What an adventure replacing the speakers in the IROC turned out to be. I ended up shooting so much video from it that I felt it was best to cut it into 3 parts just to make them consumable.
With it being December and cold, I decided on a whim to buy new speakers for the car. It had the originals in it. They were old, tired and I would be much happier cruising if I had good tunes. So I bought a matching set of 3-way Pioneer speakers in the appropriate sizes for the car. I intended on keeping the OEM Delco stereo, with cassette tape. Pure 80’s awesomeness.
I had been avoiding doing anything at home for some unknown reason. I had so much to do to prepare for the holidays. For the sake of doing something I went to work on the car. Little did I know it would be a black hole, literally and figuratively.
I figured replacing the rear speakers – which are easy to get to and easy to remove would be a good task to get my productive juices flowing. So I went to it. I replaced the drivers side, which went beautifully. Then I went to work on the passengers side, where the best words I have to use come from Star Trek: The Next Generation, “shaka, the walls fell.”
The passenger side speaker would not work. Was it the 30+ year old wiring? This car is completely factory and completely unaltered. So I connected another set of speaker cables to the factory speaker cable as a jumper – still no dice. That only really eliminated the factory style connector however.
I called Crutchfield to get a replacement, but I was faced with a quandary. This model of speaker was on back order. I wouldn’t receive replacements until February. What do I do? Mechanically the speaker was still sound. None of the electrical connections had broken, the glue holding this stem in simply hadn’t held. I decided to get some superglue and fix the problem on my own. That still didn’t solve the issue at hand.
So off to the forums and internet groups I went. I’m sure someone else had faced a similar issue at some point, right? I then found some information that told me that it was common for certain components on these stereos to simply quit working over time. I was sold on the collective voices I read on the subject. I didn’t want to buy a new stereo however, I wanted the one I have. This level of electronics is something my grandfather was an expert on, but it’s greek to me.
The hunt was on, and while searching eBay, I came upon a listing for a stereo EXACTLY like mine that had been refurbished by someone with an AUX port added. Wow, how awesome I thought. I bought it without a second thought. At least I’ll know if it’s the stereo or the wiring after I get this, right?
When I received it – I almost immediately installed it and was instantly floored by the difference. Those dead speakers began working again. I was now mixed – do I continue installing these new ones or do I put the OEM ones back?
I went with the former. The last step was installing the front ones. They turned out to be just as frustrating as the rears. The dash (an item that people scour the country for) had never been removed before. Knowing my luck I would damage or destroy it.
Immediately after I removed the dash, I leaned it against my garage door. It’s not exactly flat or square. Big mistake on my part. Within a minute it fell, my heart sank. So I picked it up and brought it up to my living room where I took this photo. It sat here until I cleaned it and installed it back in the car.
These new speakers required a trim plate to be attached to them in order to be installed on the car. The OEM speakers have a thick metal plate that they are attached to the car with. These trim plates were finicky at best. I might have to remove the dash again to adjust and / or resolve any rattling issues that could happen from the operation of the car.
The sound coming from the stereo is now similar if not the same as I remember it being as a child. I’m extremely happy, the nostalgia is really hitting me hard these days.
These speakers can handle up to 400w of peak power, and since factory stereo systems are notoriously under powered I am considering adding a discrete amplifier to the system. After doing some searching, I found one that seems perfect. The Sony XM-S400D meets my criteria perfectly. It doesn’t require a thick power supply cable be ran to the battery, has a very small footprint (about the size of a brick) and will make the quality of the sound coming from these new speakers better.
I’ve got to stop myself on this however, as I’ve already spent over $1000 in the last month on parts alone. Little did I know that I would be installing a complete stereo system.