Is it really worth it? If a technician spends a couple of hours tinkering with your radio, it's going to cost you. There's no shortage of cheap car stereos with reasonable sound, and you can probably pick up a new aftermarket radio for what yours will cost to have fixed, and which will sound better than yours did new.

If you had an expensive head unit it might be worth it, but why bother rebuilding a stock volvo radio?

The sad reality with electronic components is that a technician in Houston has to eat, pay rent on his premises, pay off his equipment etc. Which means that for him to replace or resolder a 10c potentiometer in your radio, he's gotta charge you a fair bit just to get by and continue providing the service.

Now the cheap car stereo that you could buy down the street is assembled in a factory in Malaysia, where they churn out a couple of thousand of the things every hour and pay their workers next to nothing. They can keep their margins tight, and still make a buck through the sheer scale of the operation. This means that except in the case of high end equipment, it just isn't worth repairing this kind of stuff.

I can pick up a CD player for my car under $100 australian ('bout $70US). When my radio dies, I won't bother fixing it, I'll just keep the consumer economy going.

Sad really, there used to be apliance repair stores everywhere, now they're disappearing. One less trade for the next generation.
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Drive it like you hate it