The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay The Radio Bench Wiring a '66 AM Radio

I'm probably making this much more difficult than it needs to be, but to be honest I have never wired a radio before. I'm rewiring with an AAW classic upgrade kit and I've got what seems to be 2 power wires. One says Radio Bat and the other just says Radio. I'm thinking the radio bat wire may go for a radio that has presets or digital clocks that have to remain powered, if that is correct then I won't need this one as I'm using the original AM Radio.

Does that sound right?

Don't know about the wiring harness, but you may be right and I believe that would make perfect sense. In the case of your truck, the radio power wire should be hot when ignition is on and when ignition is at the acc position. There will be no power to it when ignition is off. That's really all you need to know, I think. As I recall from mid-60s AM connections, you'll have a ground connection a power connection and a speaker connection and then one terminal of the speaker will need a good ground contact. Good luck.

I would try them out to see which one powers what. I would be surprised if they had electronic memory back then. It was common to have one feed for the power and one feed for the dial light. That way the dial light could be hooked up to the dash light dimmer.

One ground, one power and one positive speaker wire. The negative wire on the speaker goes to ground.

Or, the radio itself could ground through the chassis and the extra wire could be for the light in the radio.

Actually a speaker wire or connection is neither positive or negative since it only handles AC current.