How to (not) Install a Car Stereo

I just spent four days installing my car stereo.  Here is the great (awful) story:

I read a ton of Do it Yourself (DIY) guides online and talked to several of my friends and everyone said it was easy and took about an hour or so, so I thought I'd give it a go.  Here are pictures of the successes and mistakes which you can learn from and not go through the same ordeal.

I bought a Clarion CZ209 (which i love) on Amazon.com for about 100 bucks, 20 dollars cheaper than anywhere else.  That was my first mistake.  You can buy it from Crutchfield.com for 30 bucks more and it'll come with the stereo, the dashkit, wire harness, AND detailed instructions.  I had to spend a lot of extra time and money buying all that extra stuff.

My 2005 Toyota Corolla.  On Sunday, i start to try and replace the stock 6 cd changer.  First, while the parking brake is up, i shift to L so i have more room.  then i pop the hood and disconnect the negative battery terminal using a wrench.

i pull the plastic gear shift cover from the bottom and let it hang off the left side.  it comes off easily.

pull the A/C control knob off.  it comes off very easily.  unscrew the screw there.

put both your index fingers inside and pull the instrument panel hard outward to make it come out.

move it off to the side.

use the socket wrench w/ extension to get the four screws out.  one fell out cuz it was already loose.

none of my socket wrenches fit the screw!  i looked everywhere for the right size but found none.  that was sunday.  monday, i went to autozone and bought the right size (10mm) for about 4 bucks.

ok, got the four screws out. now pull the plastic that contains the stereo out.  this you gotta pull VERY hard. it helps to put in a flat blade screwdriver to disconnect the top part of it.

remove the A/C vents first, then pull out the stock stereo.

i bought a Metra brand dash kit and a PIE brand wiring harness.  gonna put the dash kit together.

i didn't realize there was a difference between DIN and ISO DIN and followed the directions for ISO DIN stereos and couldn't find the screws it said i needed. i looked everywhere!  i gave up and went to sleep.

tuesday, i decided to follow the much simpler DIN directions which didnt required screws on the side.  put new stereo inside.  voila! 

must connect all these colorful wires to the car wires through the wiring harness.  just follow directions that came with the wiring harness and stereo.

my friend said he just used electrical tape so i thought i'd do the same.  this was the biggest mistake i made.  i twisted the wires first...

then put electrical tape over it.  looks okay right?

connected all of them and came to this black wire, which is the grounding wire.  it's got this strange U shaped metal end.  i was tired so i thought F it, i'll just cut it off and connect it together like the others.  strangely this was one of my better decisions.

so after connecting all the wires i put the stereo in and reconnected the battery and turned on my car.  nothing.  i pulled out the stereo and saw that HALF THE ELECTRICAL TAPE CAME OFF AND WIRES DISCONNECTED.  i moved the stereo out a little more and it turned on.  but then i saw a spark and it turned off!  the wires had crossed and the stereo seemed dead.  OMFG, i thought.  i hope i didn't fry my car or my new stereo.  maybe i just need to make the wire connections stronger.

went to autozone and bought these crimp caps for 4 bucks.  made sure the caps were screwed on very tight.  i put the wires back in and the stereo didn't turn on.  also my car clock didn't turn on.  shiiiieeeet.

wednesday, described situation to a coworker and a friend and they said it might be a fuse.  there are fuses on the stereo wires and fuses in the car.  i have a Multimeter which measures current so i brought that to work and asked the physics teacher how to use it.  saw that the fuse on the stereo wires were still good.  that meant either a car fuse burnt out or the new stereo was dead.  i reinstalled my old stereo to see and that one didn't work either.  so it had to be the car fuse!  i had to get my car manual at my parents' place to find out how to get to my car's fuses.

thusrday, replacing the burnt fuse.  a fusebox under the steering wheel.  had to replace the middle blue 15 amp fuse.

another fusebox under the hood.  there's a fuse remover tool and a couple spare fuses.

as you can see, the top fuse which i took out from under the steering wheel is burnt out.  the bottom one is the new intact one.  the plastic thing is the fuse remover tool.  the manual gives directions.

replaced the fuse, put everything back in in reverse order and TADA!!  it works!  the USB connection goes to my glove compartment.  i will never have to burn another CD again because i could put all my music on a flash drive or even connect an ipod to the USB which charges it also.  sound quality is noticeably better.  i suffered three days of quiet car rides and now i have great music accompanying me on every trip.  ok i hope that helps people learn not to make the same mistakes i did.  i'm glad i did this cuz next time i install a newer better car stereo system it will only take me about 10 minutes.

YEAAAAH!)(*&)$#$)(*_*

Cash or Gold? It's Hammer Time!

If you could choose between five one hundred-dollar bills or five gold coins (totaling one ounce), which would you choose?

If you ask Warren Buffet, he would say take the dollars.  Gold just sits there and looks at you, he says.

Strangely, Buffet's father, Congressman Howard Buffet, warned:  "So far as I can discover, paper money systems have always wound up with collapse and economic chaos."

In other words, your paper dollars will soon become worthless.

A trillion dollar stimulus package here, a trillion dollar bailout there, a trillion dollar buyout of bad mortgage assets here.  We are seeing massive printing of paper money on a scale unprecedented throughout all of history.  Buffet thinks it's necessary -- he also receives a lot of that newly printed money.

