73 radio adding a power antenna

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two73stangs

New member
Joined
Feb 13, 2014
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Location
Bartlett, IL
My Car
73 mach1
73 convertible
I have a 73 mach1 with factory am/fm radio. Two plugs one flat two wire in for power and the other square 3wire out for speakers and ground. Basic cheap power antenna add to keep from cutting a hole in car cover. It has two wires red green and a black ground. I assume the red is up and green is down but both need power? Want to have it go up with radio power on but don't see a power out on radio?
 
Factory AM/FM radios did not have a power provision for power antennas. You can tap ACC or RUN-only power, but the antenna will be up all the time the key is engaged.
 
Your add-on antenna should have come with instructions. Typically, the red wire is connected to a continuous 12 volt power source and the green wire to a switched source from the radio. The only way that you'll be able to get that switched source will be to open the radio and tap into the output connector on the radio's on/off switch.
 
Thanks that's what I thought. No instructions with cheap stuff. But I did tap a 12v source and got an on-off-on toggle switch to just power manually up and down. Still not working. 🤔 antenna is grounded to body where installed may check that again.
 
Connect the red wire directly to the battery (through a fuse), then the green wire to the switch (all you need is an on/off single throw switch) then the switch to the battery. When the green wire receives 12 volts the antenna goes up and stays up. When the voltage is removed from the green wire the antenna retracts.
 
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