radio head unit hacking; exhaust center section.

[Kevin Hart]

On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 3:54 PM, Matt Hunt <mhunt at ecin.net> wrote:
> davidpertuz at mindspring.com wrote:
>> Have any one of y'all hacked an OE radio to provide an AUX input
>> jack? I don't know what the workings of those radio are like, but it
>> seems pretty reasonable that there is some sort of signal input line
>> or circuit that you could splice a line into, then run it out the
>> back of the casing and out to the console somewhere. I've to a spare
>> '91 radio to practice on if I can find it.
>
> Check out Make: at http://makezine.com. I did a quick search on "aux
> input car stereo" and there are a bunch of hits. You could poke through
> some of those projects and see (in detail) how people went about hacking
> their car radios. It's a great geeky site for lots of other DIY projects
> as well.
>
> matt


One other thing to look at is the various 'cd changer' style aux in's.
 Most classic head units had the option for the cd player on them, the
one that went down instead of the pocket.  What you do is tap that
plug.  Its a big din style plug.  The secret with it, is you have to
supply 12v in, to make it think the cd player is there, before it will
let audio in to it.  But that will do the trick most of the time.

Second option is to use a fm transmitter that plugs in to the antenna
plug in the head unit.  You get really crisp sound that way, better
than the cig lighter models.  but still has all the issues that most
all fm transmitters have.

Third is if the tape deck still works, just use a tape adapter.  they
will sound the best of 'non hacking' type of inputs of above.  They
can be found for cheap and work quite well, until the tape deck
dies...like on my Altima.

Last....just buy a new head unit with a 3.5mm in jack.  Or better yet,
ipod input with controls or the such.  You can find most head units
these days with 3.5mm jacks, and under 200 dollars.

-Kevin