A couple of years ago I installed a Magellan 5310 GPS in place of the original factory GPS. For my purposes it worked great and looked stock. However, it has quit functioning and I'm trying to decide what to do next.

I was toying with the idea of putting a 5" media player or small ipad like computer in there that would not only give me GPS, but a media player that I could put my music library in also.

For music I currently hook my phone to a tape adapter and play it through the OEM stereo on tape mode through my phone. I have run the headphone jack through the stereo and it comes out very cleanly where the center console and radio/climate control unit come together.

I was thinking that I could hook the headphone adaper into a dash mounted media player and play music and GPS through the vehicle like that. After looking at devices it seems that the Samsung Galaxy Player 5: Samsung Galaxy Player 5.0 may be the answer.

My concern is powering the device on, if I would have access to the power switch when dash mounted, or if I could somehow take it apart and modify/move the switch if it is inaccessible, as I'd like to keep the stock look. Any thoughts?

 

Do you have any pics of how you mounted that magellan? How did you get to the device's power cable.

BTW, you can wire a direct hardwired aux in in place of the CD changer. You can even set it up with a switch between your audio and the CD changer. All you need is a an AI net extension cable, an xacto knife or razor blade, and a set of 1/8" plugs / jacks. I can give you complete details on that one.

Take care,

George

 

To mount it I used a piece of ABS plastic and drilled holes to correspond to the stock GPS mounting hoses. But because of the angle, I had to cut part of it out, and this is where it could get tricky. I am a dentist and have access to some resins and other materials that start doughy and maleable, and then harden to plastic. This is what I used to actually mount the gps.


Then I made a jig and using mesh speaker grill, I hammered speaker grills into shape and covered with speaker cloth. The effect looks great. But, now I want to put something else in there. I would be extremely interested in cutting into the CD/Aux cable and bypassing the whole tape rout.

And for the power, I used the DC cigarette lighter cable. I opened the cigarette plug end and soldered 2 wires into the leads from the lighter so I would still get the 12V to go through the transformer. Not sure if that was necessary or not, but since I don't know a ton about these, I thought that was safest. Then to the other end of those wires I soldered 2 pinto onto the wire and plugged the two pins directly into the wiring harness' 12V and ground pins so that way I didn't have to cut any wires. Being that it is made to be plugged into a car's cigarette lighter and come on and off when the ignition was turned on and off, the power button of the gps wasn't an issue, it was built to read the power cycles from the car and respond accordingly. A media player won't have that benefit.

 

The cigarette plug was neeeded because these gps's all run on 5v I believe.

As far as the direct hardwired audio input it's actually pretty easy.

buy one of these:

ALPINE Ai-NET EXTENSION FEMALE TO MALE DIN DATA CABLE LEAD US SELLER | eBay

Now when you take the CD changer and amp rack out of the car you will see an AI net connector coupling behind the cd changer - it's the only way the CD changer conencts to the audio system. As represented here:



What you need to do is split open this extension cable's insulation and get to the wires inside. You can use a razor blade or xacto knife, BUT make sure you get just the insulation. remove a 4-6" section of insulation.

Then you need to cut the following wires:



So, basically on the side of the cable heading TOWARDS the amp, solder either an RCA cable or a 1/8" jack, common ground to black, left audio (usually white in most cables) - to the blue cable and right hand audio, (usually red) to the green cable. I actually used two of these cables:

20-Ft. Stereo Headphone Cable, 1/8" Jack to 1/8" Plug : TV & Video | RadioShack.com

reason being. I cut one in half. I trimmed down the cables to about 2ft on each end. I soldered the JACK side to the cables in the AI connection heading to the amp (basically making that an input jack), I soldered the plug side, to the side heading to the CD changer. That way If you plug those two together, the CD changer audio works as intended. Once all that is done, tape the cable back up, and plug it in between the CD changer and amp connection. I ran the two pigtails (the input jack, and the cd changer out) down into the spare tire well for access.

THEN I took the second one and ran it into the cabin. With the top up pull the passenger side corner of the carpet up and you will see a hole that leads into the trunk, and then ran it down between the back seat and the plastic trim, under the back seat and up into the center console. This gave me a 1/8" stereo aux input jack in the center console.

I then use one of these:

3.5mm Audio Line out + Usb Dock Cable iPod iPhone i Pad | eBay

To plug into my phone or ipod using the dock connector line out. Honestly it sounds better than the CD changer.

Just keep a few meaningless cd's in the changer and select CD on the head unit and everything will work fine.

Hope this all makes sense.

Take care,

George

 

Hi,

I have been studying these posts with a view to using an ipod in my 2003 S-type. I purchased the Ai-net extension cable and other bits and pieces but today, when I pulled the CD changer out I was disappointed to find that it is not the standard Alpine model. It is Jaguar branded but Hungarian made and instead of an AI-net cable it has two cables - one with two wires and one with 4 or 5 I think. I guess it should still be possible to do the hack, but does anyone know what wires to use?


Rick


2003 Jaguar S-type

 

Rick...you will have much better luck posting in the S-type forum. The S-type has a completely different system.

 

Hey Rick,

Sorry for the delayed response, but sadly, there isnt a way for this to be done in the S-Type alpine system. That uses fiber optics to transmit the sound digitally. They never upgraded the xk8 to the digital system even throught it's entire model run in 2006, so this mod works on all xk8's and pre 04 xj8's but not on s or x types, or newer xj's.

Take care,

George