Anyone who’s been to Best Buy, Walmart, and (depending on where you live) Fry’s Electronics knows all about the Bag Nazi. For those of you who don’t, the Bag Nazi is the person who stops you on your way out of the store to have a look at your receipt and dig through your bag to sure you haven’t stolen anything.
As a customer of these establishments, this really pisses me off. There are at least two dozen stores that sell electronics in my area. Knowing this, Best Buy chooses to reward me for doing business with them by having a loss prevention employee harass me for a receipt as I’m walking out of the store. This would be perfectly acceptable if I was spotted opening boxes and stuffing their contents into my pockets — but I’ve never done this. At Best Buy, I walk in, take what I need, and walk straight to the check-out area. I pay, take my item, and head for the door. Regardless, Best Buy’s loss prevention people still ask to see my receipt every time I’m trying to leave the store.
Until a few months ago, I had no problem showing my receipt, and leaving the Bag Nazi with an antecdote (“didn’t steal anything today”, etc.) on my way out. This was all perfectly acceptable until one day there was a lengthy line of at least 15 people waiting to have their receipts checked.
At that point, I decided that I had better things to do with my time, and that I would not be waiting in line just to have some guy glance at my receipt and mark it with his highlighter. This was something I’d never done before, so I made a plan while I waited for my turn to pay for my purchase. I would maneuver around the line at a regular walking pace, step out of the store, and walk directly to my car. A clean getaway.
And that’s exactly what I did. So, what happened? Did the Bag Nazi stop what he was doing so that he could chase me through the parking lot? Was the police called? Did Best Buy release the Geek Squad so that they could run me down with their black and white Beetles?
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Upgrading the stock radio in the Crown Victoria is pretty simple — but parts of the process are also needlessly complicated. I started out with the basic AM/FM unit which is, well, just a bit too basic:
Removing the radio is a simple affair. There are two ways to go about it — you can either take apart some coat hangers and bend them so that they fit into the holes into the front of your radio (I like to call this the crackhead method) or you can spend $5 on Ford Radio Removal Tools on eBay. I went with the latter option. You simply have to stick the removal tool in until you hear it click, and then pull both tools away from the radio, while pulling it out of the dash, as shown here:
Once the radio is out of the dashboard, you simply need to disconnect the two cables that connect the speakers, power, and antenna. The thick black cable connects the radio to the antenna, and the large connector connects the speakers and power:
This is where it gets tricky if you have a 2003+ P71 Police Interceptor, or any other fleet model. I decided to upgrade this to a stock Ford radio that was pulled out of a 2004 Mercury Marauder, which contains the almost exactly the same electronics as the Crown Victoria. This is what the radio looks like:
I did some research and learned that the Marauder radio should work in the 2006 Crown Victoria as long as both of the vehicles use “Phase II” connectors for the speakers and power. Every site I read stated that all 2003+ Crown Victoria / Marauder / Grand Marquis models are set up with Phase II wiring harnesses. What these sites missed, unfortunately, is that all Police Interceptor and fleet (taxi/limo) models are not equipped with the Phase II wiring harness. They are, in fact, equipped with the older “World Plug” system. This makes the installation much more difficult, as you are left with two choices:
1. Cut the old wires and install a new harness. You will have to solder the new harness into place.
2. Make a World Plug to Phase II converter cable, and plug everything in without cutting any of the original wires.
I went with the latter option. A local car stereo shop (they sell online as well, at http://www.installer.com) was able to make the converter cable for me for about $35, soldering and all. This allowed me to simply convert the car’s harness from the World Plug system to the Phase II system. Once that was done, I was able to get power to the new radio without any problems.
There is only one issue you should look out for once you’ve made these changes. If you end up going with the converter cable, it will add at least 5″ of wire to the existing wiring harness. This is not good since the radio I installed took up the entire radio bay inside the dash. I had to spend a lot of time getting the radio to fit in just right — this will take you at least 30 minutes before you get it just right.
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