Well, after years of adding stuff to my car, I now seem to be on a quest to minimize some things. Over the past few years I've had several stereos in it but all either seemed too blingy or didn't work well. I don't do too many long drives and enjoy just listening to the car most of the time, but decided it was time for a change (again).
I finally got an iPod and of course that got me thinking of using one in the car. I was too chicken to experiment with the iPod but had a cheap MP3 player around so I tried an experiment using it with extra amps and speakers I had laying around. I found that if I ran a cable from the earphone jack directly into the low input RCA jacks of my amp, it worked great.
So, I pulled out my head unit and replaced it with a panel covered in basket weave fabric left over from my old door panels to complete the radio delete look. I replaced the dash speaker grill (before) with a wood panel covered in vinyl that closely matched the dash. I ran my cable under the carpet from between the seats, through the tunnel access hole, up through the smuggler's box and up to my amp. I have a 4 channel amp so I had to get a couple of RCA splitters to connect the two cables to four inputs. I had to adjust the gain levels down on the amp and I did add a switch on the console to power the amp.
So now I have a cheap (under $50) MP3 player that just holds about 30 of my favorite driving tunes and can attach to the side of the passenger seat (Velcro) or be removed to hold in your hand or lay on the seat. There is enough slack in the cable to tuck it out of view if needed. It just runs on a AAA battery so I don't need messy power adaptors (I just carry a spare battery). Perfect for a few occasional tunes, and if I want to get fancy I can put the iPod in for long trips. I'm sure the audio experts will say this isn't the way to hook things up, but it works for me.
Radio delete:
Speaker grill delete:
Amp mount (I already had this):
MP3 unit mounted:
