Car Stereo Stories

In another thread, I mentioned when I had a car stereo stolen, and I thought the other time I had one stolen.  Looking back, while it sucked to have them stolen, the stories are funny now.

First one was my 1979 VW Rabbit parked overnight in the parking lot at University Motors, an MG shop in a sketchy area of Grand Rapids, MI where I worked in college. We never left cars outside at night, but one night I stayed late to finish enough work on my freshly-repainted MGB/GT to drive it home.  I thought, it's just one night, no problem.  The next morning, the left rear door's window was smashed and the radio was gone. The funny/insulting part was that back then I was a huge Todd Rundgren fan and the thief took the time to eject the cassette, look at it, and then leave it on the dashboard for me.  Okay, stealing my stereo was bad enough, but did he have to judge my taste in music?  By the way, I wondered why the back window was smashed instead of the front. I learned from the cops that the experienced thieves always broke the back windows so they didn't have to sit on broken glass when they steal the stereo.

The second one was another Rabbit in another parking lot at the college. For my insurance to pay, I filed a police report stating the radio and damage to the dash was about $150 and the insurance company paid it without a deductible since my comprehensive covered it. Cool.  Anyway, about six weeks later, at about 6:00pm on a Saturday night, this guy knocks on the door of the rental house I was living in with my college friends. He says he's the guy who took my stereo and the judge said he could pay restitution and join the army or go to jail.  He was leaving for the army and needed me to sign the paperwork saying he'd paid me the $150 back. I'm an honest guy and called my insurance company to offer them their $150 back, but they said keep it. Cool, justice was served. But I still can't believe that the judge gave a criminal his victim's home address.  This was about 1988, I guess times have changed. 

Anyone else have any stories like these?

Many years ago, I DD'd a Mazda 626 and had a '71 Super Beetle for fun.  I upgraded the speakers in the 626 and took the stockers and mounted them in a homemade panel "custom-fit" to the space behind the rear seat in the Beetle.  I took the time to cover the panel in black felt and I was really happy with the way it looked and sounded.  I had an old Radio Shack Equalizer/Amp that I mounted under the dash.  I don't remember what the head unit was like. 

At the time I was living in an apartment complex and I walk out one rainy morning to my car door hanging open and the amp and speaker panel gone.  The head unit was still in the dash.  They apparently forced their way in past the vent window.  It was clearly stolen by someone local who had a Bug.  I didn't spend any time looking around for it.  Insurance paid me nothing for the audio, but paid a little for the very slight damage to the weatherstrip.  I couldn't help thinking that whoever stole it took a risk for very little gain. 

I almost always keep a stock deck in my cars as they rarely appeal to thieves (and I satisfy all my audiophile tendencies on my home systems).

The one non-stock deck I had was in an old Lamborghini and I had no worries about theft there as it was a Lear Jet 8 track unit!  The only problem with it was that whenever I went for fifth gear it pushed the tape in and started playing.  Never could understand why the previous owner was a fan of head banger music - tossed out 3/4 of the tapes that came with the car.

Picture it: Grand Rapids, 2017.  I had just bought the most expensive car in my life, far wider than anything I had owned since 1998, and was setting out to drive it 8 hours home.  In the dark.  During rush hour traffic.  In a slushstorm.  With heavy road construction.  Completely unfamiliar everything.

I did bring my CD collection, including the MP3 disks, as I had not had an MP3 player in a car for years, and this one had (has) an Alpine CDE-102, connected to a baby crib sized amplifier in the trunk powering the OE Volvo premium audio speakers.

About an hour into this equation the Black Sabbath folder came up.  First song was Fairies Wear Boots.

The clarity, the range, the staging... it made all the hairs on my neck and arms stand up.  Absolutely amazing. 

Normally I had to wear headphones for all of the stereophonic tricks to make themselves known, and here it was in something hurtling down the almost wide enough road at 65mph.

Years ago maybe 2008.. When I used to DD my 1994 Plymouth Duster in college.  I parked at my apartment complex that was always quiet with no issues.  The driver side door lock was always sticky so I rarely would lock the car.  I came out one morning and someone stole my "Rampage" 35 dollar CD player... BUT they unplugged it from the back and left all the wiring in the dash.  So basically they got a paper weight and my E36 M3ty ex-girlfriends Disturbed CD.  SMH.

Soon after getting the Garage Rescue Miata back on the road, I was on my way to Daytona Speedway for something big–probably the 24–and I had to wait in the conga line to enter the infield.

While getting the car back on the road, I never thought to even try out the radio. Did it still work? Was there even a CD in the player? 

So I hit play while sitting there.

Only the right-side speaker worked, but I was greeted by a familiar guitar riff:

Very fitting, I thought. 

My dad bought me a Spark-o-matic AM/FM/Cassette player to replace the stock unit, along with some 6x9's to go in the rear parcel shelf (to replace the single 3x10 along the passenger side rear window).

A million internet points to the poor soul who can name that car.

Chevrolet Citation

1968-1970 Datsun Roadster had the same issue.

This was a real problem solved by the latest technology.

I guess I have 2, I'll start with the first.

Back in 1985 I was 14/15. My new step-dad gave me his 1075 1900 Kadett. Mechanic would not fix it or something. Mechanical injection I could not figure out how to make work for more than 30 seconds. I di put a hell of a stereo in it made up of broken boombox speakers, ancient home speakers and some twine. My friends and I loved it. I will never forget the smell of that damn Kadett I hung out in it so much. The Chiltins manual for it turned me on the the best car ever, the Opel GT.

I think every kid back then did this.

