1979-1993 & 94 Conv [Subscribe to Daily Digest] |
Saabradio will add an ipod jack to your head unit in place of the little alarm LED. You'll have to send them your head unit for awhile. I believe what they do is clip the wires to the cassette deck and wire the jack in place. I believe that you will lose the ability to play cassette tapes.
I looked into adding ipod functionality to the Clarion setup a couple years back. Volkswagens of the same era also used Clarion components, so there was a lot of good info on VW forums. The problem is with the Clarion C-Bus protocol. The units use this protol to talk to each other. One option is to connect the iPod to the c-Bus connection on the back of the CD player that is reserved for the trunk-mounted CD player. The issue is that you have to figure out a way for the CD head unit to recognize the ipod using C-Bus. I read somewhere that you need to add a switch that connects two of the pins in the c-bus connector to do this. I've got all the parts and the wiring diagrams to try it, but I haven't gotten to it yet. Another option is to wire your ipod into the audio lines between the CD unit and the radio head unit with a switched connection. You also need to record a CD with white noise. When you want to play your ipod, you put the white-noise CD into the CD player. The head unit (using the c-bus protocol) acknowledges that a CD is playing. Then you flip the switch on the audio line that your ipod is connected to and pump the audio signal from the ipod.
One of the reasons I haven't gotten around to this yet, is that I wanted to do a stealth install, where I could just connect my ipod to a single connector in a cradle that would power my ipod and pump the signal to the head unit all at the same time.
posted by 64.128.17...
No Site Registration is Required to Post - Site Membership is optional (Member Features List), but helps to keep the site online
for all Saabers. If the site helps you, please consider helping the site by becoming a member.