The above pictures are the most recent, taken in late 2003. She's still holding up pretty well for 112k miles. Nowadays, I mostly keep the Ninety Eight in the garage. I've been working on a new stereo system, but trying not to turn this car into a ghetto cruiser. Everything is in such great shape, I feel bad about changing any of it. Here's what I've done so far:

When I first bought the car, it had a cheap tape deck installed running two 6x9"s in the rear (not stock). I immediately replaced the tape deck with the original AM/FM radio that I found lying in the trunk. The radio worked, but it didn't sound good to begin with, so I had to find a way to put a stereo in the car without altering too much.

The ashtray has a flip-down door that opens when you push the button above it. Since I don't smoke in the car, I decided to mount a Clarion Pro 6-disc CD changer/player under the seat and put the controller in the ashtray space. Here's a few pics of how I mounted the controller:

Basically, I trimmed the faceplate to fit, discarded the other parts, and then glued the circuit board to the ashtray at an angle using urathane foam supports. Then I just put the ashtray back in. A card remote lets me control the player.

The Olds has no stereo speaker openings, so I had to look hard for a way to mount a set of 6 1/2" separates in the kick-panel area. The speakers I chose were SAS Euphonic 6 1/2" mid/woofers and Kicker Impulse 1" aluminum-dome tweeters.

I removed the carpeted panel from the kick area and found a solid metal plate with 6 bolts around it. I removed the plate and discovered a chamber with insulation behind it - looks like a speaker enclosure if I ever saw one!

Only problem was, the plate was 1/8" thick steel (proof that they really did build these cars like tanks), so it took a while to cut out a hole to mount the speaker in, but it works as a very ridged speaker baffle. Picture at above right shows the plate after cutting the hole.

Below left image shows the mid/woofer and tweeter installed. I used epoxy and a foam block to mount the tweeter to the metal plate, pointing at an upward angle.

The final shot shows the carpeted panel reinstalled. I had to cut part of the panel away so the speakers would sound good. The next phase of the project is to fabricate custom grills to make the holes look nicer.

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