Dear V-8 Buick audiophiles, UPDATE!! There appears to be enough interest for me to document what I did. I'll do this in four installments. Links to each installment are listed below: Control Shaft modifications: http://www.v8buick.com/showthread.php?268438-FYI-Custom-Autosound-mods-for-improved-authenticity&p=2208297#post2208297 Recreating the 1965 Buick letters: http://www.v8buick.com/showthread.php?268438-FYI-Custom-Autosound-mods-for-improved-authenticity&p=2209847#post2209847 Image processing for recreating letters: http://www.v8buick.com/showthread.php?268438-FYI-Custom-Autosound-mods-for-improved-authenticity&p=2212236#post2212236 Eliminating the modern Buick logo: http://www.v8buick.com/showthread.php?268438-FYI-Custom-Autosound-mods-for-improved-authenticity&p=2213321#post2213321 For newcomers, the rest of the original post is below: . . . . . . . . . . As those who have been following "da' trusty wagon soap opera" know, I decided to stick with a Custom Autosound stereo since I've had one since the mid-1990s. There was a recent thread on the appearance of these stereos in our cars and that got me thinking about what I could do to make these stereos look more like what Buick installed. Michael (64 Skylark Mike) noted that he really through the BUICK lettering on the station selection buttons was very important for the Buick look. So I decided to see if I could add that while deleting the modern Buick logo on the top. Here is what the Custom Autosound stereo looked like "out of the box:" Here is my car's original AM radio put back into the same bezel and photographed under as close conditions as I could come up with: Here is the Custom Autosound stereo after all my modifications: Now it isn't going to fool any judge and nit-pickers in the audience will quickly spot a few flaws, but I think it looks very nice and much more like a radio that Buick could have installed in 1965. It appears to me there isn't much interest in this crowd for using this sort of stereo. So I don't know if folks would like to have me post a description of the modifications I made. I've added a poll to this thread. If there is significant interest, I'll be glad to write up how I did it. If not, folks who are interested can always send me a PM. Hope you'all at least found the pics interesting. Cheers, Edouard :beer
Edouard, I would be interested. While I have the factory AM/FM front speaker setup that is working fine I am going to upgrade it and I like the Autosound look.
Lettering reproduced photographically (Re: FYI: Custom Autosound mods) Dear Chris, Gary, flippermtc and V-8 Buick Audiophiles, Thanks for the interest! The lettering actually was made by taking a high-resolution photo of my AM radio lettering. I then did some image processing to sharpen the letters. I then printed it onto the clear plastic transparency film that is used to make slides for overhead projectors. Printers don't print white. So I painted the back of the plastic slide with a glossy paint. To protect the laser printer ink, I applied a clear satin paint to the front of the lettering. Once finished, the plastic sheets were glued with Cyanoacrylate (CA) glue. This technique should work for any brand of aftermarket radio and could also be used to repair an original Buick radio which has had the lettering damaged. I'll provide more details if the interest continues, Cheers, Edouard :beer
That is fairly clever and I wouldn't have guessed how you did it. I think they turned out great and I bet we see these on more radios in the future.
Nice work! It looks much classier/subtle now and not as "cheap." And now for Eduard's final trick, he's going to make the floating ball work in the dial. (Sorry Eduard, I couldn't resist throwing that in there)
Well, . . . . . (Re: FYI: Custom Autosound mods) Hi Adam and V-8 Buick audiophiles, . . . . . . . . Well, I can't exactly do that, but I could show you photos of the circuit board and LED display behind the dial . . . . . . . . . . . It wasn't what I was trying to do . . . . . but I kinda dismantled the stereo a little more than I . . . . . . intended!! :shock: If this appeared to be a "quick project" . . . . it was because I had to quickly hide the evidence of penetration!! :Brow: Cheers, Edouard :beer
Stay tuned for instructions (Re: FYI: Custom Autosound mods) Dear Dan and V-8 Buick audiophiles, Sorry, I don't have enough time to take car of own car! However, there appears to be enough interest for me to describe the modifications I made. I think I can give you'all an easy way to produce the lettering from a computer file I've created. The rest is reasonably basic DIY stuff. Once you see how I did it, I don't think you'll have any problems doing it for yourself. Cheers, Edouard :beer
Re: Stay tuned for instructions (Re: FYI: Custom Autosound mods) Main thing for me would be knowing how you got the factory knobs to fit. Thanks.
Re: Stay tuned for instructions (Re: FYI: Custom Autosound mods) I certainly would like work instructions on how to do the swap & letter creation. I'm game to try it. Thanks!
