So easy even Caveman can do it. So I started this project at 7:00 and was totally completed by 9:00. I wanted to document everything properly as I wasn't able to find one fully complete post that described end to end how to do this on an 03/04 6MT coupe. I must say, this was EASY. Anyone driving around with their iPooeds in their trunks should re-consider this setup as having it in the center console is really that Shiznits. I tried to get everything as I went along, but I forgot to take 1 or 2 pictures as I was going along but you will get the idea.

Step 0 - Confirm you are at least as smart as the Caveman.

Step 0.5 - Buy the kit from EverythingG35 - http://www.g35parts.com/9083/osc/pro...roducts_id=521

Step 1 - Empty Trunk and remove Drivers Side AMP Cover. Take youre golf clubs and crap out of their along with the mat and the spare tire. On the Drivers side is a plastic cover held on by a 10MM bolt. Unscrew the bolt and take the cover off. You will be looking at the AMP, along with the factory SAT radio hookup held on with some breakaway tape.

Step 2 - Remove rear center console. This is really easy. Pull up gently from the front of the console. It is held on by 2 clips as shown in the picture.

Step 3 - Attach factory harness to SAT hookup. In the trunk, attach the factory SAT harness to the harness from Everything G35. You will then run this wire along the drivers side and tuck it under the carpet and the rear seat so that it comes out where the rear center console is.

 

Step 4 - Remove center console caps & screws. On each side of the center console is a plastic cap which covers a phillips screw. Remove the cap with a flathead screwdriver and the screw with a phillips screwdriver.

Step 5 - Drill hole in console. A little frightening at first but trust me, you'll get through it. Start with a small 1/8" pilot hole and gradually work up to a 5/8" hole. You will be fishing the round end of the Ipod wire through the hole and under the carpet leaving the iPod dock hookup in the console. You may need to work the hole a little bit to get the wire to fit as the round connector pretty big. Once you have the hole drilled and the round wire through the hole, insert rubber grommet from the kit in the hole and use a set of needle nose pliers to push the grommet around the edges of the hole. The grommet is pretty big so you can actually fill a pretty big hole. Try to make the hole as small as possible. If the round connector fits through then it is just big enough.

 

Step 6 - Fish the bloody wire. So I didnt't want to remove the back seats and I didn't want to remove the whole center console as I am very very lazy. So I found some stiff 8/2 wire and used that as a fish wire under the carpet from the center console to the rear seat console. Basically I felt the wire as it moved under the carpet, cursed and swore at it, then guided it to the rear where I could lift up the seat frame a little bit and get a pair of needle nose pliers in-between the carpet and the rear seat frame. From here I pulled the fish wire up, attached my iPod cable to the end sticking out of the center console and pulled it through. This was the hardest part and took me about 20 minutes in total.

Step 7 - Secure the iPod unit. The kit from everythingG35 comes with a big piece of doublesided foam. I used that to secure the unit to the padding. I then placed 2 pieces of the sticky foam to the top of the unit and positioned the unit under the rear wire frame where console attaches. I figured this is the most solid place back there since it is physically under a hard piece of metal which really can't move and wrapped in foam.

Step 8 - Attach wires. Just attach the remaining wires from the trunk and the wire you fished from the center console.

Step 9 - Secure wires in place. I used a couple of the big wire ties to secure the unit to the middle of the rear wire frame, and to attach the access wires together so they are neat and contained.

 

Step 10 - Attach ground. There are 2 big 12MM bolts holding down part of the rear seat. Remove one, and use that as the grounding point. It seems to be right on the frame of the car so it should work really well.

Step 11 - Put stuff back together. Just slide the rear armrest holder into the rear grooves that hold it in place and snap the clips back onto the front retainer. Vaccum up your center console as it will be full of debris from your drilling and give your self a big thumbs up.

 

Finally play music and point & snicker at the poor saps still fussing with CDs.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS:

THIS KIT ROCKS. The kit comes with everything you need to hook your iPod up to the car. It works great, I can scroll through albums, and artists and pick a song. What I can't do is drill down i.e. Goto Artists and then choose Albums and see a list of all the albums for that artist. You either choose albums and scroll through all the albums, or artists and scroll through the artists. You can also make playlists and use those - I think it supports up to 6 playlists. I am little disappointed that the steering wheel controls don't do more. The up and down arrows on the steering wheel seem to only go through playlists - but other than that it works awesome. The titles don't scroll so if an artist/album/title is longer than 11 characters I think it gets cut off.

WORD OF ADVICE - If you install the kit, leave yourself some slack in the cable in the console so you can bring the iPod out of the console and lay it on the rollup door thingy on the console. This way you can disconnect it, go to an album and then reconnect it and it will start playing at this album. This seems to be an easy shortcut to the usability issues.

All in all, I think this is the best option for getting iPod integration with the factory headunit. The Aftermarket Headunit like Pioneer do offer a better experience, but if all you want is to play tunes from your iPod on your factory head unit and not have to replace anything, then I think this is the way to go.

HTH this helps everyone.

 

Excellent write up.

I have this kit as well in my 07. I opted for an in-trunk installation. Simply because I have more than one iPod and I just leave this one in the trunk almost all the time, removing it just to update it once in a while.

Wayne

 

LOL @ thumb up.

 

nice!, i might just do this

 

Nice DIY.

 

Great write up and photos!

 

I'm a cave man I must have missed something! What kit did you use? I want to install in my coupe.

 

Updated with the link to the kit on everythingG35.com

http://www.g35parts.com/9083/osc/pro...roducts_id=521

 

Awesome job!

 

anyone local in so cali want do make some money and do this for me? i suck when it comes to audio.

 

I have sat radio, how would it be a problem