I've recently purchased a jaguar x type 2004. I love my jaguar but the only thing that sucks is that I don't have a Aux spot and I love listening to my own music and the radio music sucks, any advice on what I could install to make it actually look nice and not tacky looking. Any suggestions? Thanks so much!

 

dperez, look around for something called an "ACM". That is the module that Jaguar put into our cars as an option to allow playing of your own MP3 player. Granted, you are going to find that this will most likely set you back about $300 for the module.

It seems to me that if you do some looking around here, there is a good write up of someone that created their own ACM, but it took a fair amount of wiring and whatnot to make all the pieces work together.

 

One of the first things I did was install an ACM. It enabled me to not only play my own digital music, but it also has two RCA jacks which I've put a Sirius Ridio.
I've see a few latley on EBay but they are now closer to $500.

 

If you have the tape deck, there's this. The audio quality is excellent, supposedly equal in quality to the in the head unit. I at least haven't got any complaints, and would say that it might be worth it to replace a CD head unit with a tape one just for the sake of this mod.

I have a small mp3 player with a charger hidden in the ash tray. It turns on when the ignition is on and turns off about 1 minute after ignition is turned off, rather convenient.

+ Extremely cheap
+ Looks unmodified
+ Audio quality far superior to all FM transmitters and tape deck adapters I've tried
- Can't navigate songs with steering wheel audio controls
- Must keep a blank cassette in the deck to fool the head unit

 

I have not yet tried the mod but I did invest in a spare X-Type cassette deck from eBay. I have junked the mechanicals and simply kept the circuit board - which I will plug into my own car when the restoration timetable allows.


There is a simple electromechanical switch which operates when a tape cassette is inserted. My belief is that if this switch is permanently bypassed it will not be necessary to keep a tape inside the unit on a permanent basis. The switch is soldered to the four large pins (in square formation) at the top right edge of the circuit board - yellow arrow in the pic below. I cannot remember if the switch makes or breaks a circuit when a cassette is inserted.


I'll let you know in due course if this works.


Apologies to Dutch-Black-X for pinching his excellent picture