Radio Shack Plug N Power 61 2470 Zip
Stephanie Dejoode
How Many of us have been to an auction sale, see an open station 856, 966 ,. Jumped on the step & took a Quick look at the Tach and notice the Dozens of Holes Drilled in the Cowl & sheet Metal or even the Fender and knew exactly which groups of holes the Fender radio was attached to and the 12 volt power supply wire!!
I got a TENNA radio for my 14th B-day, my B-day is in the spring, just in time to use it sowing oats, moving hog houses and other hog equipment. Doing fieldwork meant running the 450 with Dad's Automatic big box radio, the "Standard" by which all radios will be measured. Those tractor radios you hear from a mile away even over the tractor noise, about a 99% chance they were an Automatic.
I had a Tractor Supply radio, was a small formed steel box with a Motorola truck radio, a mounting bracket, antenna, and We had robbed a bigger speaker out of a radio or TV and it and the radio really wasn't getting the job done. The Tenna proved to be slightly better but not even close to the Automatic. Dad listened to the small local station from 10 miles away to get the noon farm market reports. I really wanted WLS radio from CHICAGO, and the Automatic could pull it in. Best my Tenna could do was get KSTT, a local, Davenport, Iowa rock station as long as I wasn't too close to power lines, and seemed that running east & west worked better than north & south. But of the 250 hours I put on the SH every year that Tenna was on at least 249 of them.
About 10 years ago I found a new SONY car radio head unit with an amplifier and two co-axial speakers on sale and stripped the guts out of the Tenna and installed the Sony. It's electronic tuning is much better, or maybe there's more local stations around here now than was around home in 1970.
Max Armstrong interviewed a guy at HCOP a couple years ago that created a mobile display of ALL brands of tractor radios available over the years. The various colors to match tractor brands, the AM, and AM/FM, and the early 8-track and cassette tape models. I did eventually buy a cassette tape deck for my home stereo, but never interested in one on my tractor, one morning cultivating corn think it was WLS played the Association song "Windy" 10 or 12 times, WHY would I want a tape deck? If I liked a song it would be played again in half an hour.
As addicted to tractor radios as I was, the BTO I worked for NEVER had a radio in ANYTHING, don't think his combine had one till he traded his #95 Deere for a 6600. The 4230 with turbo He bought about 1974 with sound-gard cab was his first tractor with radio. His 2470 CASE had one too, was probably my favorite tractor to run. It rode on 28Lx26 tires, rode like a Cadillac.
Used to be you could go to Radio Shack and buy a simple self-contained AM-FM 2-knob radio for $19.99 or $39.99, or something like that. Had the speaker built in. Nobody has anything like that anymore. Everything now is all button operated, with a digital screen that you have to hog out a big rectangle in your panel to mount.
And then there are those of us who had radios and never ever turn them on because its just distracting...we want to hear every squeak and rattle so we can catch any problems early.... IDK why it is, but I simply can't have a radio playing, somehow my mind is so tuned in on the machine noise, that even changing my posture in the cab sometimes make me think there is a problem starting...since moving my head makes it sound different..... Honestly its kinda annoying, as that causes a "alarm" that keeps me on edge! I've tried the radio to "cover that up"....unfortunately it just makes that internal alarm work harder and alert more often!
I'm sure if you look hard enough you can find the old 2 knob "restoration" units, but remember they were not all the same either. The distance between the knobs varied....the size of the opening varied....Probably best to get a simple newer style and make a new plate. BUT....IMO none of the new stuff is worth your time. Its all built way to cheaply to survive out on a tractor fender! If you really gotta have your tunes....a smartphone and cordless headset is the way to go. So restore the radio for pretty, and use the smartphone!
I have been using these fender mount ones that the dealer has in stock for probably 10 years, and I can pick up radio stations that are eight or 50 miles away that my pick up truck will not tune in. Inside of my Antique cabs, I cut the big hole and stick in these hundred dollars from Walmart in they last 10 years anyway. But I buy the hundred dollar Sony type, not the $35 off balls. Bluetooth and XM friendly
We Could Also Receive "Super CFL" ...WCFL-AM 1000, in the early 70's,...Larry Loujack "Animal Stories", Every Farm Kid in our Area had Animal Stories & Little Tommy, Broadcasting on a "Tractor Fender Radio" Those Voices Carried for Miles across the Farm Fields, The thought of this Makes Me Smile!!
YEP, Larry Loujack was the driving force behind me wanting the BIG tractor with the AUTOMATIC radio, First couple days cultivating corn or beans just crawling along at idle I had to have something to keep me awake. Jobs I did with my H or SH only took 3-4 hours tops, I could tolerate the local Quad-City, Moline, Ill/Davenport, Iowa stations on it.
I'm sitting in my semi-tractor at Hy-Vee Foods warehouse in Chariton, Iowa catching up my log book and I look up at the semi backing up right in front of me, Large Car, and down on the lower edge of the sleeper bunk is a sticker, "Official Larry Lujack Dumb Animal Story Mobile Unit", and yes, I turned on my AM/FM radio and searched for AM 890 on my dial. I almost had to be right IN Chicago to get anything, I ran cassette tapes once in a while. I "Think" that radio is the one I have on my #72 Cub Cadet, works O-K on there.
SON has built some really impressive stereo systems, one in the '88 Mustang GT hatchback would rattle the aluminum siding on the house 80-90 feet away with the car in the shop with all the doors & windows closed. By the numbers, the system he put in his Lightning was bigger/louder, more watts, but didn't rattle the siding like the Mustang did. Mustang had a 12" Solobaric woofer in a custom made encloser in the spare tire well, think the Lightning had a 12" MTX speaker. I never had the ambition or the cash to build a stereo like that. When I gave my old F-250 to SON, he asked me, "How long has the radio not worked in it?" Far as I knew it worked, last time I turned the volumn up 3-4 years before. Now if I was out fall plowing, or mowing/raking hay, I'd have the radio on. Last fieldwork I did for Dad was discing the back 20 acres with the 4010 ahead of the corn planter, and for darn sure the Automatic tractor radio on the fender was blaring. That just the way "Things" were done.
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