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Make yer very own Aux Input


vanmansam

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If you have a stock style AM radio with mono output this write up is for you.

Although the sound of an l-series motor is music to my ears, the deafening drone of gear noise on the highway drove me to to come up with an audio solution for my car. Was not satisfied with crappy AM radio, but HATE the look of modern stereo deck in a classic car. Seriously, if you cut up the dash in your Datsun for a crappy walmart deck, shame on you.  :no: 

 

You can wire in an auxiliary port to play all you favorite Backstreet Boys' songs from you ipod with a simple 50cent RCA jack, some wire and a little know how.  This aux in basically takes signal info from a device and sends it to your speaker, be it audio from a portable CD player, walkman, ipod ect.   It sounds surprisingly good, especially if you upgrade your speaker.

 

 

Parts you will need:

-Working AM radio and speaker.

-Wire (~22gauage) 

-A resistor (anywhere from 80-220 ohm)

-RCA Jack.

      You can get this at radio-shack, or online: http://www.allelectronics.com/make-a-store/item/SMJ-6/3.5MM-STEREO-MINI-PHONE-JACK-W/2-NC-SHUNTS/1.html

You will need a 2 normal closed shunts type RCA aka 2NC .  This means that when nothing is plugged in, the normal radio signal can still flow through the RCA and to your speaker, but when plugged in, the switch is broken and the speaker gets its input from yer Ipod.

 

Tools:

-Soldering gear, including shrink wrap

-wire cutters, wire strippers, ect

-basic hand tools

 

You will need 2 wires, make them as long as they need be to reach from the radio to your desired mounting location.

Wire up the RCA jack like this:

CIWflLA.png

 

 

here is an actual picture:

TCRmgDn.jpg

 

The resistor is inline so you can play stereo information in one speaker.  Basically blends the stereo signals from your ipod into a mono signal.

 

 

After your little RCA is all wired up, remove the radio from the car.  Remove whatever necessary to get inside the radio, for me there was 2 screws holding on the backing plate.  Once you do that look at the Volume control knob.  Look at the guts just on the inside of where the volume knob side is. There are three sections to it working from face to rear. One is a switch for on off, the next back is a potentiometer for tone, the other is another pot for volume.  There are 3 wires connected to the pots, oYou want to splice into the input side of the volume pot, aka the unaltered signal wire from the antenna.  In my radio the input was red.  

 

pic:

NOTICE! in the picture I did this step wrong.  The blue wire i spliced into is the output of volume pot and the way it is wired in this pic gives no volume control with the volume knob. The red wire to the left is what you should splice into, and later I did go back and fix it, but did not get a pic.  If in doubt hook up your radio to a 12v source, and read  voltage with radio on at both ends of the pot.  The wire with lower voltage, and which voltage drops when you turn the volume knob down is the one you splice into.

ibs2tll.jpg

 

 

All thats left to do now is route the wires, close the radio and  run the jack to a location of your choosing.  I put mine in the center of this dohickey.

cLVi0nl.jpg?1

 

 

 

Video of it working:

Notice in the video, it worked but no volume control because I wired it wrong.  Later that night I fixed it however.  Also, my antenna is broken so when I pull the plug you only hear static, but if wired up right you should get AM when you unplug your input cord.

 

 

 

 

and finally I gotta say, with any project like this YOUR MILAGE MAY VARY.  seriously, read schematics, look up how electricity works, buy a multimeter and a soldering iron, but above all dont be afraid to just try it out.  I bench tested mine, was pleased enough to install it, but pulled it out again to fix what I did wrong.  dont be afraid to get a 12v battery and test it out before you put it back in, and if it doenst work, then experiment as to why.  Hell, the RCAs and resistors are cheap enough, by a couple of them incase you f-up.  This is a basic guild, and Im not an expert so dont expect me to be back here to troubleshoot your problems if it goes wrong. Good luck and thanks for reading! :frantics:  B)

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Well 6 days ago I posted here saying I wanna do this "someday" when I get another Datto. Well I'll be damned! I got one that qwick, and it has the stock radio! I'll be trying this and reporting back. Thanks again for posting this where everyone can see.

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I just finished mine on my AM/FM radio.  The volume pot also had a red wire that I spliced into.  I did however have an issue with it not working correctly untill I applied ground to the nut on the RCA jack. Not sure if the device playing the music needs to share a common ground with the radio or I just screwed it up.

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YES! the ground is something I did forget to mention.  Its pin 1 I believe.

There are a couple different ways you can choose to set up the jack.  Basically I just played around with it on the bench until it worked the way I wanted it to.  Hope I havent caused anyone any problems because of that.  Also hopefully anyone confident enough to try this is also confident to modify the schematic as necessary.  For stereo for example, you would run two separate wires from 2&5 to the outputs.

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  • 2 weeks later...

SICK !!!!

 

You can also do this and wire it to a amp. I have a headphone to rca jack, wired to my amps. I use the volume control on my phone, mp3 or whatever. Simply wire up your system then plug it in. no need to modify anything but speaker holes. If you want more sound control then wire it to a crossover, then to amps.Besides speaker and amp prices i think i paid $4 for the plug. I have done this on several rigs and have had no problems as of yet.  

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I can hear with a lil boom cube on my ipod. i plan on doing this though, be nice and hidden, awsome sauce.

 

 

you better not be talking about doing it on the 510! if you so much as touch it with tools for anything other than maintenance i (and the rest of ratsun) will assemble a mob and come after you..... 

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I'm in the process of finishing up a radio with this same type mod in addition to this bluetooth module. I haven't decided on my power yet, but most likely a LM7805 with heat sink embeded into the radio. And I'll likely just put in a switch to go to AM like never. Here's the parts:

http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?partnumber=320-353

 

http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?partnumber=7805

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Erik its why i have a extra am stereo anyway, the one in it the orange needle doesnt work right, going to pull it out, try this with it after i test and make sure the other am one works, and see what i think, just hide the wire in the glove box if it did work nice and run off the stock speaker so i dont have to use that lil cube thing.  

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