'67 AM Radio very quiet and static-y

[Markuli]

I need some guidance here, guys.

Since I bought my truck, the radio would only make a faint "popping" noise when turned on, no music or anything. I tried turning on the radio just the other day, and it turned out that it no longer made any noises at all. When I finally pulled out the speaker and the radio, this is what I found:

- The speaker is trashed, as expected. Dry rotted through and the wires are cracked in the cone.
- My antenna cable was also chewed in half.
- The little coil that comes off of the antenna (inside the unit) was chewed off at both the antenna pickup and the solder joint it's supposed to wire into.

I re- soldered the coil in, plugged in a new antenna, hooked up two 4- ohm speakers to get an 8 ohm setup. Now upon bench- testing the system with a motorcycle battery as my power source, I have hardly any volume, and most of the AM range is static/ distorted. I can *just barely* pick up Mark Levin in the 700s range, that's about it

I'm trying to determine the root cause of my distorted signal and low volume. My questions are:

- I know I lost a "loop" or two in that antenna coil when I soldered it back in. How critical is it to have the proper amount of loops in that coil?

- I grounded my radio right to the negative of the battery... That's the best ground I can use, right? Would installing the radio in my truck give me a better ground?

- Is it possible that the transistor at the back is shot? That acts as the "amp" if my reading is correct...

-Am I completely bass-ackwards as to what to be checking out?

I'm sure we have some electronics gurus on here, so hopefully someone can steer me in the right direction!