I'd like to work on the radio of my 65 F85. Can anyone give me plans to set up a bench test?

 

What is it your looking for? Wiring diagrams to tell you which wires are power & ground etc???

 

Looking for wiring diagrams and safe power source. I'm fairly new to the electrical stuff.

 

Get a 2 to 4 amp 12V power supply. It should be a transformered type (non-switching), so it should weigh a couple pounds. Do not use a featherweight switching unit, as they often do work well in hobby use. Check with your local electronics / hobby store. Radio shack and Fry's sells them. An electronics surplus store sells them also. In a pinch, a 2 to 4 amp 12V battery charger could be used (I have done that often.)
Do not get one with too much current, as an accidental short can either scare the crap out of you or blow something up.

An old 10 Ohm car speaker would work great, but an 8 Ohm home speaker would also work for testing. Do NOT use a 2, 4 or 6 Ohm speaker, as it may fry the radio's output stage. A PAIR of 4 Ohmers in series would work, though.

An old car antenna would be perfect (with plug attached). Mount that in a box with the speaker and run the wires to the test area. Alligator clips are great on speaker and power wires.

If you get into soldering, find a 20 or 25W iron with a grounded tip. Too high a wattage can cause traces to lift off the circuit boards. Gentleness is key also.

 

Rob, once again you've come to the rescue. Thanks.

 

radio shack or fleabay both have power supplies, you "may" want to invest a couple of bucks and get something decent you can use for lots of things, normally old cb base station power supplies are found cheap, here is a decent one from ebay

http://cgi.ebay.com/PYRAMID-PS7KX-5-...item45ef332a0a

I have a 25 amp unit similar from radio shack at the time it was around 75 bucks...

there are plenty of power supplies out there and if your looking for just a one time use you can even get the power supply from an old cpu, it will have taps for 5 and 12 volts, and is around 5 amps

 

Glad I could help!

These CAN work and I do use one, but they often shut down under large load additions (short protection) like when turning on a radio and the supply is on.
Having the radio connected and THEN turning on the supply wil get it running again. A quirk that can be dealt with in most cases.

 

There's not a lot in the way of connections to these old radios (I'm assuming this is an AM radio). A single terminal for 12V power and two terminals for the speaker as the vehicle chassis is used for the return wire on the power. Just get a 12V power supply from Radio Shack, clip the positive lead to the power terminal on the radio (where the power lead coming from the fuse panel would connect), clip the negative lead to some secure spot on the radio's metal housing, and clip two leads from the speaker to the two speaker terminals on the radio. Then turn on the power supply, turn on the radio, and pray.

All this will likely do, though, is tell you if the radio lights up at all. You can twist the volume **** to see if you get any hiss from the speakers, and you might pull in a very strong station. But you'll want to connect an antenna if you want to test the ability to tune in stations of various strength as well as see how well the dial is calibrated, etc.