In Stereo
The existing stereo in the car has to go. It’s the stock Honda one, a simple tape deck with a radio, and it doesn’t work very well. We’re replacing it with a Sony CD/MP3 player rather than the Jensen I mentioned earlier. The Sony should have better quality; the Jensen had one review on Amazon which basically tore it apart. I picked up the Sony at www.etronics.com, which had the cheapest price on a comparison site.
The main trick will be putting the new stereo in nicely. I found some instructions on
how to remove the stock radio from a Honda Civic, 1996-2000. Much of the dash has to be taken apart, but it shouldn’t be that bad, since it looks like it’s just screws and plastic tabs. Here’s another site, which looks like it might be more detailed. This was referenced on the Honda newsgroup, but I haven’t taken a look at it yet.
My main fear is that the clowns/previous owners damaged the cabling harness. The current stereo cuts out, and requires some jiggling to get it to work again, meaning that there’s a loose wire in there someplace. I’m hoping it’s in the stereo itself rather than the car’s wires. I think they had some fancy stereo, which they hooked up to their big speakers in the back (the subwoofer is gone, but there wires are clearly there), and replaced it with the old Honda one when they sold the car. There’s some RCA jacks that pop out of the console right underneath the lever that opens the hood, so god knows what they did to the wiring. Hopefully, the other end of the RCA jacks are hanging forelornly in the console someplace, rather than spliced stupidly into the wiring. There are also two 16-pin connectors that hook into the stereo, a wide one and a narrow one. The old stereo was hooked up using the wide one. If the old stereo’s problems are due to the connector, hopefully it’s the wide one, and I can still use the narrow one. Just speculating. I’m not sure how much of a pain it’s going to be to redo all the wiring.
Oh, Jack noticed the tint film on the front passenger side had peeled a bit in one corner because of the shlocky job they did. In an act resembling the peeling of labels off beer bottles, the tint film was gone within minutes, leaving thin traceries of glue on the window. These should go away with a little acetone or ammonia, and there’s much, much more light in the car. The other tint films were better applied, so we’ll need more effort. The most annoying and hazardous tint is on the rear window, since, near dusk, it makes cars very hard to see.