re car stereo stolen in article c t qg ij rice edu xray is rice edu kenneth dwayne ray writes i had the front panel of my car stereo stolen this weekend i need to buy the front panel of a sony xr u car stereo i was my understanding that the purpose of those removeable front panels were to make the radio useless and thus discourage theft that is if the cover were removed by the owner and taken along whenever the car was left if those covers were sold for anything remarkably less than the radio originally costs or even sold at all then the above discouragement wouldn t be so great i personally would be unhappy if i bought a radio like that thinking that removing the cover greatly depreciated the radio s value and the covers were sold by the company or other legitimate source cheaply the front covers should be available from sony check with a local car stereo shop you will probably definitely have to provide the units serial number and hopefully you had registered the warranty card i don t know the cost but replacements have to be available to people who damage the face cover so it stands to reason that it can be replaced as to deterring theft when i worked for a stereo shop we referred the customer to a sony number we would not sell the face nor did we have them available most people who came in asking for the face cover or a pullout sleave for that matter would look very disheartened to find that they acquired a deck they couldn t use if theft occurs with these decks notify sony serial numbers do catch theives just a thought michael
