I bought my 1996 Mystique in Chicago three months ago. I've replaced the dry-rotted tires. I've scoured the salvage yards to replace missing and damaged interior trim pieces. Now I have turned my attention to the broken head unit. It was a Pioneer DEH-P735R with an unlit backlight display and a reggae CD stuck inside. I fumbled around to find the station for my iPod's FM transmitter, and left it alone ever since. This head unit proved irreparable, so I had no coice but find a new one which would be iPod compatible.
I had no idea how hard that was going to be! Unless I bought a $600+ unit, I wouldn't even be able to use the iPod's clickwheel. Everything with an iPod cable treated it like a memory bank and required you to fumble through the stereo's own interface. That was no way to control 20Gb of music. I just wanted to mount my iPod over that useless coin holder and hear the music (without interference), let the iPod keep itself charged, and not have a lot of cables dangling everywhere. It only cost me $165.64
The fist challenge was finding an iPod adapter that would both charge it and connect it to a stereo head unit "aux-in". The best deal I could find was the CBLiAUX-AVi from Neo Car Audio: http://www.neocaraudio.com/product_info.php?products_id=1086
For only $35, I only had to attach the red wire to a red accessory hot, the ground wire to the ground, and the RCA plugs to the back of my head unit.
The next challenge was to find a good head unit with a rear-mounted auxiliary input jack. The Pioneer DEH-P4900IB was the cheapest I could find; and it would use the same wire harness as the old one, or so I thought. I found a remanufactured unit on eBay for $106.94 with shipping.
Once everything was together, it was time to pull out the old unit and wire in the new one. The old one was miswired, but had already bypassed the factory amp. I pulled out the old amp and mounting bracket if anyone wants one. I just needed to connect the RCA jacks from the adapter to the 1/8" headphone jack of the "AUX-IN." To do that, I needed $10 worth of audio Y-adapter and gender changers from Wal-Mart and Radio Shack. A little overkill, but cheaper than any new head Unit with RCA auxiliary Inputs. I loosened the instrument panel and ran the Neo adapter cable up behind it. I drilled a cable-sized hole next to the top of the coin holder nad cut a slot across the top of the instrument panel (and replaced that darn clock backlight.) This let me wedge the cable in, because the end of the iPod cable is very big and would need a correspondingly big hole in the instrument panel. Velcro holds an $8 iPod holder in place right over the coin holder. There are no toll roads or parking meters around here, so no loss for me. This is what the final results look like, and how it'll look next time I visit Chicago:
I just don't know why the head unit came with a remote control. Do you really trust the folks in the back seat with the child-proof door locks and windows to keep from turning the volume up to full blast?
I had no idea how hard that was going to be! Unless I bought a $600+ unit, I wouldn't even be able to use the iPod's clickwheel. Everything with an iPod cable treated it like a memory bank and required you to fumble through the stereo's own interface. That was no way to control 20Gb of music. I just wanted to mount my iPod over that useless coin holder and hear the music (without interference), let the iPod keep itself charged, and not have a lot of cables dangling everywhere. It only cost me $165.64
The fist challenge was finding an iPod adapter that would both charge it and connect it to a stereo head unit "aux-in". The best deal I could find was the CBLiAUX-AVi from Neo Car Audio: http://www.neocaraudio.com/product_info.php?products_id=1086
For only $35, I only had to attach the red wire to a red accessory hot, the ground wire to the ground, and the RCA plugs to the back of my head unit.
The next challenge was to find a good head unit with a rear-mounted auxiliary input jack. The Pioneer DEH-P4900IB was the cheapest I could find; and it would use the same wire harness as the old one, or so I thought. I found a remanufactured unit on eBay for $106.94 with shipping.
Once everything was together, it was time to pull out the old unit and wire in the new one. The old one was miswired, but had already bypassed the factory amp. I pulled out the old amp and mounting bracket if anyone wants one. I just needed to connect the RCA jacks from the adapter to the 1/8" headphone jack of the "AUX-IN." To do that, I needed $10 worth of audio Y-adapter and gender changers from Wal-Mart and Radio Shack. A little overkill, but cheaper than any new head Unit with RCA auxiliary Inputs. I loosened the instrument panel and ran the Neo adapter cable up behind it. I drilled a cable-sized hole next to the top of the coin holder nad cut a slot across the top of the instrument panel (and replaced that darn clock backlight.) This let me wedge the cable in, because the end of the iPod cable is very big and would need a correspondingly big hole in the instrument panel. Velcro holds an $8 iPod holder in place right over the coin holder. There are no toll roads or parking meters around here, so no loss for me. This is what the final results look like, and how it'll look next time I visit Chicago:
I just don't know why the head unit came with a remote control. Do you really trust the folks in the back seat with the child-proof door locks and windows to keep from turning the volume up to full blast?
