Contributed by Jim Turk
So there it was. April 1. Staring right at me and my Boxster’s CDR23 radio.
But, no foolin’, the radio was, ummm, as I guess the Germans would say, “kaput”. The dealer, I’m sure would agree with that and then add a few zeros to replace it.
What happened? Truthfully, I have no idea.
I seldom use the radio, not that I don’t like music while I’m driving, but mainly because I can’t hear it over the wind noise when I have the top down. And, IMHO, the only way to drive a convertible is with the top and windows down. So the darn thing could have become kaput months or even years ago.
A few quick Google searches and I confirmed that, in fact, when the radio cycles on and off without it being turned on, won’t play a radio station – AM or FM, and the CD player keeps trying to read that non-existent CD, it is officially kaput. Dead. Non-functional.
I had considered upgrading the radio last year, but with the pandemic and so few miles being driven, it was sort of a why bother situation.
Now I have to decide. Should I replace the radio, and get something that is a bit more modern? Or should I just suck it up and listen to 60’s On Six from my phone when I’m in the car? If I can even hear that tiny little phone speaker over the road and wind noise.
Seems like a kaput radio would be a negative selling point. And since I will most likely be selling the Green Pleasure Machine in the future, maybe an upgraded radio with Bluetooth would help close the deal?
I don’t know.
As one of my ex-bosses said, “Jim, you have a wide band of indifference.” And this is one of those situations where my band of indifference approximates the width of the Milky Way. As I said earlier, I don’t listen to the radio that much.
I can rock and roll with most situations, but sometimes, just sometimes, I get fixated on something and I can’t let it go until it is almost perfect.
This is probably one of those situations. Make it better if not perfect.
As most of you know, I do not wrench on my cars. I worked long and hard to be able to afford to NOT have bunged up knuckles, and grease on my clothes. Long ago I owned a Ford Cortina and every time I fixed something, I broke something else. Lesson learned.
Once I read the seemingly endless number of posts about replacing a 986/996 radio, I had to fall back on the no knuckling credo. Best leave this job to the professionals.
How should I know if my “head end” (always thought that was the pointy part) connects to the speakers via fiber optic cable? I’m sure as heck not going to pull the radio out to find out, even if I could identify the connection medium. And why is it called a “head end”? No idea. To me, a “head end” is what Comcast uses to refresh a cable box, which usually ends up removing that one network I really wanted to watch.
From what I’ve learned:
- It appears that Porsche original equipment radios just die. No one seems to care to share why they do that, but they do. Maybe the Germans are good at mechanical engineering, but not so great at electronics?
- Porsche used a different radio setup in the Boxster beginning in 2003, my model year. This change seems to have complicated the replacement process. I don’t know what changed, but 2003 appears as a standalone year on many of the sites I searched. Something unique about the Boxster radio for that model year. Some gumshoe should do some work to figure out what changed, and maybe more importantly, why.
- Newer replacement radios offer many connectivity options that were in their infancy back in ’03. Now this is a good news – bad news situation, IMHO. Too many options to sift through. Again, my band of indifference is a wide moat. Do I really need a CD/DVD player? Bluetooth? USB? Notably, psychic connectivity seems to not be supported. Give it a few years.
- It’s gonna cost a bunch of bucks to replace that radio. This is true.
Eventually, I decided to replace the radio with a newer and more technologically advanced one.
I got a Pioneer AVH-221 receiver which includes a DVD/CD player (installer reminded me that watching DVDs while driving is verboten and can result in a big fine), Bluetooth connectivity so I can listen to music contained on the phone as well as internet streaming providers, and a backup camera which will be a nice addition.
Now my Boxster has some electronics that vaults it into the 21st century.
Was it worth it? Hmmm…. I guess so. Certainly the backup camera was worth the extra money that it cost. And it is nice to have music when I am idling along stuck in traffic.
I just hope that this radio will not become, as the Japanese say (and I hope that I am using this correctly in the given context) Kowarete imasu, or, as the Germans say, kaput.
Only time will tell.