So what does this do to your dollars?  The more dollars there are, the lower the value of each dollar.  If the dollar loses half its value, a $1 double cheeseburger at McDonalds will cost $2.  I bought gold back in September when it was about $750/ounce.  Now it's about $1000/ounce.

With trillions upon trillions being printed up to "save" our economy, price inflation, and likely hyperinflation will occur.  Gold will continue the long upward trend in price because the demand for gold will continue to increase while the value of the dollar decreases.

About two years ago we started seeing these advertisements on television with ever greater frequency:

In February of this year, this company spent big bucks to make a Superbowl ad (and probably didn't spend big bucks to get MC Hammer's endorsement).  Why has this company all of a sudden decided to horde gold?  Isn't it worthless, as Warren Buffet claims?  Maybe, just maybe, they think, with the Fed putting the printing presses on overdrive, it's better to hold gold than dollars.  Or maybe they're just a bunch of kooks who like shiny objects a whole lot.

Ben Bernanke said in 2007 that the housing crisis was "contained."  In November 2008, Nobel Laureate and prominent NYTimes columnist Paul Krugman suggested on NPR that the economy was close to bottoming out and that all these bailouts were going to save us from the recession.  The media simply parrots what these so-called economists trumpet, never questioning it.  Anyone that does must be a kook.

Here's a kook everyone laughed at:  Peter Schiff.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0QN-FYkpw. 
Watch as the establishment ridicules his pro-gold standard views and his prediction of a severe recession.  He has studied the same economics as I have recently: the Austrian school of economic thought.  The Austrian economists were the only ones that predicted with precision, clarity, and accuracy the bubble economy.  Only the Austrian economists have been consistently right and the establishment consistently wrong (even Krugman says he should have seen the bubble coming).

I am optimistic.  I believe the economy can recover by itself, and we need not panic and have the government do all sorts of shenanigans to rescue us -- like print and spend trillions.  It was reckless lending and spending that got us into this mess (fueled by the Federal Reserve), so more reckless lending and spending by the govt does not make sense.

I strongly recommend reading this great book to get a clear picture of the causes of our economic depression.

There are only two paths for us to take:  Get the government to try to rescue us, as the establishment favors (Buffet, Bernanke, Krugman, Obama, Bush et al), OR get the government out of the way, as the Austrians favor (Schiff, Ron Paul, et al).

Since I favor the less popular latter view, I could be considered a kook.  I don't expect you to believe a word I say here.  I only hope this will get you to think and come to a decision on your own.

So would you choose cash or gold?

My Proud Accomplishment

The GREAT thing about Obama

the fundamental problem. why your money is becoming worthless.

a house of dollars = a house of cards

if you look at my previous blog entries, you would see that i passionately espoused these views:

-we need universal healthcare
-wal-mart is evil
-unions do wonders for workers
-democracy is the solution
-the govt needs to protect us
-etc.

things are very different now.  i think a few of us are coming around to see the rarely spoken truth, although very slowly.  here's a conversation i had with my friend josh about what's going on in our world today:

mrbaek: man...
mrbaek: its like
mrbaek: talking about Jesus or something
Pizza D HUT 9: i think we have to look at what our founding fathers intended
mrbaek: empower the people
mrbaek: government works for the people
mrbaek: not the other way around
Pizza D HUT 9: they wanted us to believe in jesus as our God to be followed and worshipped and unquestioned
Pizza D HUT 9: but now we're doing that to people in our government
Pizza D HUT 9: people are worshipping obama and mccain
mrbaek: yea
mrbaek: at one point
mrbaek: i put obama up there with jesus almost
mrbaek: but then i had to check myself
mrbaek: hes just a man
Pizza D HUT 9: that's good to see youve realized the truth
Pizza D HUT 9: there is way too much deifying politicians nowadays
mrbaek: ironically
Pizza D HUT 9: even christians like us are going against what we're supposed to be practicing
mrbaek: cause we all know theyre crooked

it's kinda strange what happened in the past year.  let's just say i became enlightened.  at first i was afraid, uncomfortable, but finally i accepted the irrefutable truth with all its evidence. 

now that this financial crisis is finally rearing its ugly head, maybe some of us will start to see that Bernanke, Paulson, Bush, Obama, and McCain (and the mainstream media) have been wrong time and time again.  maybe we should stop listening to these politicians and start seeking the real truth.  even if that truth challenges the beliefs we've had our whole lives.  i know politics makes us all uncomfortable.  any belief system we emotionally invest in becomes personal.

what i will be writing in the next few months may be enlightening, it may be offensive, it may go against every single belief you've been taught (which was the case for me).  but i do this because i want people to know the truth, the truth that isn't taught at schools like UCLA.  i don't expect you to believe me just cuz i say it.  i just ask that you think about it.  the ideas will seem radical.  and to understand and possibly believe in them we must start believing in one thing first:

Politicians are not gods.

but this is how most people, including myself until recently, treat them.  i don't mind if you worship God, Jesus, the devil, etc.  but worshipping the people in government and believing they know all and need to be in control of all will make it near impossible for you to see the truth.  it is time we start questioning the people that have been repeatedly wrong, start looking critically at actual history and economics and see the truth.

maybe i'll start by exposing one popular myth:
the Federal Reserve, its FDIC and other regulatory powers, stabilizes our banking and monetary system.

here's the truth:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-466210540567002553&hl=en