What should you do with your old car radio?

This is an interesting question we hardly take the time to think about here at Iceboxauto, we're always so focused on installing the newest, latest and greatest in-car entertainment systems into your car, we rarely get the chance to think about what happens to your old car radio.

We're usually under the assumption that after your new system has been installed the old one sits on a shelf somewhere, or is lashed on eBay for someone else to have. These assumptions are correct for the most part, but what if you were to recycle the radio, how would you do it, and where would you go?

In the current world of single-use items, increased diversity of parts, and the right to repair under attack, it's sometimes difficult to figure out exactly what to do with an item that's beyond re-use, but not broken. How many of us have old phones sitting in the bottom drawer? How many of us have boxes stashed away filled to the brim with old VGA Cables, HDMI Leads, and old iPhone Chargers?

I have an old PSU, GPU and Cables from my most recent PC upgrade sat on a shelf gathering dust, in reality, I should scrap these items, but I almost have some sort of attachment to them, due to their previous (over) use, and the mindset of keeping everything I've ever used, every manual I've read, every box an item has come in. I'm not the first and I won't be the last.

This blog post is a little about how you can get rid of your old car radio if you're not wanting to keep it in storage or sell it to someone else.

You can go down several routes to recycle the system, some more conventional than others, and some requiring a bit more skill.

You could send it off to a pawn shop for cash-in-hand or you could open it up, dissect the radio and sell off the parts inside separately, as items for others to fix their systems with, if they're not looking for a full replacement on a system you can sell specific parts to people looking for them. For example, someone could be after a new screen for their old single-din radio. You can also get Gold, Aluminium out of these systems, which inherently have value, especially with the current squeeze on natural resources this is a legitimate way to get some money back.

Some systems with things like CD trays, USB Slots, and SIM Readers, are also more valuable, these can be repurposed for other things, as the plates used to mount them, can be mounted elsewhere if needed. Parts such as Fans, anything to do with the hydraulic motion of parts, and buttons are also useful to keep hold of if you were to dismantle the radio, as they can be sold to people looking for replacement pieces. These items are not likely to fly off your eBay or Facebook Marketplace pages, but they will eventually move as it's likely that someone will want them eventually.

One amazing thing we found recently is someone who has turned their old car radio into a fully functional Home Audio System, with speakers attached at the sides, the whole car stereo has been turned into a regular stereo, now obviously this is on the extreme side of the re-use, reduce, recycle spectrum, but you get the point, you can use these systems for a lot more than what they were intended for. This is an example of someone finding a correlation between the intended use, and the utility of the items they have available.

If you're going to sell on your old system we recommend having a look at the asking price for the system new, judging its condition and listing it somewhere, or alternatively if you want a quick return you can go directly to a pawn shop and get cash-in-hand, assuming the system still works.