How to Wire an iPod Connection into Your Car
Posted 03/30/2007 at 5:15pm
| by Zack Stern
Step 1: Disconnect the Battery
Your car’s electrical system doesn’t pack enough juice to cause most people significant injury (read: people with their original hearts), but nobody likes getting shocked. (Also, you can better fake the gearhead aesthetic with a popped hood.) Disconnect the negative battery cable. If it can’t swing far enough away to avoid its circuit, insulate the connection with a cloth between the cable and the battery.

The great hope? That your battery is better tended to than this one. But a standard ratchet should help undo it quite nicely.
Step 2: Remove the Stereo
Getting to the stereo varies in degree of difficulty depending on both car and manufacturer, and owner’s manuals rarely give directions for this kind of thing. So search online to try to find free instructions, or barring that, visit www.carstereohelp.com to buy downloadable instructions, available for many car makes for a few dollars each. Also consider Chilton’s Total Car Care Manual book series ($20 to $30, www.chiltonsonline.com) for service manual directions to nearly every aspect of a car. Pulling the stereo may also require special tools, so reference this documentation to decide, and save money buying online at a retailer like www.cardomain.com. (We got a simple removal tool for $5.) Remove the stereo and cabling, and tape the wires together if you’re concerned that they’ll fall back behind the dash.

Once we figured out which way the hooks went, always toward the stereo, yanking it out was easy-peasey.