Add an iPod input to many Volvo radios for $0

[instarx]

The one difficulty I had with soldering was that the 3 headphone wires each consisted of many small copper wires. I twisted them together and soldered them the best I could. Perhaps the connections are bad? Would using a small intermediate piece of copper wire between the board and the headphone wires make the connection more solid?

Soldering 101: To solder stranded wire you first tin the strands together. Twist them tightly together, nip off the end so it is nice and neat and then heat them with the iron and touch the solder to them. The solder is drawn into the spaces between the twisted strands by capillary action. This gives you the equivalent of a solid core wire for a few mm on the end. Trim the tinned tip to the correct length and solder THAT to the connection point.

[KEWROCK]

hey everybody,
i've got the sc900/1 radio with the built in cd changer. i started taking it apart and realized the bottom circuit board has been soldered to radio chassis (it probably doubles as a ground) there for i can't get under the changer to the tape deck or circuit boards. i don't think volvo intended this radio be serviced. reading the whole thread i didn't see any mention of the sc900. i could reach the solder joint, but then what? i don't know if my radio matches anything on the thread. there also appears to be a heat sink in there, but i was under the impression this radio had a seperate amp.
anyway, i want to go the way of the commercially available adapter. i don't know which to buy. i have a cd jack on the back of the unit, but i read ther is no adapter available yet for the sc900. i don't understand if i have the jack why wouldn't the adapter work? i plan on buying a cheap $20 mp3 player to semi-permanantly velcro to the dash, taking it out to load and recharge only. songlists and stuff on the radio display doesn't concern me, just a headphone plug will do. anybody got any suggestions?
(besides the tape adapter and the over air signal adapters).
thanks

[MadeInJapan]

Look up USA Spec at www.crutchfields.com should work fine with your unit. After attaching it to the CD input in the back of your unit you can control your files on an iPod with your head unit.

[stone36]

This may be crazy but has anyone tried using an alpine M-Bus to ipod, or M-Bus to 3.5mm jack cable directly into the SC-xx head unit? The ones below can be found on ebay for about $15 and are designed to be used with alpine head units.

It could be logical that if this ipod adapter was reverse engineered so that the wiring replaced whatever the cd changer signal was supposed to be into that of the ipods signal, it would also work on a head unit that would accept the signal of a matching alpine CD changer, i.e most if not all of the SC series radios.

Has anyone tried this??

[MadeInJapan]

I haven't tried it but sure would like to know the results. A friend of mine is asking for an inexpensive way to get her MP3 player (not iPod) hooked up to her SC unit in her 850 but doesn't want to solder her unit.
You think this cable will work? This one

[stone36]

That one looks like the AMP output on mine. (which makes me wonder about other possibilities. The input cable has to look like this:


If I could find one with this on one side and a headphone jack or ipod connector on the other... there has to be one out there somewhere.

[MadeInJapan]

Sure looks like the end of the cable in my link above...same number of pins and a mini jack headphone adapter on the other end.

[stone36]

I think the only difference is the pattern, the other Alpine ones I saw that were in a circle as opposed to lines, I don't know though, I couldn't tell from the angle of the pic. I am going to try to find one locally, radio shack, car audio store etc. before I get one online, see if they will let me "try before I buy" Let me know if you go with that and I will do the same and keep you posted.

[MadeInJapan]

We'll do!

[mja850]

I had a friend make good solder connections to the L/R/G on the circuit card using short wires. I then soldered these to a stripped headphone wire. The sound was alright from the iPod, but any loud music (like the Beatles) was noticeably distorted.

I just added 1K resistors to the L/R connections between the short wires and the headphone wire. I used a lot of solder and I think the connections are solid. I placed one piece of electrical tape under the connections and one piece over, to make a kind of sandwich and to keep all of the connections from touching. Some of the tape went over the resistors.

Problem is, the sound is almost all BASS and is much quieter! Is this some kind of grounding issue or are the resistors too strong/weak? Could it be the tape over the resistors? What could cause all of the high frequencies to be filtered out?