Is your CD changer broken like mine is in my Z? Does your Z not have a cassette slot to put a cassette adapter in and make your life easy? Do you constantly wish your Z had a built in auxiliary cord so you could bump your favorite tunes as you and the rest of your goons sit and nod your heads in your car while you're parked in front of McDonald's? Well, if you're good at following instructions then you too can install an auxiliary cord into your Z!


Let's get started. I will skip showing how to remove the center console because I believe you know how to do that or at least can figure it out using the search bar.

Supplies:
1) Solder iron
2) Solder wire
3) Auxiliary Cord (I got mine from Walmart for $5!)
4) Phillips screwdriver
5) Pliers
6) Wire stripper
7) Ibuprofen if you get headaches easily (just kidding, it's really not that hard)


*The hardest part of this DIY is taking apart and putting back together everything (which isn't really hard, just time consuming)*



STEP 1: So, you figured out how to take out your Z's radio, you've come a long way. Next thing you want to do is start taking that bastard apart. Below are pictures showing how it should look like.





Remove the front interface panel:



Remove the top and rear cover parts and then remove the CD player:





Next move the surrounding "walls." Circled in red is the radio modulator:



Lastly, you will need to remove the bottom metal piece. After unscrewing the screws, make sure you also use pliers to turn the metal clover looking thing to unlock and easily remove the last piece:





Now this is where it gets fun. Grab that auxiliary cord you purchased or stole and cut and strip the wires off one end.





As you can see, your aux cord has three wires. In my case, they are green, yellow, and white. Now, at this point, you don't know which color is for what. Since this is some Chinese auxiliary cord, there's no way of identifying unless you test it. You will need to identify which is for your left output, right output, and which is ground.

If you're lazy like me, you can do what I did to identify these three wires. Take the cut off end of the aux cord and strip off the rubber jacket to reveal the inside. The 3.5mm jacks will always have this order from the top to the bottom being: left(top), right (middle), and ground(bottom).

Here is a picture to clarify:




Just by looking at the jack, you are able to identify which is which. In my case, yellow was left, white was right, and green was ground.

Now to solder these bad boys onto your radio's motherboard.

Turn your motherboard over and inspect it. You should see that right behind the radio modulator is this layout of "pins."




On the very top is AM-ANT which is obviously for your received AM signal. Further along on the bottom is... you know what, I have them labeled, just look at the picture.

We will now solder a wire from the AM Antenna pin to ground. This will dispose of any received AM signal.



After you've grounded the AM signal, you will then solder on your three wires from your auxiliary cord.

Solder your left wire to L-out, right wire to R-out, and ground to ground.






If you've made it this far and followed the instructions correctly, then you are done! Now put the radio back together... I know, that was my least favorite part.. I still have a bunch of screws left and I don't know where they came from.. oh well, probably don't need them, I'm sure they were extra...


Just make sure to reroute your auxiliary cord safely. This is how I did mine, it was a tight fit but it worked. Also, you can zip tie or hot glue it down somewhere to also keep it safe if it gets tugged when in your car.







**By the way, to use the auxiliary, just turn on your radio, plug your phone in and switch to AM.**

Below is a video showing you that it does indeed work! I hope this helps out if anyone was trying to add an auxiliary cord and couldn't figure it out. Thanks for reading and good luck!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYnE...ature=youtu.be

 

It's easier to swap head it's and you get more features lol

Like BT. No more wires

 

Nice write-up and pics, Arrtus. Factory look and now you can listen to virtually anything. Good stuff!

 

Haha, yes, that's true. This way is more cost effective, however.

 

Arrtus gets an A for effort and ingenuity!!f Nice job.

However, I have to agree that once I got the radio out, easier to drop in a new HU. Sure, you might say it's cheaper and more cost effective doing it the way you did and I wouldn't argue.

My only point of it is that at the end of the job, one is still left listening to music through a sub-standard sounding OE radio that's ultimately going to fail. (That, based on the four or so Zs close to me where they all died.... or some aspect of it, e.g. CD player, tuner, etc.)

But for those wanting to retain the OE look on the dash, excellent write up!

 

Well done! now connect a blue tooth module to the aux port and you have all the "features" from the aftermarket head unit.

 

What are you going to do next year when no phone has these ancient progress impeding ports? These companies might be brave enough to remove them like apple.

 

All aftermarket HU looks like pos and never flow with the interior lines like OEM HU...

 

I've had two CD players go bad on the OEM non Bose unit in my ''03. Great write-up but I too went/would go with a new HU.

 

Maybe so but I've got a 6" screen, Bluetooth, aux, and USB with iPhone compatibility. I also got one that has color changing options so the colors match the factory dash lights color.
I looked at a tutorial for doing this a while back. I ended up just buying a new head unit because even if I had an aux cord, I would still have a subpar head unit.

 

Question i did this exact thing and it works but theres a slight hiss coming from the speakers. some of the sound is also biased towards the driver side door speaker, could this be a faulty connection. sorry kinda new to all this stuff and im slowly working my way into it. awesome post by the way

 

I'm not sure what the hiss may be. Make sure to use a quality aux cord. I regret not having invested in a better one because now my cord has become bad and merges the sound with the radio sounds.

Have you tried to change the balance to center the sound?

 

ive tried that already and it helped a good bit with the bias. i redid all the solder points, they aint pretty but they work gonna try that now. wish me luck!

 

welp didnt have much luck in fixing the hiss too much, but for literally free im not complaining better than the old phone in the cubby trick. regardless excellent write up was very easy to follow!

 

That is deff a good effort... But yeah, im with the people who tossed the factory HU in the trash.

 

well shoudlve taken your advice my aux has gone to sh** lmao guess i gotta re do it

 

Already?! Damn, sorry. You know how sometimes if you hold a messed up aux a certain way it sounds fine? I had to electric tape mine in a weird way at the head that connects to my phone. Works flawless now. I should redo it but i'm so lazy.