Decades later, I just bought a home with a barn. I still live here, but at the time I was young and needed roomates to afford it. My roomate and I shared the shop and met another cool guy that I also let share the space. Well, my roomate sucked at wiring, he once wired his ignition switch with house wire nuts and it failed all the time. We gassed him all the time about his E36 M3 wiring. So one day he was putting a crappy but upgrade Sony into his cherokee, as he was wiring it his dome light kept blinking, we tore him to shreds and he became quite frustrated. Over an hour of him trying to get the thing to work and 2 of us making fun of him he realized that the light was blinking because of the driver door switch. My buddy and I already knew this but every time we'd make him look his foot would repeatedly hit the door enough to actuate the switch. I was in tears as was my buddy.

I was 18, and had not had the best of luck keeping my Javelin running. Money was tight, and that oh-so-important V8 and 4-speed took a lot of my $3.50/hr wages. I had mis-spent some money on a Mosfet amp, 8" subs, crossovers and tweeters. A guy from school offered to trade straight for his Honda CM400T-with a 450 swapped in. 

My Dad has had a bad wreck on his Harley in his twenties that resulted in a body cast, metal plates, removed knee cap, etc. Bikes were not a popular option for Mom. I eventually convinced her, and the trade was made. That bike was my first real taste of freedom. I could finally afford to go places and not even worry weather I could make it back. I got frostbite on that bike, and lost shoes and a lot of skin coming off it. Good times.

When I was in the Air Force I put in a system for a friend. He didn't have a lot of money but I scrounged up some used equipment for him like a/d/s amps and a Soundstream sub. He liked tight bass so I built a sealed box for him. The bass wasn't hitting right and I told him we must have an air leak. He swore the wires were bad and kept arguing with me. To teach him a lesson I grabbed a nice lithium battery we used on the planes and told him we'd do the tongue test like a 9 volt battery. I hooked up the battery to one end and he touched the other end of the wires to his tongue. I swear his head snapped back and when I asked him if the wires were good he agreed with me now. Took the sub out and resealed the box for some of the most detailed bass I've ever heard. 

My first car was a Volvo 940 wagon. Had my older brother help me install what was at the time a rocking system. IdMax 12" sub in a giant ported box I carefully did all the calculations on and built, with a 1kw amp, CDT (I think?) component speakers with their own amp, nice Alpine headunit with a needless motorized faceplate. Basically spent years of savings since I started working at 14.

Wasn't until years later I realized my brother barely knew more than I did, which was 0. The sub would cut out sometimes, I figured I should check the ground. Pull up the back seat that the ground is under, grab a drill and pull out the self tapper we used... Gas comes flying out like a fountain, all over the back of the car. Panicked and ended up just screwing the screw back in as it just kept coming. I had grounded the 1kw sub through the chassis AND gas tank for a few years without knowing it.

I had some shop "fix" the gas tank at the behest of my parents, but I could never again fill the car more than 3/4 tank without the interior reaking of gas in the morning, so I don't think they did a very good job. Knew nothing about cars at the time.

I still have the sub, amps, and a set of components, but never bothered putting them in anything. Eventually want to put the components in my truck, but not sure the sub would be worth the hassle as I'd have to take the box out all the time as I use all the space. Nowadays its easier just to have a nice home setup.

My stereo was stolen out of my 1989 Toyota pickup. I bought it with an amp and speakers on installments so it was a lot of money. The thieves also took my stack of Cd's and the only thing i got back was my Abba CD which they threw away a block from the house. 

In reply to bearmtnmartin (Forum Supporter) :

that is called "adding insult to injury".

My silver RX-7 had red doors because someone punched both locks one day qnd silver doors were hard to come by.  Driver's door handle was broken, common FB problem... they tried prying the Pioneer radio out but they just broke the face off because I had screwed it in to the factory DIN frame.  They stole a $20 Harbor Freight drill and left my $100 wireless headphones in the car.

I was able to line the pins back up and push the face back on the radio, still worked fine.

Sadly I don't have a photo, but my '92 Sentra SE-R didn't have a radio–just the block-off plate. 

I was big into car audio in my early college years, and my platform of choice was my daily driver 1989 Nissan Maxima SE. I learned a lot about car audio owning that. It came with Bose premium audio and the optional CD player, and of course, none of it worked when I got the car. I soon learned that Bose speakers are special (these were individually amplified and had 1.8 ohm resistance) and don't work with regular car audio receivers, and the fancy "adapter box" I bought to make them work was garbage. 

So, I did the right thing and bought an Alpine CDM-7871 receiver, Boston Acoustics "Rally Series" speakers for the doors and back deck, a Kenwood amp, and a pair of JL Audio 12W0 subs. That was the best sounding car audio system I've ever heard to this day. When the car got sandwiched in a car accident, I followed the tow truck to the tow yard and removed all of it right then and there, and then went to the hospital. I still have all of it except the subs, which I sold off a few years later to a friend with a 1994 Maxima SE. 

The 6x9's were in my Trans Am for years, and they will end up back in there soon. The head unit is a backup solution in case my current plan (a Yamaha YCR-305 pull-out cassette deck) doesn't work out. 

My 70 Ford XL(LTD) convertible's factory AM radio was an odd shape & located to the left side of the gauge cluster. When I got the car the PO had mounted a cheap head unit on one of those plastic cupholders that sat on the transmission tunnel. 
 

Not satisfied with that, I found a cheap used Alpine AM/FM/cassette unit and a Kraco powered EQ, built an extension above the cupholders out of 1x6 lumber approximately 1.5 DIN units tall. Then I built a 2x12 "sub box" for the back seat - it was barely wide/tall enough for both speakers, so it definitely didn't have enough volume, but in retrospect I'm pretty sure they were actually guitar speakers. On each side of those I had some fairly large home stereo speakers, so the back seat was completely filled. But it's not like I would have had a reason to use it for anything else anyway.