Re: AMC radio testing

When benchtesting a radio, it wouldn't hurt to have either a circuit breaker or an inline fuse of the flat blade type in the lead going to the 12V+ terminal. That way, if there is something awry in the radio itself, you won't short something out!

The way I commonly benchtest the occasional radios I sell on Ebay is to either have a hot battery sitting on the workbench where I'm testing or I raise the hood on my truck and run the power leads to the truck battery. A riding lawn mower battery is sufficient and is usually pretty cheap and doesn't take up too much space. 

I use wires with alligator clips on each end to connect the ground and 12V+ leads. I have a couple of speakers that still have a wiring pigtail to which I've connected alligator clips. The 'gator clips make connecting all the wires a snap. 

I have an antenna I snagged at the Pull A Part for a couple of bux. It's complete from radio to mast and I think I took it off some kind of mid-80s Ford product. 

As to connections, someone else has mentioned this, but I'll recap: 
The general color coding of AMC radios is like this: 
Brown wire is usually 12V+. The orange wire is usually the backlight for the dial (also a 12V+). The green wire is the + side of the speaker, with the black wire being the - side of the speaker. Monaural radios have only the two wire flat speaker plug. Stereos have two sets of speaker leads, one square plug with three wires and one flat plug with three wires. I can't remember which, but each plug is specific for a side, with a front/rear wire on each side. (I think this is right, it may be that the plugs are for front or rear speakers with L & R channel wires--it's one or the other, I can never remember without checking). 
I'm not 100% sure of the speaker wiring for mono radios with a single rear speaker, but it's not too complicated. I haven't tried one of those for a while.

Hope this helps.

Jeff Reeves
Auburn GA
79 Spirit GT
72 Javelin SST
69 Ambassador DPL

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