Print

[fretster]

i posted this on the bmw board that i belong to, but i thought i should post it here too to see if you guys have any ideas... here's the post...

alright, i have (should be getting) a stock bmw radio/cassette deck for my '87 bmw 325e. i want to be able to use my mp3 player/cd player with the car, BUT i dont want to use a cassette adapter. what i was thinking of, is if there is a way to wire an input for a 3.5mm plug into the wires going in/coming off the radio so that whatever i hook to that input, will play through the speakers.
first of all, is this possible? one thing i'm worried about is that the device i use for the input wont have enough power to run the speakers in the car. so hopefully i could use the amp thats in the cassette deck to do that.
and second of all, how do i do it? i've attached a picture of where i want to put the plug so hopefully that explains things a little better than my words do.  

(IMG:http://home.comcast.net/~fretster/hosted/bmw/radioinputdiag.jpg)

[opjose]

WOW is this off topic for this forum.

Almost record setting in scope too!


First the problem is that you need some preampflication of the signal from the MP3 player.

Some decks make seperate Pre-amp ins available on the back of the set for this purpose.

Otherwise you'd need to take the deck out and find a point in the circuitry where you can patch into the preamp, or worst case into the amplifier input stages.

Since nothing is obvious, a circuit diagram for the head would be helpful.

Needless to say, it will probably be easier and cheaper in the long run for you to simply buy another head unit which does have input jacks either front or rear.

[fretster]

yeah, i know it was wayyyyy off topic. but i thought i might have better luck here than on the bmw board since ya'll are more diy electronically inclined than they are. but it looks like ill just end up using a cassette adapter for the time being and just see what comes my way. thanks for the post though, i appreciate your input

[opjose]

No problem.

BTW: I've done the hardwiring above, and timewise, it's not worth doing.

Often replacement decks can be had with more capacity, features, etc. that will do the job, are easy to install and will be far less expensive than the time, effort and equipment you'll require to do it.