Tunes for Hoons: The Goingincirclez MP3-Track

In June 2008 I flipped a defiant middle finger to the Fuelpocalypse and resurrected a 17-years-derelict land barge – a 1975 Lincoln Continental Mark IV.   I dubbed this rolling assault on Priuses and good taste The Angstmobile for many reasons, not the least of which was its proclivity for making its presence known with a delightfully evil chugging, courtesy of an inconvenient exhaust manifold leak.  10mpg never sounded so bombastic!

Of course the reason for stomaching 10mpg (16 downhill with a tailwind) is to enjoy yourself, and sometimes you wanna just kick back and listen to show tunes Sepultura as you drift down the interstate in your glistening, vinyl-coiffed iron puff.   Sadly, to this end the Angstmobile had an even more bothersome issue than the exhaust chug:  a factory 8-track radio.    Did you know that 8-tracks basically suck?  Cherishably quirky Beta tapes and Laser dics they are not; when hoary cassettes and bulky reel-to-reels take the honorifics in today’s eclectic sound systems, you know your magneto-format is dead.   Pity… I mean what a waste of a perfectly good Mobius Spool.

Since broadcast radio in Kentucky is the 8th Level of Clear Channel Hell, I made a conversion adapter to play MP3′s through an 8-track head unit, without major modification, while retaining its original appearance.    The basic idea is simple enough so I surely wasn’t the first to do it, but I did get the idea and work out the design on my own.  I posted the finished product on a handful of Ford-related forums at the time before stucking it on my own cesspool of angst personal website, where it’s consistently a #1 result of many Google searches.   Isn’t great to discover you’re not alone in your insanity?

I call it a – drumroll – “MP3-Track” cartridge.  Basically, I gutted a crusty 8-track cleaning tape I had on hand (any cartridge should theoretically work, but that cleaning tape was obviously useless), then disassembled a nondescript wireless FM transmitter for MP3 players.   I chose the transmitter based on the likelihood of a fit, as its guts are transplanted inside the 8-track cartridge shell.   When the finished unit is placed in the deck, the transmitter ends up right next to the receiver, so there’s little or no interference.  I purchased a small horizontal-form-factor MP3 player that attaches to the label end of the tape cartridge and looks sleek.   Yeah, so a cheap player won’t win you any friends or accolades but who cares – it’s more than sufficient to hold an assortment of Foghat’s Greatest Hits road rage and cruising music, since the Angstmobile isn’t my daily driver (yet).

The advantages of this design are numerous:  The car’s radio remains 100% factory original bone stock – no expensive replacements or irreversible mods are necessary.  Everything is contained in one removable, portable cartridge that you can easily share and use in any car with an 8-track / FM radio.  The in-use appearance is clean and integrated, unlike an iSpaghetti upchuck pouring out of your dash.  And formfactor gripes aside (sorry, iPod fanbois), it works with any MP3 player!

The guts of the system. You can see where I removed material from the cartridge shells for clearance, but this wasn’t difficult at all.   A pair of pliers to snap off the unwanted material, and an X-acto blade for the clean-up trimming is all you should need.

I did have to use a different battery holder because the original, as built into the back of the transmitter’s circuit board, would not have fit inside the closed case.   The one I’m using was a freebie I got from a countertop point-of-sale display crate – you know, those cardboard ones with blinking lights to get you to waste three bucks on rave pacifiers useless crap you otherwise wouldn’t even notice.  I soldered the leads to the contact points from the original battery cradle – pretty basic stuff.

I carefully cut some holes in the bottom for the frequency switch and power button.  The transmitter is a simple press-fit this way, but stays securely in place.   The selector switch fit perfectly in that recessed area of the cartridge shell – this just might be a dumb lucky coincidence as different record labels used various cartridge designs and styles over the years.  Also, most 8-tracks aren’t held together – and easily opened – with simple philips screws… so maybe a cleaning cartridge really is just the one to use.   I’d recommend comparing several cartridge styles at your local Goodwill.

Closed up.   I’m using Velcro to attach the player but you’ll note there’s ample space in the cartridge to cut a “dock” of sorts if I want to.  The caveat of a dock is that it would only fit that one style of player, limiting the converter’s aesthetic adaptability.   Which isn’t a concern when you’ve decorated it with sharpies, but I digress…

Not only is Velcro the dapper gentleman’s favorite two things – cheap and easy – but the player is slightly easier to reach (an inch closer) by not being recessed in the cartridge.  Laziness, engage!

Installed in the car (of course I bought the color-keyed MP3 player model).

Note that if you push the cart in all the way, the tape mechanism engages and the radio no longer plays… So, only insert it just to that point. It sticks out maybe an inch further but this doesn’t look bad and is actually helpful with easy reach for skipping tracks, etc.

If I were to produce or sell these, I’d probably have to make a few minor changes but for $10 (cost of the transmitter) and a couple hours of fiddling to convert, I won’t complain.   Also, a far better route would be something like those CD-to-Cassette adapters so it could use the tape player’s stereo head directly, skipping the radio altogether.  I understand there actually were Cassette-to-8Track adapters (!) I could possibly cannibalize for parts, but those would have cost me a surprising bit more to obtain, and I didn’t have a spare player to take apart and hack for proof-of-concept.   The original goal of this was function on the cheap!

I used the MP3-Track throughout 2 summers (’08-’09; 2010 was sadly lost) with no problems!  Every now and then I’d get some minor static, and of course that vintage FoMoCo head-unit amp can’t handle all new songs that well – a problem rooted more in today’s high-gain values, EQ curves and low/bass frequency bias -  but I’m very pleased with the results.  Most of the time it’s crystal clear… within the original radio’s limits of course.

Now, to fire up some Chaos A.D. and hunt down a Prius…

(Tony Lucio, aka “Goingincirclez”, is a self-described jack-of-all-nothings idiot who allegedly contributes to Hooniverse when he’s not searching for his lost marbles, which is an amusing notion since he long ago crushed them with a sledgehammer.  The marbles that is, not the Hoons.   You can find his contribs on Hooniverse, or at his own aka-ponymous dot com).