8-track player install

[HotWheelsBurban]

GM had a factory 8 track:

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Find them on ebay. This one has been serviced and had blue tooth added:

CLICK HERE

Cheaper ones available too. If your truck has a GM stereo, this is plug and play.

I remember those....I think the '75 Sierra Classic had one. We had the Delco or aftermarket units in most of our trucks until I got enough cassettes to make mixtapes, and it was getting really hard to find blank 8 tracks. First factory CD player was in our first 400 Burb, man that thing sounded good! Then Dad's last Burb was an '06 Yukon XL Denali with the Bose 6 disc changer.....I didn't think a "car stereo" could sound that great!
Of course now in the 2020s we have Retrosound and other companies that make the old style appearance head units with all the mod cons like CD and Bluetooth.....just gotta spend a little $$.
My daily has a radio with a dead cassette player and no CD player, so we just listen to the radio. I have a set from an Escalade to swap in, just don't have a shady place to tear into the dashboard to do that, and couple other things need doing while I have it apart.

 

[HotWheelsBurban]

Nobody has mentioned yet how much space a collection of 8-tracks take up in your truck. People today can’t appreciate how easy it is to have thousands of songs at your fingertips compared to listening to the same 10 tapes over and over because they don’t have any more room to spare in the cab. Even after 45 years, there are songs I still can’t listen to because I had the tape and played it too many times because it was that or nothing. I’m all for nostalgia, but the 8-track era is one I don’t miss.

Yes that's one thing that killed the 8 tracks for traveling, you can put 4 cassettes in the space of one 8 track tape. Cassette decks can be finicky too; I learned that the hard way after a bunch of my tapes got eaten by a couple of our car/truck decks. I would buy tapes at Sam's Club, and thought I had good ones because they were the same brand I'd been using. Nope!! So I bought a better grade of tapes and cleaned the decks periodically.....
But even a CD player can get messed up if it's not taken care of.

 

[AceHanlon]

I would think that splicing in an aftermarket unit wouldn't be too bad considering the simplicity of the speaker set up. I have a factory 8 track player for my truck that I'm going to swap in eventually. Got plenty of 8 tracks to play on it too.

 

[AllSquaredUp]

I put an RCA aftermarket 8-track in my truck. It was NOS in the box. My factory wiring was already cut. Be sure to install it with a support strap in the back of the radio. That will keep it from bouncing around when you hit a bump.

 

[Ricko1966]

@HotWheelsBurban l9ok at this https://www.walmart.com/ip/Auto-Dri...8kBHs-WlrEu0DMZcSZxoCniAQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds
I think as long as the pickup in the cassette player is good,this would allow you to stream pandora etc. From your phone,now I want one.

 

[BRetty]

One more thing to consider, 25 years ago a client gave me a really nice reel to reel tape deck with 8 track built in, and a hand full of 8 track tapes. Because I live in Northern Nevada where the humidity is often quite low, 8 track and cassette tapes dry up and crumble when you put them in a player. So how the tapes were stored determines weather or not they will still work. Hate to see you go through all the effort to find and install the 8 track if you cant find tapes that will still play.

VV interested to know what make/model that r2r/8-track was. I bought an Akai/Rheem-Roberts unit that also combines open reel and 8-track, off Craigslist a few years ago. The seller was listing it for a friend -- they had a small recording studio together -- I had to point out that it also had a slot and heads for 8-track!

it doesn't work. Those Akai units were kind of a Rube Goldberg kludge of lots of mechanical levers and cams, age and lack of lubrication can freeze them, I haven't really tried to work on it.

8-tracks are cool nostalgia but a dog's dinner of a format. I would recommend selling them to a collector or somebody with a working player. Take pics of them for memories but give them to somebody who can possibly play them a few more times before they self-destruct.

BR

PS -- take pics of your audio haul and show us! And if any of them are Boston, Thin Lizzy, or Head East, I might buy some!

 

[JBswth]

Has anybody added an 8-track player to their square? I inherited a bunch of my grandfather’s old tapes and I’d like to use them in my square body (just like he did when I was a kid)

Does the wiring usually have to be spliced in? Some kind of plug-and-play? Other things I should think about?

You just install it the same as a regular radio. If your truck never did have one, you need to find a wiring diagram. The old Clymer's paperback manuals have wiring diagrams for all the Squarebody trucks. You will need a magnifying glass, as they are pretty small and hard to read.

J. B.

 

[Finkaire]

Show machine? Trying to understand why when there is modern plug and play available. Cool, yes! Led Zeplin full blast, yes! But……no way will it it match the sound quality of a modern deck. IMHO

 

[Redfish]

My favorite-ex-brother-in-law has the factory AC/Delco 8 track in his '79 Trans Am. There is a cool factor to it that cannot be duplicated.

1. It fascinates people at car shows. They like to see "original" and what it really looked like back then. The mini suitcase of tapes is cool also.
2. It sounds the way it really did back then. A modern radio playing the same music sounds better and more clear but it does not replicate the way it sounded in that vintage vehicle when that vehicle was new and a daily driver.
3. A Retro-Sound or similar radio looks almost period correct...but it doesn't.

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[Finkaire]

Understood,
I love the sound of well played vinyl. Brings back fond memories.
Sounds of a bygone era!
I get kids in the truck that don’t know what the window cranks are for.

 

[BRetty]

My favorite-ex-brother-in-law has the factory AC/Delco 8 track in his '79 Trans Am. There is a cool factor to it that cannot be duplicated.

1. It fascinates people at car shows. They like to see "original" and what it really looked like back then. The mini suitcase of tapes is cool also.
2. It sounds the way it really did back then. A modern radio playing the same music sounds better and more clear but it does not replicate the way it sounded in that vintage vehicle when that vehicle was new and a daily driver.
3. A Retro-Sound or similar radio looks almost period correct...but it doesn't.

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This might be the greatest pic ever of a squarebody interior. !!!!!!!!!!

My bad, that's a Trans-Am. Still cool

 

[BRetty]

Hey Redfish, your saying, "my favorite ex-brother-in-law" deserves a little back-story explanation.

Sounds like the thoughts I had at 18, thinking my GF's brother was a hard-core criminal and maybe I should get away from that scene despite any feelings or merits of the woman herself.

 

[Redfish]

Hey Redfish, your saying, "my favorite ex-brother-in-law" deserves a little back-story explanation.

Sounds like the thoughts I had at 18, thinking my GF's brother was a hard-core criminal and maybe I should get away from that scene despite any feelings or merits of the woman herself.

It's relatively simple. My wife Bigun/Mrs. Redfish has a sister. That sister is my Satan-In-Law. She was married to a great guy. She divorced him. The rest of the family kept him. He is Godfather to my son, a wonderful friend and he has a couple of really nice classic cars. The '79 Trans Am in the pics above is one of them. In those pics if you look back, the odometer is actual miles on that wonderful car.

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[BRetty]

@Redfish -- that's a great story and I'm glad things generally worked out. Good people are good people, and they -- must be loved, to quote Anton Checkov.

I'm old enough (ha!) to ask people the question: "Have you ever dated a boy/girl/person far beyond when the realationship should have ended, because you just felt love for their FAMILY, and the S/O was just kind of an excuse to enjoy their company?"

Sometimes people don't understand the question, but most of the time there's a 2-second pause and then a LIGHT goes on in their eyes....

 

[idahovette]

Had an Ex brother-in-law that was more a real little brother than anything .....til cancer got him