Ok, for a long time now, I've wanted to mod my car by adding in a way to utilize the auxillary input for my deck. My deck rocks. Not as much as my old one, but it still rocks. It's got stereo RCA inputs in the back. There are a few ways to utilize this: carputer, laptop, iPod, cd-changers, whatnot. The list goes on. Anyway, since a carputer is out of my price range, an input for a laptop or iPod would be great. ALSO, since my laptop is mostly functional now (<3 gentoo, fluxbox), I can actually utilize this option. ALSO, Erin has an iPod so it would be absolutely kick-ass to be able to plug it in and not use her FM transmitter thingy. So today, while at home having somewhat of a sick day to myself, I decided that - damnit, I was going to do it. So here it is:

It starts with my trusty screwdriver. My dad bought me this tool set thingy a while ago for giftmas or my birthday or one of those other gift giving days. It's actually been invaluable when fixing my car, computer, or things around the house. Thanks dad, you really do kick ass.

Look! I'm removing the middle console section! You can see soda spill stains on the cupholder thing in the middle.

My gearshifter thingy and the middle dash area, which I'm about to pry off. You can see my slammin' deck it's all of it's blue and grey glory.

WAH-LAH! I pulled that shit off. Next, I'm going to be removing the actual deck itself so that I can hook up the aux in, but I didn't get any images of that.

And here it is! I actually changed my method of wiring after I took this photo. I was going to mount an input in that little knock-out panel (the hole where the cable is coming through in the picture), but I decided it would be cleaner and more 1340 to run the cable under the middle console and have it come up under the lid thing between the chairs. I routed the cable back through the hole and under the carpet and everything and it's now coming back out where I wanted it to. It really does rock.

Ok, sure, it wasn't a BIG project, but it was something I've been wanting to do, and now it's done. I'm very pleased with how it turned out, and proud that I actually figured out how to do it by myself (not to be misleading, I looked up online how to remove the console panelling without breaking anything :P). It wasn't hard, but it's still damn cool.