One of the minor things I discovered was that radios in 1967 had "Ford" on the dial while in 1968 they had "Philco" instead. The '67s also had chrome push buttons while the '68s were just black. I didn't know this years ago when I reinstalled an AM radio back into the car. I took the radio from a 1967 fastback in a salvage yard. The reason I grabbed it is because my car was originally equipped with an AM radio plus the windshield and other glass was intact (and rolled up) on the fastback so the radio was in excellent condition and wasn't "weathered" or rusted from the elements.

I think I'll go into a little "radio history" of my Mustang so you'll better understand how I got into the predicament I'm in.

When my Mustang rolled off the assembly line in January 1968 it was ordered with the AM radio. From paperwork and receipts I got with the car it appears that it held onto this radio until about 1988. At that time the radio and speaker were replaced with a Custom Autosound radio and dual speakers mounted in the original single opening in the dash. The original radio and speaker are long gone. Custom Autosound makes radios that fit in older vehicle dashs that require no modifications. This is the radio and speakers that were mounted in the car when I bought it in 1998. Unfortunately the radio was broken. The dial selector and tuning knob didn't work so you couldn't change stations and the cassette player was worn bad. I wanted a working radio for the car without doing any cutting to the good bezel plus I wasn't about to spend a lot of money for a radio in a car I don't drive much. I bought an Optimus from Radio Shack for just under $100 that had a cassette player, 30 station presets and the main thing, wouldn't require and modifications to the bezel to mount it. I wired it to the existing Custom Autosound speakers. I used this radio for two years and during that time I had picked up that AM radio from the '67 fastback.

The car was being shown at shows plus I belong to the Mustang Car Club of New England and did some of their shows. I kept admiring the stock class cars, the class I was in, and noticed they kept their cars as original as possible......even down to the radio. I liked how the chrome on the radio matched the interior better than the black Optimus I had. I know my car needed other more major things done to compete instead of a radio but since I already had that AM one it was something easy I could do. I cleaned up that AM radio, pulled the Optimus out and installed the AM one hooked to those Custom Autosound speakers. I put an FM converter in the glovebox. I definitely liked the way it looked, same as when I had removed the black Anco wiper blades and put stainless steel ones back on.

About a year or so after I got that AM radio back in I had found and bought an original clock for a '68 Mustang. An option my car never came with but I decided to add. The clock was physically like new except it didn't work. I decided to have a quartz movement installed. I found out the place that did the clock conversions also did radio conversions. They would gut the original AM radio and add new AM/FM internals to it while keeping it's outward original appearance including the AM dial. I had this done for $400 all the while not realizing yet that the '67 radio wasn't exactly correct for a '68. After I discovered this some time later it was too late. I kept thinking though there might be a way to swap parts to make it look more correct for my year.

In the summer of 2003 I bought another 1968 coupe for parts. It came with an original AM radio, correct for 1968 with "Philco" and black push buttons. Here was the one I could use to make the conversion. I didn't get around to this until October of 2005. Other things took higher precedence. I started taking the 1968 radio apart and soon realized it would be a lot of work to switch the pushbuttons or even the internals. The dial was cake. I didn't want to start tearing into the radio which I had paid $400 for it's internals.

Now with the background you may realize why I'm only switching the dials so I'll have the correct "Philco" but I'll live with the chrome pushbuttons. I'm keeping the basic 1967 radio but it will have a 1968 dial bar. I cleaned up the 1968 dial bar with plastic polish and repainted the chrome stripe before installing it on the 1967 radio. In the Mustang's Unlimited catalog they have a dual voice dash speaker which is supposed to have better sound. I ordered one and removed the dual Custom Autosound speakers that had been used with several radios over the past 15 years.

The 1967 dial with "Ford" is on the left and the 1968 dial with "Philco" is on the right as they sit on the car's trunk lid. The number bar is also different. 4 screws are the only thing that holds the dial bar to the front of these radios. The hole locations are identical.

This is the 1967 radio that was converted to AM/FM with the 1968 dial in place and remounted in the bezel.

These Custom Autosound speakers were used with several different radios over the years. They played good with no problems but I wanted to try the dual voice speaker instead. I'm keeping these speakers in case I ever want to use them again. They're safely packed away in one of my plastic containers for car parts in the garage.

The crude metal bracket on top was what mounted them to the original speaker studs in the dash. I also saved it.

This is the new dual voice speaker mounted in the dash. Both channels go into it. It bolted right onto the original studs in the dash.

It's all back together again! The 1968 dial looks good. The radio is on in this pic. You can see the yellow LED mounted behind the "16" on the dial. That means it's on FM and it has a station. It will turn green when it's on FM but doesn't have a station and it will be red when the radio is in AM mode. The LED goes out and is almost invisible when the radio is off. You can only see it there if the sun is shining directly at the dial.

The dual voice speaker definitely has better bass as they claim. Not a big difference from the Custom Autosound speakers that were in there but just enough. Switching the dials was easy. I spent more time removing the radio from the dash. The chrome push buttons aren't correct but they're not easy to change. The main thing is I'm happy with it now and it's one less thing on my to do list.

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