I’m the original owner of this car. Back in the 1990s, one of the first mods I made was to plug in a Heidelburg cassette player from one of the more expensive VWs.
It served me well for a very long time…and I kind of ignored a stereo upgrade back when my commute was shorter.
Nowdays, I spend 40min in the car each way. Time to let an old friend go.
The head unit is a discontinued JVC that the local Wal-Mart had discounted from $140 to $80. I also picked up a pair of new Sony 4x6” there for $30. They were probably discontinued as well. I didn’t replace the 3”ers in the dash, but after I replaced the original (dead) 4” rounds in the doors with a couple of ancient Planet Audio four inchers I’d salvaged from the green Corrado, the little tweeters in the dash came back to life!
Spent maybe three hours on it, but that’s probably because I spliced into the original harness, instead of running new wiring. I also ran the “switched” and “unswitched” power leads into the same unswitched source, because I like to have the option of playing the radio with the car off. An old leftover from my “party camping” habits during my SCCA Corner Worker days.
First sound out of it was the Clash’s “London Calling”. Followed by the Beatles’ “Abbey Road”, and the Tubes’ “Completion Backwards Principle”. I must have played the thing for a couple of hours, just because I was so stoked that I’d connected it all up properly. Sounds pretty good, just needs more bass. I’ll probably let it go without adding the subwoofer, just because it’d be such a PITA to add new wiring..
