please im a noob and could use help or info

ok here it goes...

ok to begin im building a ported speaker box and i found a sound bar that i picked up super cheap, i pulled everything out of it and im going to use the speakers and the electronics... heres the thing it has a remote that i would like to use but im running into the problem of the ir receiver isnt long enough to mount in a drilled hole in the front of the box..... so im trying to figure out what i can do.

the problem is that where the circuit board mounts and the ir receiver is mounted there is about 4.5 inches of space to the front hole where i would have to figure out how to mount it, [ i was thinking hot glue gun and just glue it in the hole.

  so what can i do? can I cut the 3 pins on the ir receiver and use wire solder to extend them? or is the something that i can use in its place and solder the wires back to where the pins were?

please any kind of info would be very helpful im losing this battle 

thank you in advance