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On Friday Night I began a small project... properly integrate my iPOD with my 1999 93 Convertible. I live in the Bay Area, so RF transmitters don't have enough power to work (too much RF interference). And no after market kit existed, so I took my chances.
Step 1. Pull the CD changer out. (Don't bother opening it... nothing in there that helped much).
Step 2. Tap 4 wires (2, 3, 7, 8) those are -R +R -L +L. I cut those wires leading to the changer and spliced inline some 4-conductor telephone wire. (solder and tape well...)
Step 3. Hook the CD changer back up
Step 4. Run the 4 conductor wire under the trunk liner, through the firewall, under the back seat, under the carpe to the center console.
Step 5. Punch a 1/4" hole in the center console for the 1/8" stereo plug.
Step 6. Solder this plus onto the end of the 4-conductor wire.
BANG. It works.
Now - fine tuning it. Because this appears to be a really simple circuit (the impedence of the headphone out just overwhelmes the ouput from the CD Changer) you can STILL hear a very faint background of the CD player when the iPOD is playing. I got around this by making a 70 minute CD of silence, and just playing that in the background while I have the iPOD playing.
You still have the volume controls from the steering wheel, but the rest of the iPOD is manual.
I doubt this would work with the LINE-LEVEL outs on the doc connector... I think that the fact the pre-amp from the iPOD is just overwhelming the CD changers output is why this is working so fine.
I may go back and add power (so I can charge it at the same time)... but that's a Phase II project.
I am thrilled at how well this works. It took me about 4 hours... but mostly because I didn't have a plan. OH - by the way - the CD changer is really fussy - if you don't hook it back up entirely you'll get an 'error 50' message on the SID. In my case it was because I hadn't pushed the connector back on all the way. It's been 3 days and not a complaint. I couldn't have asked for a better integration - and the total cost was about $3.00 in parts (less if you have a good 1/8 plug laying around :-)
posted by 208.8.5...
, Sat, 10 Sep 2005 20:09:57
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