Hillman Imp Classic Radio Installation

Today we had this smart little Hillman Imp in for radio and aerial. 

The imp belongs to a very good customer of ours, he has a nice little collection of classics and we have done similar work for most of them. 

The original radio was faulty, but it suited the dashboard (despite being an aftermarket fit), so we stripped it down and got to work making the new RetroSound Laguna unit look and feel the same as the old one. 

We removed the old tuning pointer and installed it within the display of the new Retrosound Digital display (the pointer is non-functional but it works aesthetically) along with the Retrosound SCP Screen Protectors. 

We managed to get the original radios Knobs and fascia to fit the Retrosound with a small amount of modification. 

The original radio is mono, but it had 2 speakers, on each side of the rear bench.  

We removed the speakers and checked the impedance, both speakers are 4 ohms, but they had been wired in series to work on the Mono radio with an 8ohm load.  

 

So we re-wired the speakers and now we have stereo separation, it's not ideal having the speakers behind you, however, they are closer to your ears than if they were mounted under the dash, so it works for this car.

 

The end result is a modern radio that pretty much looks like the original. We had hoped to install an electric telescopic antenna; however, on inspection, there is just no way to get one into the wing of the car, so we opted for a basic manual telescopic antenna which was installed from the top, which is a trick in itself ;-)