Today's post: Car Stereo Repair

This morning on the way home, I noticed that my subwoofer in the back of the Exploder was buzzing like someone had stuffed it full of marshmallows or maybe violently ill pixies (I checked. Sadly there were no marshmallows. Or pixies.). The thing sounded terrible. It had to die.

A little online research convinced me that this could cost a little or a lot. So instead of going somewhere and paying out my dupa(Polish for "bottom." Stop looking at me that way) with money I don't have(because SAFF is coming up and there must be money for fiber), I decided that I can work a screwdriver(as well as read a knitting pattern, and make a mean beef stroganoff) and that it would be an adventure to fix it myself.

Off I went to my local stereo store where there were a bunch of tattooed guys discussing speakers and sound quality and whatnot with each other. One of the tattooed guys was very nice and gave me just the right speaker for the car. He very nicely explained that since my old subwoofer had two male (use your imagination) connectors and that the new one has 4 male connectors, I would have to wire it up differently to install it. I needed to go to Radio Shack to get my female (you can do it) connectors. No problem, right?

Well. I walked in and the guy at radio shack took one look at the old and new speakers in my hand and said "No". "No what?" I asked. "We don't do car stereo here" he said. Wow. Like it hadn't occurred to me that Radio Shack WASN'T a car stereo place. How stupid of me. I politely explained that I needed female connectors to connect the wires. He proceeded to tell me that he does a LOT of car stereo and what I wanted to do wasn't possible because he'd never seen a subwoofer with 4 male connectors before. It took a lot of explaining and visual aids before he was on board with the project. I bought a soldering iron instead of female connectors (his one good suggestion) and left. He told me to have fun on my way out. Thanks dude, rock on.

Anyhoo, here's what my old subwoofer looked like once I ripped it's guts out:


And the new subwoofer all soldered up and ready to install:
And the finished product:

Ok, so it's not perfect. In taking out the panel, I broke it a little bit, but hey, it's an 11-year-old car. It has a few dings. Given how most of my cracked-up, post-call plans I usually hatch explode in my face, this one went surprisingly well. And it sounds pretty good too.

I'm gonna go celebrate and eat some marshmallows. And if I find any pixies, I'll let you know.