No longer that time of year

A couple of you, without prompting, recalled that I might have to disconnect my battery to fix my car radio time, what with this being Daylight Savings Time in California. Thanks for remembering the saga!

Soon after correcting my car radio clock last Fall, my car wouldn't start. Turned out I needed a new alternator, and so I replaced that. Oh, man, that was nuts. I couldn't figure out how to get the alternator out of the small opening on the top in the engine area (see D) so I tried pushing the alternator toward the ground. Great, I got it stuck down there on top of the muffler, wedged against essential tubing. (See A. And B and C serve to show just how low that part was, how close to the ground, yet blocked from removal out the bottom.) The muffler bolts were completely rusted, so I HAD to find a way to get the alternator out the top. It took a lot of wriggling, twisting, pushing to find a way to get that bulky thing out the small gap at the top, near where the alternator is normally mounted. D shows the new (smaller) alternator in place.

For relevance to the original story, note that replacing the alternator meant I had to disconnect my battery which meant I needed to find a noontime when I could disconnect it again to reset my car radio clock.

Soon after replacing my alternator, the car died again. Turned out the battery couldn't hold a charge anymore. Great. So I replaced the battery, which meant I needed to find yet another noontime when I could disconnect it again to reset my car radio clock (everyone, sing the ending "I don't know why she swallowed a fly--perhaps she'll die" and let's move on to the next verse).

In the same period, I'd yanked out Mom's car radio because all that worked was the cassette player. I found a factory 1992 radio on eBay (matching her car) and it turned out it was busted (couldn't get a cassette back out of it and mailed it back with the cassette tape). Bought a 2008 radio and connected it and could get no sound. Dug into wiring diagrams, got out the voltmeter, no luck. Tried a test familiar to speaker technicians: touch wires from a battery to the speaker wires to get a scratchy sound...and got no sound. Could all speakers really be shot? Then I thought to try the battery test on my car's speakers. The test worked on my speakers. I bought a radio wire harness from BestBuy and hooked it up and heard a car radio in my car for the first time in, what, 6 years?

I set the time correctly on the radio via the radio buttons--without disconnecting the battery--wow, what a thought. Coincidentally, it was just a few minutes before midnight.

But I had hooked up the radio in haste; I didn't have the necessary mounting gear to fit it properly in the different-sized hole in the dash. While the radio played, I shoved the radio further into the dash. I heard a fzzt sound over the speakers. Some kind of wiring issue. Made me nervous. Disconnected the radio so I could think about it.

Drat, now the clock was off again.

I bought the necessary mounting hardware on eBay, got the radio all wired up properly and got the radio in place. I set time.

"Now what?" My dash lights behind my speedometer went out. I checked the fuses and found one was fried. I checked the fuse for the radio; it was fine.

Darn it, unplugging the radio fuse reset the clock.

I've become quite adept at setting the new car radio's clock. I can set it in under 3 minutes in the comfort of the car interior, while enjoying the sound of the radio.

And so ends an era of touching stories about battery cables and Daylight Savings Time and my car radio clock.

The dash lights are still out.