Yahoo News Editor's Letter: I Once Shocked Myself Trying to Fix a Light Switch
From the November/December issue of Car and Driver.
When you're bad at addressing electrical problems, you have to admire people who can restore the flow of electrons without hurting themselves. Perhaps you're wondering why I didn't disconnect the power to the light switch. Fair question, but the fact that you're asking only drives home my point. I am water, and electricity is, well, electricity.
Contributor Brett Berk recently wrote about a business that restores the cathode-ray-tube touchscreen for Buick Reatta owners. Yes, they're out there, and they have needs. I'd love a Reatta convertible, but that's not what this letter is about. I'm fascinated by the people who care enough and know how to undo obsolescence.
When something fails, more often than not, you're stuck removing and replacing more than what's actually faulty. When the touchscreen in your Buick Envista goes dead, don't bother with a diagnosis. Just pull it and put in a new one. Even I can remove and replace things, but it's not the same as a repair. The problem gets solved, but nothing really gets fixed.
Remove and replace works well when shiny new parts are plentiful, but what happens when your car has been out of production for decades? That's when you start searching for a flame keeper. Unfortunately, flame keepers tend to hide in dark corners of the internet on websites that only AltaVista users can find. These dedicated few build their businesses around being the only people with the knowledge and skills to make something very broken and forgotten about useful again. Come across the right one, and you'll kiss the web address at the top of your browser. Gratitude can only begin to describe the feeling.
When the 34-year-old radio in my BMW 325i convertible started crackling through the right tweeter, I unplugged the tweeter, hoping that would stop the reactor from melting down. But the crackle spread, the rear speakers went offline, and then, a few months later, the radio went full Chernobyl.
"But Tony, that inline-six sounds terrific."
Sure, but I can't sing along to it or use it to listen to my high-school-era collection of cassettes, nor can it play (with the help of a Bluetooth tape adapter) the Into Cars and New Heights podcasts. I really didn't want to go to electronics retailer Crutchfield for an aftermarket stereo without a fight. I'd rather keep the car as original as possible for as long as possible. Some internet sleuthing uncovered that Alpine made my 325i's radio. Used units selling as parts on eBay revealed it to be the Alpine CM5908. I typed that make and model into Google, and boom—I found Brad Nicholas at OEM HiFi.
Nicholas's company specializes in the Alpine radios that BMW installed in its lineup in the '80s and early '90s. Nicholas, an E30 owner himself, has refurbished more than 120 CM5908 radios and offers a built-in Bluetooth kit that replaces the tape player. He suggested the trunk-mounted amplifier might need work too. I didn't know my car had an amplifier.
Now I just need to pull the amp out of the trunk, carefully disconnect the head unit, not shock myself, and send off the parts. My BMW will be going up on Bring a Trailer soon, and thanks to this keeper of the flame, it will have a song to go with its dance.
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