Hello all,
just like a lot of members here, I am using my ipod in my car with a cassette adapter on the 4th gen double din radio..
now I have no issues with it but the sound is not evenly distributed( vocals only come out of the passenger side)..
now, I want to do the radio mod so I can use the AUX mode on with my ipod..

but I need to know what to get ( wires).. or can I just use and exiting RCA to Earphone wire and splice that one up?

I ran a search and so far, the only thread I can find has this link, but nothing in the link talks about the aux mode mod

http://forums.maxima.org/showthread.php?p=4083400

then I found this one
http://forums.maxima.org/showthread....light=aux+mode
but still doesn't explain to me do some wires simply jump a connection and which wire is connected to the earphone jack.. etc...


if anyone can find me detailled pics( of parts needed) and procedure how to do this mod( pictures will would help), it will be very appreciated..

Thank you all
KL

found what I was looking for

or, you could've gotten an aftermarket hu and had the face actually display the song and artist like my pioneer does, buuuut if your on a budget and you have a rocket science degree.......

something tells me if you have a degree in rocket science you're probably not worrying about a budget too much lol

lol, shut up you.......

nah, I want to keep the OEM look going on in my car.. thieves don't like 90's OEM radio..
and it's not rocket science.. after reading thru all the pages, I put what I see and logic together to "mentally" visuallize how it's done and then I found this link : http://ryft.org/index.php?title=1995...Bose_HU_AUX_in which confirms what I was visuallizing from the early posts and broken links and trying to make sense out of it on how the job would be done was right

that link was actually one of the last posts on the last page in one of those threads.. lol

Digitized, what year is your Maxima? The pic of the Bose stereo in Wiki looks like it's a 96-96 unit.

I wonder if the process is the same for a 99 Bose unit?

^^^ I got a 95-96 and a 97-99 unit..
so while I work on 1 of them, at least I can still listen to some tunes in the car in case I don't finish it right away lol

So the AUX Bose hack is nearly impossible for me (or most of us) to do easily. The prev owner of my car has Sirius satellite radio installed but kept their unit and left the antenna and wiring up through the vents. I was considering getting a Sirius unit but the decided that it would be a waste of money for me since i'd much rather listen to my MP3 Player or my favorite local radio station. Well to get to the point here, in my research I came across these two products that look like they might provide a solution to our desire to play an MP3 Player on stock stereo systems with crisp clear sound.

#1) http://www.amazon.com/Sirius-FMDA25-...=cm_cr_pr_pb_t

#2) http://cgi.ebay.com/Delphi-SA10112-S...QQcmdZViewItem


The Sirius one looks like it might just plug into a regular headphone jack but the Delphi/XM unit appears to have a specialized plug.

The way these units seem to work (or at least the sirius one which i researched the most) is it plugs into the satellite radio head unit then runs directly into your antenna-in port on the back of your radio but also has a separate splitter to connect your regular antenna to so you can still listen to the radio. When the Sirius head huit is powered on the adapter cancels out the FM reception from your antenna and plays your music without FM interference through your antenna input.

My question is... does anybody have one of these installed that they have tested, or could test with a regular MP3 Player?

Uneven sound distribution with a cassette adapter might just be a bad adapter. I was using an old adapter with my Sirius S2, and noticed the sound was mostly coming from only one channel. Replacing the adapter with a new one solved the problem.

So I'm continuing to look into my above scenario and it looks like you might need some type of FM transmitting device to use in tandem with your MP3 player, but I am not certain that there are any that have an FM Out jack to plug the above device into. Any search I have run with FM Out brings up satellite radio head units.... damn, the search continues...

What about using an FM modulator? My dad used one in his 06 GTO because he had a Blaupunkt system and couldnt add in anything easily.... With his he had a weird antenna hook up so we had to splice up the antenna cable, but all very straight forward and it works very well.


http://www.crutchfield.com/S-ba04CIv...x?i=142FMMOD01

this might be exactly what i'm searching for. Was there any interference or loss of audio quality with it?

