IPOD’ing a 2002 530I M-sport

Expensive cars, expensive solutions for connecting your IPOD to your factory radio. I was completely blown away by some of the prices of the aftermarket solutions by independent shops/companies to interface my IPOD into my 530I. I tried the FM modulators, but who are we kidding, those have never worked. I was going to use my 1/8” to Cassette adapter, only I don’t have a cassette deck in the car. Next up, some 4:12 am web surfing that allows me to find just what I needed. I remembered my high school days of installing systems, and I went back to my trusty vendor of the day, Crutchfield. Why not, might as well see what they had.

In browsing the Crutchfield catalog, I located an auxiliary interface that you can use to interface into the stock radio on a 530I, via the CD changer connections. Using that, and a few RCA to 1/8^th inch jack converters, I thought I had the right solution.

The only catch, you car must be pre-wired for a CD changer. If you have a changer, you will lose the function of disk 6…but hey, rip it out anyway…you are connecting up an IPOD with half a centuries music anyway. So after getting my auxiliary adapter, my RCA to 1/8” jack converter, it was time to take apart the 530I.

Removing the rear access panel to the amplifier, if you look at the very bottom of the access panel, you will see the 2 connections needed for the auxiliary inputs.

Since the auxiliary box is very small, mounting it is not an issue. I used a 1/8^th inch titanium bit, to drill the below holes (2 small holes in middle of picture):

Once the holes are drilled, go ahead and mount the USASPEC aux interface:

Close up shot of the factory CD Changer connections in the aux adapter cables:

Up to now, the entire process has been a breeze. Not comes the test of your skill. Now you have to route the 1/8^th inch input cable to the front of the car, from the truck, via the small access panel in the rear firewall. Now, DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK, you can seriously doink up your $30-49,000 car, and NO, I take no responsibility for your screwups on your own car. I did this work myself on my own car, if you have any doubts, take yours to a professional. The real issues with this entire process, is just getting all the access panels out of the way, and figuring out how the Germans put the thing together without a Chiltons manual is…well…time consuming.

Once you have the wire fed through the firewall, you will need to massage the rear seat into allowing you access to pull the wire through. To do this, I had to use my Mag light, a screw driver covered in soft cloth, and a custom tool (read: coat hanger with rubber coating) to grab the wire from behind the seat.

After some swear words, and a few thoughts that you could seriously screw your car up, you have success. Now time to rout the cable through the rest of the car.

I routed my cable all the way up the side, under the kick plates. Takes a long time, but with the right tools, you can get it done and no one will ever see it even there.

Once you have the cable routed, get your IPOD, dial in your head unit to CD 6, Track 1, and jam away. You are all done…almost…

Last step of the project, put all the bloddy body panels back together, until you get a trunk that resembles the below. All in all, I had all of this done in under 1 hour. Took me a bit longer than normally would considering I had to figure out the best route to run the cable.