Control shaft modifications (Re: FYI: Custom Autosound mods) Dear V-8 Buick audio tinkerers, As promised, I'll start adding to this thread how I modified my Custom Autosound 630. I'll have to do this installments because life is really difficult right now. So first up the control shaft modifications. However, first a warning: DISCLAIMER: Anyone attempting these modifications does so solely and completely at their own risk!! Even successfully completing these modifications might nonetheless void your warranty. If you fail, you will definitely end up with hundreds of dollars down the drain. This info is provided purely as a service to Buick lovers and is purely "as is." There are no guarantees of - anything! So if screw up - don't come crying to me! . . . . . . . . So for the brave that remain, here is how I modified the control shafts. Okay, here is a photo of the unmodified control shafts on the CAS-630: At least for the 1965 Buicks, the radio has exactly the same types of shafts, but the dimensions are slightly different and the inner shaft isn't forked and has a flattened section. First I went to my car's old AM radio and got dimensions for the control shafts. If you want to try this on a car other than a 64-65, you'll probably need to repeat this procedure because this could have changed over time. I used calipers to get reasonably precise numbers. With that I made the following comparison diagram: At this point you need to decide what to modify. You could try to modify the original Buick knobs. However, my guess was that the CAS-630 control shafts would be softer steel and easier to fashion. It only took me about 1/2 hour to modify the shafts - so I think that's the safe bet. I used some hobby/precision files to do the work: I think this sort of thing can be found just about anywhere including better shop tools houses. If you look at the diagram, the outer notched shafts need the notches to be widened by just 0.02" (0.01" on each side.) I just slowly went at the notch with a flat rectangular file. I tried to avoid scratching the inner shaft as much a possible. Also, I had an aerosol air duster handy to periodically blow away the metal filings from the stereo. It is best to alternate between one notch and the other so that you can periodically try to fit the Buick outer knob. Eventually, the knob slipped down into the notches. Repeat the same procedure for the other outer shaft. The inner shafts are a bit more tricky. The idea here is chose one of the two sides of the forked inner shaft and flatten it until the Buick inner knob slides on without twisting. If you don't file the shaft down enough, the fork will compress causing the knob to not sit straight. It will then wobble when turned. I also discovered that my inner shaft has been bent either in transport or in my handling of it. So I had to bent the shaft back until it true. Once I got the shaft straight and filed the inner shaft down enough, the inner knob would turn without wobbling. The passenger side inner shaft doesn't actually rotate, but is a control that you twist left and right. To avoid damaging that shaft while I was filing I stuck another file into the gap in the fork to steady it and prevent the filing from doing any damage. The same trick can be used on the other side to make the filing process easier. Here is a photo of the shafts after modification: Hope that's enough to give you'all an idea of how I did this modification. If you have any questions by all means ask! Cheers, Edouard :beer P.S. If you look at the diagram, you should notice that the CAS-630 are thicker than even the rounded portion of the original Buick shafts. So "in theory" the inner shafts should require filing all around. However, the difference is only 0.01" radius, so I found that the forks will squeeze enough to allow these knobs to fit okay. Also, I'm not sure if the gap in the fork is weakened by the flattening of one side. It might be necessary to fit the gap to keep the shaft from bending from repeated use. Only time will tell on that one.
