hi yall,

first off i am new to this forum and a hope i have a great experience on it. secondly i just bought a 1979 ford f150 and i want to upgrade the stereo but i cant find a install kit to fit. so i called crutchfield and they had told me that i would have to fab. one of my own. if anyone has done this and found a install kit, where did you get it? if not how hard will it be to fab. my own? thank yall for your time.

Tim

 

You might want to go to a shop like Car Toys, or Circuit City, where they install stereos on a daily basis. They might have access to a universal mount kit, that you can adapt to your application. I've learned that calling a big company like Crutchfield and asking usually only gets them to check the computer, and if an easy answer isn't there, they tell you you're on your own.

I'd go in person to talk to the guys that do it every day, and they'll probably have a trick or two that can help you along.

 

im still working on getting mine into the glove box. remote control + locked door for my radio = good

 

Its a fairly easy install, and there is no kit that I know of. I just finished installing a CD player in my 79 dually. You have to remove the heater controls and the bracket it mounts to, and cut the bracket below the controls where there stereo should be and you are ready to rock n roll.

 

Look at the pictures in my gallery to see how I modified the stock bracket and modified the dash panel to accomodate a DIN style head unit.

 

Fabing the bracket isn't bad, it's the cutting the dash bezel that can be tricky. I tried to mount a CD player in mine and had the bracket fabed up the CD player ready to go and when I went to slide it in, the back of the CD player hit my A/C ducting. I didn't want to modify the ducting to make the player work so I just went with a AM/FM radio for the stock location and will use my IPOD.

 

welcome to FTE!

when I bought my truck the stereo was mounted in the glovebox. https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/7...rts-truck.html look at the pic of the stereo and how it's mounted. from studying it it's not too hard.

 

I just put in a am/fm/cd player in the dash of my Oz '79 F100.......I just found a good solid place to attach the rear mounting bracket & slid the unit right in place, it went right back against the old dash panel, now all I have to do is attach a panel above the old location where it had a Big *** rectangle radio in it from the factory......some huge lookin' thing that didn't work...

 

I work in car audio and you have to cut the dash. There is no kit since it was made for shaft style radios only. You can either carefully cut the plastic and the metal brackets and slide the cage in it. Or you can go a bit farther like I've seen done and actually add some supports to the bracket after you cut it out. I cut the brackets and didn't add support for the '77 and it works fine. The '74 is still sporting a shaft radio and I think I'm gonna leave it that way.

 

thanks guys for all the good input i think im gonna tackle this project this weekend.

 

you know, you dont have to keep it in the dash. ive see radios under the dash, in arm rests, and mounted in the headliner.

 

when you make your wire harness,use the 4 wire flat trailer wire with the disconnect.I ran three inches with a disconnect from the radio. I then ran the other disconnect with all of the wire over to my fuse panel.the wire is all tied together,very neat ,and very clean.I used yellow for memory,white for ground,and green for hot. The brown wire can be stripped off clean. If you ever replace your radio you can unplug it like a factory setup.

 

Not a bad idea to use the trailer plug. Since I work in electronics I know of other ways. Depending on what you do with your overall setup, you can get a plug to match. Say you wanna run 4 speakers and a cd player and want a detachable cord. You can get an 11 pin molex plug (or similar) to make connections. I'm not going to do it myself but if I were to, I'd probably get a modern ford plug and adapt it to it. I sell metra parts and they make the factory side of the harness as well as the aftermarket side. You can purchase a 71-1770 and a 70-1770. It's two plugs for each, one for power, ground, switch, illumination, power antenna. The other for you speaker wires. If you wanna pay a bit more money for a single plug unit you can get a 71-1771 and a 70-1771. This is for 98 and up fords and use one plug for all the wires (16-pin plug).

 

on my 79 f100 i cut the dash myself, boy was that a mistake, i took my 77 sc to best buy and had them do it for me (man i miss that truck). it was a bit more money but it was well worth it. Im building a center console this weekend and itll have a place for the stereo as well as a cb (using the factory speaker in the dash as a speaker for the cb). Im installing 2 4x7 in the console and putting 2 5 1/4 rounds in the doors. Ill also be getting a different dash and metal piece and put the factory pin style radio back in the dash for looks, since the dash is in damn near perfect condition. for buying the truck last sunday for $400 its well worth it. but i would suggest that you spend the extra time and money and have best buy or someone like that do it, that way you dont have to go bet another dash or metal piece if you miscut.

 

Best Buy is no longer allowed to do custom installs including cutting a dash. I have friends that work there. Ask around your town who does good work before you carry it anywhere. In my smaller town there are 7 audio shops. I'd say only 2 of those can cleanly cut a dash and make it look right. To be fair, two are big box stores that aren't allowed by store policy to do custom work.
You can cut it yourself but measure it three times and take your time doing the cut.