I'm back after a several year hiatus of not owning any vehicles that qualify for the site. I agreed to purchase a 1960 F100 today, so I'll be bugging the site from time to time for info. Right now I'm stumped on this Motorola radio. It's not the factory option radio that would have been offered with the truck as far as I know. I'm looking on ebay or elsewhere to see if I can find any info about the radio. Does it look familiar to any of you professionals out there? I kinda refurbish tube AM radios for the home as a winter hobby and I would love to have that truck radio up and running again at some point. I think the on/off knob is snapped off though. There's no dial or anything. Just a volume knob and a tuning knob. Sorry for the crappy photo, but I don't have the truck here at my house yet. Was this some sort of cheap aftermarket thing you'd buy and drill a couple of holes to install? I'd love to get a replacement and use it.
I had a radio just like that in a '69 Dodge van I used to have. It was aftermarket. It is supposed to have another part with a dial that is secured by nuts on the shafts for the knobs.
Do you know if it has another box that should be hung on the firewall, that actually contains the "guts" of the radio controlled by a couple cable drives from the back of the "head unit"? Either way its cool, I'd like to have one for a future project!
I'll know later when I take delivery of the pickup if there's a brain box or more guts located elsewhere. If I can't replicate this, I might measure the distance between the knob holes to see what else I could make work. The factory F100 radio looks quite a bit different. It's very compact for the era. I'm certain that this means someone drilled my dashboard to stick that in there. If any of you have a photo of the complete Motorola unit, I'd love to see it!
Luketrash - you have the earlier Ford truck radio - 57-59 and the earler that that is close but a little different...the 60-66 is just like a Dodge truck of the same years....I'll try and dig one out....
Thanks guys for the added info! The original knobs were in the glovebox. I took a couple of photos. The tuning dial knob is too dirty to see the numbers through so I took two photos to show that. The power/volume post is busted off. I'd like to rejuvenate it. I might try to dig up replacement parts. Do any of you happen to know the Motorola model number? I'll look under the dash tomorrow. I'd like to find a schematic and install new capacitors in it and get it gone through. I listen to a lot of AM radio when driving. Just for trivia: Did you know the little dots on the dial both signify civil defense frequencies for important updates during a national emergency when the Russians attacked? Here's my pickup. I'm pretty anxious to start going through it and getting it on the road.
Way to go on that truck. Looks good and solid. The radio is pretty neat to. I took the aftermarket 60's Ford radio out of my truck and put in this Pontiac Silver Streak radio delete. The star even matches the dash.
That silver streak blanking plate is quite alright! I found the radio on ebay (new in the box for three hundred buckeroos!) It's a Motorola 600x reversible polarity jobby. It's tubes and features... a transistor! Circa 1958 release. And wouldn't ya know it, one just sold on ebay for 22 bucks a couple weeks ago!!! http://www.ebay.com/itm/1959-Motoro...D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557
I found this in the March 11th 1960 Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Gazette: Kinda cool to think whoever owned this truck might have seen an ad like this and decided to pony up 55 bucks for this radio. That's 443 dollars in 2013 money. I think that gets you a bluetooth iPhone app radio made by Pioneer these days, haha.
I tore the radio out of the dash and took a look. It might be too far gone to save. I'll have to see if I can get a replacement potentiometer for the power and volume. The entire radio was full of mouse turds and filth. I used almost a whole can of Caig DeOxit to clean it to the point it's at now. I need to sit down and see if all of the capacitors are still legibly marked as to their values so I can replace them. It'd be rewarding to fix it radio and listen to it just for the sake of having it working in the truck it came with. Someone had already been in there. Electrical tape isolating the tube rail from the case is a giveaway and the speaker wire someone ran from inside the case looks pretty amateurish. It's a cool enough radio. I'll probably set up an ebay alert.
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