I'm familiar with testing 66-74 radios but I have a 1964 Plymouth AM radio that needs testing. It has 3 wires. A solo black wire with female connection, and 2 brown wires. One brown has a male connection, the other female connection? Which wire does what or goes where? Power, Speaker, Light...
I assume the radio case to chasis is still ground.

Ground the case to the 12V battery you're going to use, plug in an automotive radio Antanea and hook up the two wires to the automotive speaker and turn it on
Let us know if it works or not

So hook up the brown male and female wires to the speaker? Do I hook up the black wire to positive then run a separate lead from the case to battery negative? When I test 66-74 I don't ground to the battery, just the chasis and radios work.

according to my 64 FSM, the single black wire is the 12v source. the ground is the radio chassis, and can be hooked to the battery negative.
the two brown wires are for the speaker.
if it has a light socket, that wire should be orange.
hope this helps.

Thank you....one more question...in 1964 was the radio light standard or an option? I only have the 3 wires.

Ok...all hooked up...Just getting static through volume but only when I turn the volume.
I'm using g a cheap antenna and tried a coat hanger but same result.
I'm bench testing it in my garage where I always do my tests.
No known outside interferences. Any insight fellas?

Any car antenna should work. Have you tried swapping the speaker wires around? Sounds like a bad radio. Just my humble opinion.

Switched speaker wires, same result. Anyone else before I open her up and dissect it???

1. might try a real antenna and might also try it outside.
2. Older car radios did not like the antenna being inside on AM if I remember correctly
3. Make sure your speaker is good

Shoot my '69 RR back in '69 AM radio would go away under even the shortest of under passes and you could never hear it sitting in the garage (with the engine off of course) even with the door open.

I have found out the hard way that even if you value your labor at minimum wage, its money ahead to have a “radio road map” or schematic:

https://autoradioschematics.com/

You can also search eBay of “Sams Photofact”
with your radio model number.

Most shade tree fixers have some sort of multimeter,
and even the “give away” Harbor Freight meters have built in Transistor Tester
and “Diode” position on the switch,
but require desoldering and isolating the suspect part.

The component that most often goes bad in old radios is one of those small cylindrical pill bottle shaped “electrolytic capacitors” .
Some times you can immediately spot bad ones because the top is swelled out, or leaking goo.

If the cap looks normal it still can be bad,
and here a great time saver is the
ESR Meter (equivalent series resistance)
which can good/bad test an Electrolytic Capacitor in place with no de-soldering.

Some experienced repairers advise: First thing replace all Electrolytic Capacitors, period.

If you want to go with the pioneer of such testers, higher $ and still highly respected:

https://www.amazon.com/Peak-Electro...ee2c297&pd_rd_i=B005NIBEYU&psc=1

These ESR have become very cheap from China and most have added digital features,
such as the widely sold GM328 (or similar number)
which you can scroll down and read about here:

https://childhoodradio.com/test-equipment/

i would think there is a place for a light socket somewhere around the face plate, but without seeing the radio i can't say for certain.
all the 64's i have owned in the past, A, B, and C bodies, the radio was illuminated.

For certain years, the OE radios had a single dial light that turned ON/OFF with the radio, here the radios were mostly only AM.
However, later on when they added FM and some with tape players they had a separate wire output connection just for the light illumination circuit, and this was connected to the dash lite circuit so that the radio light briteness could vary with the other instrument dash lites.

Just my $0.02...

Found and replaced light bulb. It illuminates when turned on. Thanks!

Tested radio outside. Same result. Speaker is brand new and worked fine when used prior on another radio.
Still researching why, I have only static when turning volume. Still no sound when a station is selected, or tuner is turned.
Took apart radio, it was dirty. Sprayed CRC electrical contact cleaner, same result, no sound, just static when adjusting volume.

Tuner is shot, antenna connections bad. Is this thing worth all this effort?

Learning how to fix something is always worth it or at least why its not working so when you pay a pro you're not getting ripped off. I always shied away from electronic repairs, so I figure this is good practice.

Not much here but it is a ('68) Mopar radio. Maybe at or around 2:30 ish there's a note about speaker polarity and muffled sound but nothing else except how he tested it.

Are the early OEM AM radio for the b bodies the same for 1962 to 1965?
I've had the OEM radios out of one of my 1963 Plymouth but not the other years