Recreating the 1965 Buick letters (Re: FYI: Custom Autosound mods) Dear V-8 Buick audiophiles, As promised, here is the second of what will probably be four installments on modifying a Custom Autosound 630 radio to look more original in a mid-60s Buick. As before, the disclaimer of the previous posting applies! http://www.v8buick.com/showthread.p...r-improved-authenticity&p=2208297#post2208297 This is unlikely to wreck your radio, but if you do wreck it, don't come crying to me. This episode involves giving your radio those very period looking "BUICK" letters on your station selection buttons. You'll need a file that contains a high resolution version of this image: You'll need to get that file from me in Acrobat (.PDF) format. Just send me a PM with your email address and I'll email it back to you. You need to print this image onto a sheet of clear overhead transparency film. You could just buy a pack of the stuff and use your own printer, but it is expensive and a little tricky to use. Instead, I suggest you take the file I send to you and put it on a thumbnail (USB) drive and take it a local copy shop like: FedEx Office The UPS Store etc. If you tell them you want this file printed onto a sheet of overhead transparency film, they should be able to do this for a few bucks. The resolution of the image is limited to 600 dpi (that was the best I could get out of raw data - to be explained later.) That means just about any modern printer will be capable of printing a finer resolution than the image actually has. So don't pay for any fancy printing options - you'll just be wasting money. Note that the template includes 1" scales that can be used to check that the printer is scaling the image correctly. Before paying for the clear film, ask them to print the file on a piece of paper and confirm that the scaling is correct. If not, you could have them adjust the print scaling until you are getting 1" for 1". What you should get back will look something like this: At this point the image may not look that promising. The "black" may appear to be more of a charcoal grey and obviously no white lettering. So now it is your turn to make things happen. Start by applying a few coats of gloss-white paint to the back of the transparency. Here is my example after 4 coats: This is the paint that will give your Buick letters that nice shiny appearance of a new car. As you can see though, the black doesn't look reasonable yet. Once the white paint is fully cured, take a straightedge and a sharp knife and carefully cut out the letters. This may seem counter-intuitive, but some clear coat paints will chip when you try to cut the letters out of the plastic film. I discovered this da' hard way when trying to repair the letter "B" when it fell off. Once you have cut the letters, place them on some tape that will be easy to remove like masking tape of transparent tape as I did in the picture below. Now you can apply some clear paint to enhance the appearance of the black and more importantly protect the printed ink. Without this step, the printed ink will be rubbed off in a short period of time. In my first attempt to do this I used a semi-gloss clear covering: Since then I've run a second test with high-gloss clear coating and I think that is a closer match to the shiny radio-buttons. All that is left is to glue the letters on to the end of the buttons. I couldn't think of a really good glue for this job. These are dissimilar materials so the choice of glue is tricky. I ran a test using CA (super) glue and it does bond nicely and grabs all the way to the corners so that there is no give-away peeling film. However, it is tricky to use and can discolor the lettering. On my radio there is a light hazing on the letter "C" that I think is caused by the glue. Here is the final installed buttons: I got a suggestion from my friend who owns the 1957 Chevy Bel Air that my wagon is sometimes seen with to solve the problem of the visible edges of the plastic film. My first thought was to use paint, but he suggested using a "Sharpie" permanent marker pen. Here is the visible edges as the radio was completed: You can see the edges of the film reflecting back as almost a knife edge effect. After marking up those edges with a marker - look: No more visible edge and it took me 2 minutes to do even with taking the pictures! So definitely worth that small amount of effort! All told, addling the BUICK letters was the easiest of the modifications I made and it is the one change that really changes the appearance of the radio so it looks from the 1960s. Cheers, Edouard :beer
Nice work ... ... But I would have used a silicone glue. You may find that the cyano yellows a bit over time. I've had a out 20 years experience with this stuff building R/C model airplanes.
Dear V-8 Buick audiophiles, I got a suggestion for a much easier way to eliminate the reflective edge of the film on the letters by using a "Sharpie" pen. I've updated my description to explain how to do that and of course included before and after pictures. If you are curious about this, take a look: http://www.v8buick.com/showthread.p...r-improved-authenticity&p=2209847#post2209847 Cheers, Edouard :beer
Image processing for recreating letters (Re: FYI: Custom Autosound mods) Dear V-8 Buick Audiophiles (and camera buffs,) I thought I would also explain how I processed an image of my trusty wagon's original AM radio into the letter that I printed for those who would face a similar problem and want to reproduce something that could be photographed. I started from this photo of the AM radio: This is as close as I could get with my camera. Obviously a close-up lens would have been an improvement. Also as will become obvious further down, my choice of lighting was not wise. Instead, try to have only light from behind that is of a uniform source. The camera's flash alone might have been a real improvement. From here you'll need some sort of image processing program like GIMP. First thing to do is crop the image down to what you want to reproduce: The next trick is use the photo adjustment features of your program to turn the contrast as high as the image can stand and the brightness as low as the image can stand. The goal is convert a color image into as close to a black and white image as you can get: Here is where you can see that my choice of lighting gets me into trouble. The ambient light causes the letter "B" to be not nearly as dark as the others. Extracting the letter "B" was harder than necessary because of that. The next step is to switch photo mode to black and white via some sort of halftone conversion. What options you have will