/dev/zero

Well, I got the Fix-A-Flat for the car (just in case), got the stuff I needed to wire up the stereo, and mounted the CB.

I don’t think I’ll be able to afford an actual spare wheel for the car. That makes me a little nervous. As long as I just get a puncture in the tread area, the Fix-A-Flat should take care of it, but if I get a blowout or a sidewall puncture, I’ll be screwed.

I went to Kragen to get the wire connectors, but they didn’t have enough of them. They had 1 pack left, and it only had 6 connectors. I needed 8.

I went to Radio Shack, but couldn’t find them. All I could find was one of those big sets of assorted connectors, and I didn’t want to spend $10 for connectos I don’t need, and it too didn’t have enough of the ones I do need. I spoke to the guy at the counter and he showed me where what I wanted was. Heh, Radio Shack has gotten organized. They weren’t on a shelf peg, but in a drawer. I just had to know which drawer to look in. I bought two packs of 5, which gave me just enough extra for any accidental mis-crimps.

I got home, crimped on all the connectos and hooked it up (it was much easier this time, since I was replacing a functioning stereo which uses the same color coding. Last time I had to do this I was replacing the stock BMW stereo which uses it’s own wire color scheme.)

Everything worked perfectly, so I stuck it in the mounting box and thought I was done. Only then, after it had locked in place, did I discover the rear speakers weren’t working. I went down to Lott’s Stereo (the fancy, high-end, custom install shop in Santa Cruz) to ask if I could borrow a couple of release tools to release my deck from the dash. That’s when I found out there should have been some in the box when I got it. I guess I didn’t see them and threw them out by accident. Luckily he was able to guesstimate which ones I needed and gave me a set that worked. Good thing they’re “throw away” tools, he let me keep them.

Got home, popped the stereo out, took me a while to figure out the problem was that the instructions had the wires for the rear speakers mis-labeled. All speaker wires with a black stripe on them were supposed to be the negative terminal, but in the rears, those were the positive. Once I figured that out, it was a simple matter of crimping new connectors on and I was back in business with all 4 speakers. And the CD player works.
Only problem is, this being a cheap stereo, I can hear interference from the CD player’s motor in the speaker system. Not much I can do about it.

So then I mounted the CB bracket to the dash, cut slits in the dash cover (the dash is cracked, so the previous owner had gotten a nice cloth cover) and put the cover back over it. Popped one of the un-used cut-outs from the front of the instrument panel where there’s a switch of some kind in another model of BMW, but my car isn’t equipped with it, and used that hole to run the power wire for the CB into the cluster. Crimped on a couple of splice connectors to splice into the stereo’s power, screwed the CB into the bracket, ran the antenna wire how I wanted it and I know have a nicely mounted CB.

I also got inside the hood and patched in a new T junction into the windshield sprayers and it’s spraying nicely out of both holes of both nozzles. They still need adjusting. The passeneger side is doing a nice job of wetting down the roof of the car.

Cleaned out the car and took her for a little drive to recharge the battery, since I’d had both the stereo and CB going while making hook-ups to test things. Now that I have the nice 4 foot antenea on top, I can actually pick up a little traffic. I drove her up to De La Veaga golf course to get better elevation and I caught somebody up in Humboldt talking to someone in Portland. I couldn’t quite hear the guy in Portland, but the guy in Humboldt was coming in loud and clear. I have some confidence now that I’ll be able to hear trucks and so on out on the road when I hit those flat lands on this trip.

Still To-Do:

1. Get Hulda’s truck so I can get my stuff up to SF for shipping.
2. Get my stuff up to SF for shipping.
3. Get cats to vet.
4. Load up car.
5. Call siblings.
6. Email Pamela in Texas, let her know new itinerary.
7. Call parents, let them know new itinerary.
8. Call a few friends, say goodbye.
9. Hit the road.