How to Install an iPod Dock To Your Car

Broadcast radio stinks. And that's a bummer if your commute is like mine. As I navigate two states, I pass plenty of hissing, buzzing power lines and a couple of Faraday-cage tunnels while listening to the same commercials over and over again. The interference, constant dropouts and yet more ads for hair-restoration products and male enhancement are enough to make you want to stick your fingers in your ears and hum. Unfortunately, my family car is old enough that the optional iPod dock wasn't an option. Man does not live solely on a steady diet of NPR, hip-hop and treacly pop music chosen by programmers at commercial radio stations. Thankfully, there's another option.


Have It Your Way
You can always go to the local car-stereo joint for a new, iPod-ready car stereo, or (gasp) the car dealer and have your relatively new car retrofitted. Bring lots of money, though. Here's how it worked out for our donor 2008 Volkswagen, for which a dealer-installed iPod/MP3 dock is available, sanctioned by VW (and consequently included in the factory warranty). The dock, when installed by a dealership technician before you take delivery of the vehicle, runs $199, or at least that's what this dealership was asking. Like most things associated with buying a new car, it's negotiable. Drive the car off the lot and return a few weeks or years later and the price--for the exact components installed by the same technician--magically jumps to $300. The factory warranty may or may not apply. A car-stereo shop would probably charge in the same vicinity as the dealer, around $300, including labor.
We knew our car was upgradable but had no interest in spending dealer prices. (And besides: We're Saturday Mechanics.) It turns out that there are many sources for player-connecting hardware. The Internet is your friend, so research what you need and what you can get thoroughly before whipping out the Visa. A good place for advice about your car is the enthusiast websites specific to your brand and model.
The cost of our parts from pac-audio.com: 20 bucks for the vehicle-specific wiring harness, and an additional $170 for the iPod/MP3/line-level input adapter. This black box gives you full transparency on the iPod--you can see the track information on the radio display and can control virtually all of the iPod functions from the dash- or steering-wheel-mounted radio controls. It also charges the iPod. This means you can leave the iPod buried in the glovebox or console more or less permanently but still have access to it for out-of-car excursions or for loading more songs. You can also plug in another non-iPod music source and play it through the radio by using the adapter's 3.5-mm line-level input. That includes HD radio adapters, satellite radio receivers or some non-iPod audio such as a generic MP3 player or even a DVD player or video game.
Or Maybe Not
Not all car stereo systems are upgradable. Older vehicles, ones that were manufactured before satellite radio, navigation systems and MP3 players, may very well not be set up for any auxiliary inputs at all. Your only option for many of these vehicles is to replace the entire stereo with an upgrade unit that has all the appropriate plugs on the back. How about one of those FM modulators? Nah, the audio quality is too poor for serious audiophiles, and there are too many wires in a cockpit already strung with cellphones and on-dash GPS.

Things to Watch For
Dismantling automotive instrument panels is not a task for impatient, hamfisted or uninvolved individuals. There's the chance your dash panel may sustain damage if you try to pry up something not meant to be pried up. No problem, you say: The service manual you cleverly purchased years ago will unlock all the secrets, allowing you to dismantle and remantle the trim in minutes.
Wrong. Most service manuals have little information on trim removal, which is just another obstacle for a real Saturday Mechanic to overcome. We did our due diligence and discovered that YouTube is a huge resource, with several videos detailing how to dig into the VW we were modifying. Similar videos are posted for most vehicles.
Another caveat: Be sure you have the reset code for your stereo. Many head-end units require that an antitheft code be entered into the radio anytime the power to it is interrupted. The code should have been supplied to you when you bought the car or when any aftermarket radio was installed. If you don't have this code, you'll need to get it from the dealer, who will probably try to get you to pay the minimum shop charge to have a mechanic enter it for you. Goodbye, $50. Keep the card with the code on it somewhere besides the glovebox. Thieves interested in boosting radios have learned to rifle this first. If they don't find the code, they won't bother with the radio. We suggest keeping a copy at home, not in the car.
The Easy Way Out
We needed to dismantle a lot of trim on this VW to pull the radio loose far enough to get to the cabling. You may be able to access these delicate underpinnings without such invasive surgery. If you're lucky and your car has no center console, a deep dive underneath the dash may uncover sufficient access. Alternatively, removing the glovebox door and/or the glovebox itself may give you access. Many glovebox doors are removed without any tools. Simply pinch the sides together and swing the door farther than normal. Then unhook it from the hinge. Surprise, the shop manual usually doesn't bother to detail how to do this.
The specifics of where to route wires on any given car are highly variable. But there are a few constants.
Don't route wires or cables over sharp edges of sheet metal or even plastic panels. Eventually, the insulation will wear, shorting out the wiring. A handful of grommets, cable ties and some kinky cable protectors costs only a few bucks.
Leave a couple of inches of slack near every hard point. Cars vibrate, and eventually a tightly pulled cable will break invisibly inside the insulation.
Keep wires away from any air conditioning/heating bellcranks or actuators; see above for why. Inadvertently cable-tying a cable to the HVAC pieces will cause erratic climate control and eventually make the cable fail.
The safest place to route cables is right next to existing cables, which should be obvious if you think about it.
You'll find No. 1 and No. 2 Phillips, assorted sizes of Torx fasteners, Allen heads and even the odd hex screw securing parts of the interior and dashboard. Trying to get by using the wrong style or size of tool is asking for big scratches on your fragile vinyl or leather interior. Don't ask how we know this.
Keep track of which fastener goes where. I use a piece of corrugated cardboard and screw the bolts into it in positions corresponding to the fastener. Sometimes it helps to draw a little diagram to keep them all straight. One common danger is installing a bolt or screw that is longer than the original and shorting out hidden wiring.
When you button everything up and verify that it's all working peachy, use some protectant and polish your fingerprints off the dashboard.

START

We started by removing some trim on top of the dash panel and then the trim ring around the radio.

Then we unscrewed a couple of Torx fasteners and pulled the radio straight out of the dash. Pull the multiprong connector free from the radio back. Sister the aftermarket harness in between the OEM connector and the radio.

A pigtail of wires will lead from this harness to the iPod adapter itself.

The adapter box can be mounted anywhere underdash and out of the way. We velcroed it inside the console, under a piece of trim we could access readily. We drilled a small hole into the bin under the armrest and snaked the cable forward, under the trim, to the adapter box. Last step was to adjust the DIP switches (small red panel) to match the brand and model of radio in the car.