've seen 4 total 1961 pushbutton radios that have the
>manual tune face plates, where as the radio does not protrude through
>the bezel, but instead buts flush against the chrome faceplate of the
>radio. Some other interesting observations of the 1961's were that
>some of the housings (pods) were silver, indicating that they were
>probably dealer add-ons.

Many were, particularly in the 500 models, some of which came with 
hardly any accessories at all, not even a passenger side sun visor or 
a door operated dome light.   The radio was often an afterthought for 
a 500.    Dealers would oft times install a radio on the cars that 
showed up without a radio, of course having who knows what color 
pod.   Some of the later 'Vairs showing up on the trucks without 
radios also got fitted with Bendix or Motorola radios by the 
dealer.    Many of these aftermarket radios were purchased in bulk by 
dealers to have on hand for upgrading a car with no factory installed 
radio.   Many of these radios such as the Motorola variants came with 
"Corvair" script on them, sometimes only a bowtie etc... 
depending.    I have an old Motorola AM for a late model with 
"Corvair" script on the face, got it free because the previous owner 
felt it was worthless and had been in process of throwing it in the 
garbage.   I've seen other evidently-dealer-installed radios in early 
models, a Bendix here and a Motorola there, etc.    Not terribly 
unusual to see a pod with a different color.    The dealers were 
doing lots of things to cars they rolled off the trucks.


GM used a piece of black plastic for a filler for the smaller manual
>tune radio. There's a Bendix after-market radio out there that uses
>the same bezel also.

LIkewise Motorola since they were making radios specifically to fit 
GM cars and selling them to dealerships as well as to 2nd party 
vendors like JC Whitney (or what was to become JCW) etc.


>Maybe they manufactured their own or bought from
>the General, who knows. Also the 1961 and possibly 62 pods had smaller
>holes for the knob mountings. But not as small as the 1960. 1961 Monza
>900 had the typical Monza style knobs and 500/700 had the 1960 style
>knobs. Although I believe they were silver rather than the 1960 700
>black plastic, not sure. I guess I will be hooking up with Stock
>Corvair Group soon.

The "silver" knobs on early earlies had a stainless steel 
shell.   The black ones were simple plastic.  Later "bright" early 
model radio knobs were chromed cast pot metal.   The black plastic 
knobs were supplied with early-early 500 models, since they were the 
costcutter level pieces while the 700 and later on 900 '60s and up 
got the stainless shelled knobs with the factory installed radios.

...got several '60s and '61s here, four 700s and a 900, and all had 
radios with the stainless shelled knobs.   Parted out a 500, radio 
had black knobs.   All the other 500 early-earlies I've seen had 
black knobs unless the radios had been twiddled, such as an obvious 
later radio in a '60 with cobbled pod etc.   Of course, along the way 
you could expect anything to have happened after the fact, including 
a Buick radio in an early Vair (had the letters B U I C K on the 
pushbuttons).


It's pretty hard to pin down lots of things from the 1960s since the 
dealers had so much leeway in what they did with their cars before 
selling them, as did the purchaser himself who could in those days 
special-order a car and option it (or "de-option" it) out with all 
sorts of different things, which is how you could end up seeing a 
blue 'Vair with a red interior that appeared to be genuine 
factory.    BTDT.     Likewise buying a 'Vair without a radio and 
then buying a radio via mail order and saving a buck or three, which 
is how I imagine lots of those Motorola radios came to land in 
Corvairs, either via the dealer doing it or the purchaser doing it 
after the fact.    This went on for many years up through the 1990s 
where I was still seeing aftermarket odd brand radios in cars, radios 
that looked almost exactly like the factory genuine article but were 
made in all manner of strange places, saw one out of a Plymouth 
station wagon that was made in Hong Kong yet looked just like the 
original Mopar radio on the front face but inside it was a whole 
different story; the majority of the aftermarket radios were NOT up 
to the quality of the factory originals...

...except in the case of the Bendix and Motorola aftermarket 
replacements which seemed to be rather well made and usually more 
compact than the Delco originals.   I have one Motorola aftermarket 
radio with push-pull outputs, likely has more volume than the Delco 
as well as offering less of a load on the battery when run with the 
engine off etc.   It took GM until the late '70s and early '80s to 
finally get away from that single germanium output transistor and 
start using modular outputs via integrated circuitry.

And *then* they used an oddball IC that you couldn't get from anyone 
*except* Delco.    And, it was expensive.   This helped start the 
aftermarket replacement trend seeing as how if someone wanted either 
better sound or possibly repair of their existing radio, they found 
out quickly that they could replace the Delco with something 
aftermarket as cheaply as they could fix the original.    People also 
began ordering cars radio-delete so as to start fresh.

...and, GM noticed, even mentioned it "off-handedly" in several 
bulletins that came down to Delco service centers, as regards their 
offering "competitive audio products" in future model cars, including 
the Delco-Bose sound system...  which was a 1500 buck option over the 
standard AM radio.   I thought they'd kinda shot themselves in the 
foot... since these Bose system radios were equally expensive to 
service if they broke and they did tend to break often, particularly 
the front amp-speaker enclosures in the front doors which tended to 
leak water into them after a while.   I must have replaced dozens of 
amp modules in front door amp-speaker enclosures which had water 
sloshing around inside them for so long it even corroded the mounting 
hardware inside the enclosure, amp module would fall to the bottom 
and soak in the water where it eventually had its epoxy coating leak 
and then produce some amazing noises... providing the speaker itself 
(*Another* expensive item) survived the moldy humidity.

Factory radios weren't all they could have been, up through the late 
1980s in most cases.    After the 1990s, that began to change.


Now, we have aftermarket services which will gut your original 
vintage factory AM radio and reload it with modern AM-FM stereo 
innards without altering how the original radio appears in the dash, 
done it a few times myself.     In many cases it will even pass a 
concourse inspection if the speakers are sufficiently hidden.

I collected up some of those "throw-away" late vintage Delco AM-FM 
radios (actually not bad pieces) that people at the shop just gave me 
since they were "junk" simply because they were factory...  and I 
gutted them for the electronics, used them to uprate old 
radios.    It's time consuming and you have to cobble and kerfiddle 
etc but it usually comes out considerably cheaper than what those 
aftermarket outfits charge.

The hardest part was coming up with "stock" appearing knobs that fit 
the shafts of the new "innards" (you must replace the original 
controls in the vintage factory radio) which require their own 
controls and the new shafts are smaller than the vintage factory 
originals...  I collected up a box full of Delco Ford and Mopar radio 
knobs to modify and adapt so as to keep the modified original radios 
looking kinda stock...  wasn't always successful but at least they worked.

It was a LOT easier if the guy didn't mind having the modern radio 
knobs on his modified early vintage radio.   ;)

Anymore, I suggest to people that they restore and clean up their 
original radio, make it work well etc and install a 2nd "serious" 
radio elsewhere in the car, something with a remote control or small 
enough to hide away in the glove box etc... or, a "one hander" type 
of radio with a control pod on a flexible stalk that you can tuck 
under the seat or the dash etc.   Popular with street rods, 
motorcycles etc...  got one made by Blaupunkt that I installed on the 
Goldwing bike, worked out nicely, would work equally as well in a 
vintage car that gets driven often and the owner wants modern quality 
sound without having to cut the dash or modify the original radio.

Actually, for uprating the audio in a 'Vair, the radio isn't the hard 
part.    Speaker placement is the real problem especially in convertibles.


OK, I'll shut up now, blabbered on too long.


tony..