A Great Way to Spend the Day With My Daughter

A few months back the wife and I bought a car for the kids. Well, it wasn't specifically FOR them, but with them in mind... a 1996 Mercury Grand Marquis. It's got about 160,000 miles on it, the body is immaculate, and we bought it from the stereotypical old guy. I've had to sink a little bit of money into it since purchasing the car... new tires and so forth, but overall it's been quite a good little car. In fact, it's good enough that I actually enjoy driving it.

The one thing I wanted to improve was the stereo system. Don't get me wrong, I don't need a 500 watt system, subwoofers that vibrate your seat, or anything like that. But one speaker had totally gone out, and what remained pretty much sucked, so I decided to upgrade the system.

I've done a few stereos in my day, so I was confident that I could to the upgrade in a couple of hours. Little did I know what I was in for. I ordered the parts, and within a week, I had everything I needed and was ready to go. I also told my kids that I'd be doing the swap-out... the older one so that she wouldn't take the car on the day I had planned to work on it, and the younger daughter because I thought she'd appreciate the finished product. The younger one did me one better and asked me if she could help!

I was VERY pleasantly surprised when she expressed interest in this project, and immediately said that she could help. I also told her that it would be a full-day job, so she knew what she was in for. She didn't care.

The reason I said full-day is because my research indicated that I'd have to do a rip and replace, because this was not your run-of-the-mill upgrade. I found out that I'd have to run all new wires, and run an antenna cable from the trunk to the dash. You see, this car came with the "premium" sound system, which was a JBL receiver with no built-in amplifier, so the amplifier was in the trunk, and all cables ran from the amplifier to the speakers, and the antenna wire ran from the rear window to the amplifier. This required pulling the back seat, and lifting carpet to run the wire, and pulling door panels to install the front speakers. I had done the rear speakers a couple of days earlier.

Like I said, I told the kid in advance, and she was in. Not only did she SAY that she'd help the whole, she DID it! The process took about five hours, and she actively helped me every step along the way. She stayed focused, and asked intelligent questions along the way. It was a wonderful way to spend the day with my little girl.

Oh, by the way, the new system cost less than $200, and is light-years above the old setup.

I bought XPress brand 6x9 3-way 700W speakers for the rear deck. ($25)
The front speakers are Boss Audio Chaos Extreme 3 5x7 3-way 300W. (18)
The deck is a Sony Xplod CDX-GT40UW. ($80)
Various adapters and wiring cost about $40

Like I said, I don't need something that will make the windows rattle. I simply wanted better sound than I had, plus the old deck was a cassette deck, and I wanted to play CDs and our various MP3 players. One nice feature about the Sony deck, is that it comes with a remote control. Initially, I thought "why?" But then I realized that I could let the kids change channels and so forth from the back seat on long trips.

So yeah, it was a really good day. The stereo install was a good way to kill an afternoon, but the fact that my kid hung out and helped dad -- and she REALLY did help -- made for a memorable day.