depend on the software you have to use: The previous two images may appear to be same at the display size. To see a high-resolution image, click on the photos to get to the online photo gallery. At this point you need to shift from image processing to more traditional "paint program" manipulation. The idea is clean up any marks that would detract from your print job by lassoing and deleting the blemishes. At this point you can approach the problem in various ways. You might get satisfactory results by simply changing the resolution to print-size and printing it. A better strategy is to select regions and making them white or black uniformly. If your software supports something like the Magic Wand or Magic Pen tool of Photoshop this is a good way to get the regions selected. This is the technique I used and here are how the letters ended up before rescaling: If you have an illustration program available, you could create vector graphics by tracing Bezier curves over the raster letter outlines. That will give you the best quality, but is a fair amount of work and could raise the eyebrows of GM copyright police. I decided not to go there. Once all this was accomplished, I measured the size of the Custom Autosound buttons and selected the highest possible resolution I could print and still have the letter images be the correct size. Because I used an illustration program for this part of the job, I created rectangles of the correct size and then placed the images of the letters on top of that. With a image processing program you would need to create a black rectangle of the correct size for the buttons and position the lettering in the right location. I was using the program called Canvas that has some CAD capability. that made sizing the black buttons and centering the letters a little bit easier. Once you've go that done, it's time to print onto transparency film and follow those instructions. Hope you'll found this helpful. Cheers, Edouard :beer
Eliminating the modern Buick logo. (Re: FYI: Custom Autosound mods) Dear V-8 Buick audiophiles, This is a fourth and final installment describing the modifications I made to a Custom Autosound 630 stereo and it concerns the rounded rectangular logo that on my stereo had the "Buick" letters in the current style rather than the 1960s style. Solving this problem can be the easiest modification or perhaps the hardest. By far the easiest way to deal with this problem is making a special request to Custom Autosound and asking that they not secure the "Buick" logo, but instead provide you with a generic one. I'm sure they have such a thing since they don't make logos for every possible classic car. Indeed, you could go one step further and ask that the blank rounded rectangular piece not be attached to the stereo, but simply included in the package. I'm certain this piece simply glues to the front of the stereo and so you would have more style choices if the part wasn't attached. So how I can be sure this part is glued somehow? I have a confession to make. The whole reason I got into this project was a bit of misguided curiosity. It turns out there is an outer bezel frame surrounding the front bezel where the buttons and this logo are mounted. It just slides off with a little pressure. What is left behind is this: See the two screws on either side? Well don't bother removing them!! It does not give you access to removing the logo!! How do I know?? . . . . . . . cuz I tried!! ou: What is behind there is the printed circuit board and LED display that is the "digital" in a seemingly plain vintage AM radio. That circuit board also has the contact switches that are activated by the buttons on this bezel. I can provide photographic evidence that the logo piece cannot be removed from the back: As you can see, there is solid plastic behind the rectangular piece with the logo. There is no way to detach it. Therefore, it must be secured on the front with some kind of adhesive. Fortunately, I know my way around electronics and was very careful in my disassembly. I'm reasonably sure I didn't harm anything. However, even though I tried very hard to "hide" my penetration, odds are that if my stereo needs repair under warranty, I'll be in trouble with Custom Autosound for my curiosity. Now if you have already bought your stereo or somehow purchase one that has been made up in the Buick style like mine, then you have to either live with the modern Buick logo, or paint it over. Painting it isn't as difficult as it appears if you have a "secret weapon:" 1/16" modeler's masking tape. 1/16" is the perfect width go in between the rounded rectangle and the nearby buttons. Because I had the stereo apart in my search to remove the darn modern logo, masking was a bit easier for me: However my strategy of first masking the tight spaces and then applying overlapping bits of larger masking tape should work even with the buttons in place. I used plastic wrap to get around the odd-sized items like the extensions for the screws. That technique should also work for wrapping around the whole stereo. Here is what the painted-over logo looked like close up: So that's how I did these modifications. Remember, you try any of this stuff purely at your own risk! However, since I obviously made a few mistakes in my attempts, definitely feel free to post any questions about what I did on this thread. Cheers, Edouard :beer
Corrected instructions and sportin' preposition (Re: FYI: Custom Autosound mods) Dear V-8 Buick audiophiles, I just corrected the instructions on cutting out the Buick lettering of this series. I needed to replace the letter "B" on my trusty wagon and in so doing discovered that it is better to cut the letters out first and afterward apply the clear gloss coating. At least the Rustoleum clear paint that I used had a tendency to chip and would pull off the laser printer ink in the process. It is a little more complex, but safer to paint the backside white, cut the letters into separate button covers and then secure them for the clear coating. It is how I did it the first time and it turns out to be the better solution. Also, I have a sportin' preposition for anybody interested in trying to do this. I can print 11 sets of 3 Buick button covers onto a single transparancy sheet. With 3 sets of button covers, that ought to last a lifetime unless you are very unlucky. So if you are willing to send me a self-addressed and stamped envelope, I'm would be willing supply a sheet with 3-sets of the Buick button covers. That would spare you'all the hassles of printing your own transparency sheets. Just send me a PM and we'll work it out. Cheers, Edouard :beer