No, the sound quality has been really good, basically it has an on off switch... and when you want to use it you just turn it on and it tunes to a specific radio station that it sends directly into the antenna. Its very clear sound and very easy to install.

http://ryft.org/index.php?title=1995...Bose_HU_AUX_in

I wrote that up after running into the same issue with the walkthrough above.

The pictures are lacking as I forgot to take em while it was all apart, but you should get the idea how to do it.

TBH this is the best mod I've done, I use the aux in prettymuch every day...

If you need more info, lemme know.

that looks sweet, but there is no way I would be able to do it, that's why I am looking for an alternative.

some1 help this man..

It's really not all that hard, tbh.

If you have a soldering iron, all you need is a 1/8th" plug, and and a switch. You don't need to install it in the faceplate, you can route the switch out and leave it hanging - inside the flip open thingy in the console or just out the bottom of the console.

Looking at the pin out diagram, couldnt this be done simply by connecting your wires to the pins of the cd changer plug?

that's the link I am using, but one question, what is the magic pin #5??
there is no description why a wire was soldered to this location??

I installed an iCruze iPod interface kit from MonsterCable and keep the factory HU. It goes it thru the CD Changer connection. So I ripped out the CD Changer and sold it.

http://www.monstercable.com/icruze/s...fo_icruze1.asp

Many places were dumping these a while back so I got it done cheap.

The magic pin is the one that, when shorted to ground (or AUX), turns the aux mode on. I'm not sure why it works with two differnt things, but it does, you can use either, I used both.

The picture acctually says The magic pin[b],[b\] 5 to the right. Thats the only pin that can't be accessed from the back of the radio where the cd changer plug is. There is no reason why everything couldn't be soldered to the back, other than the switch pin.

And, tbh, there is a way of doing it without switching it to aux, just make an audio cd of nothing - as in, open a recoding program like audacity, record nothing for a few minutes, burn as an audio cd and pop it in, the playing from your ipod or whatever else will play through.

The way it works, if the ipod is playing when you have the radio on, or the cd player running, you'll be able to hear it in the background, so to keep the radio on, and not playing anything else, you either need to use an audio cd of nothing, or the aux mode. Aux mode is cleaner, but not vital.

so the wire coming from the magic pin, I can tap it to either the "grnd" or "aux" it it should work?( meanwhile still soldering the ground to 1 end of the switch and the "aux" to the other end of the switch?

No.

The switch should have the magic pin on one side, and either the AUX, GND, or both on the other side. I'm not sure why it works with GND aswell.

TBH, the pic wit hthe yellow wires isn't my own, thats from the original how-to, I just borrowed it, because I forgot to take a picture while I was doing it.

There really is no point in taking the magic pin to gnd, just take it to aux. The original how-to didn't have much direction so I ended up taking it to GND and AUX. At first I misinterpreted it, and thought the aux should be taken to gnd, but it didn;t work, so I tried out the other pin, which was unlabeled in the original pic (I labeled it).

I suppose I need to fix my how-to, I didn't even realize that I left out the specifics of what goes to what.


Simple way: wire the magic pin to one half of an on/off switch (not a momentary switch), wire the other half to the aux pin. Wire up to a 1/8" jack (cannibalize some airplane headphones, or get one from radioshack).


1. Sleeve: ground.
2. Ring: Right-hand channel for stereo signals.
3. Tip: Left-hand channel for stereo signal.
(pay no attention to the lower half of the picture)

Reassemble the radio, put it in your car (not all the way, until you figure out if it works!) - flip the switch, play the music. General satisfaction ensues

I've yet to hear an aftermarket hu that had the sound quality of the bose, for my opinion/taste anyways. (Even the 5.5 gen bose < 4th gen) And you can post up links to all of them, chances are I've worked on a car that had it.

Not to mention that installing an aftermarket system is a serious pita when you have the bose system already there.

hence why I want to do this mod..
it looks clean, oem, no after market radio to get stolen...
also, I'm past the ICE/AUDIO stage.. my system still works and good enough for me.. so why not spend a little time and a few bucks to do this mod..

ah, now I get it... thank you very much for the instructions..
I will attempt this mod asap..
I will keep you guys posted to see if I am successful

thanks again!
kL