Homemade aux input for 2002 330ci done!! finally!!

ok... when I bought this car in april '09 I started looking for an aux input connection to install. I have a blitzsafe in my A6 now my 18 year old sons after purchasing this. but when I looked in the trunk for the cd cable the end had been cut off... needless to say i was pissed so i couldnt go that route.. .. so i went and purchased a fm transmitter for my mp3, and i couldnt bear the static so it just sat there unused....so i figured it was a done deal...so i searched the forum and found out i could remove the cable and install an aux input cable in its place behind the business cd (H/K system)and that would work fine, or I could splice the cd changer wires and add the aux output myself. but read it could only be done if i had the actual cd changer there.... so i was like damn..cd changer was gone.. so i decided to go ahead and try it anywayz since the wire was cut anyway....so i took a female end of a 3.5mm jack cut it, exposed the wires and went to the trunk... the wire that was there was to a alpine changer... so I split it open to take a look at the wires to figure out which ones were speaker output wires... the alpine wire itself after exposing the outer protective rubber was wrapped in ground wire.. so i pulled that down a bit to expose the other wires... there were two grey bundles of wire that were there.. and I knew one of them had to be left and right channels to the radio... i opened one and it had a red and white wire..i immediatley knew that was no good... opened the other and it had 2 sets of wire wrapped in protective foil insulation... i removed part of it to expose the wires and there was a green wire with a ground and a blue wire with a ground an knew those were what i was looking for. remove the foil insulation carefully if you dont you may break the wire and there is not alot of wire to play with. so after i exposed all the wires it was trouble shooting time... i joined both ground wires from the cd changer wire together.. plugged up my mp3 player to the female end of the jack with a male to male extension and toyed around till i heard sound... to make a long story come to a close.. ;0) ..the green wire is for the right channel, and the blue is for the left channel, and my mp3 sounds crystal clear although no steering wheel controls... but i could care less... only cost me 2 bucks to do.(female extension donor wire/male to male extension 99cents each)..if you try this just remember to cut clean all unused wire and tape up before trouble shooting your left/right side connections... good luck.. I just love the sound.....no more burning/buying cd's for me..... .... it worked for me just fine... *try at your own risk* ..(MAKE SURE YOU GET THE STEREO 3.5MM CABLE NOT THE MONO)

Good work man, you actually stumbled upon the right way to ground them, as when the actual connecter is on there it actually terminates the grounds together into a common ground. If people actually have the connectors on there still though, the best way is to buy a SIRIUS slave cable (meant to hook up things like a DICE unit), cut the end off, and then you will have wires that have the 6 and 3 pin hookup connectors on one end. I did something similar to this to get my DICE working properly when my SIRIUS slave port kept causing noise.

thanks... I still couldnt figure out how the end got pulled off... when I first pulled the wire out it looked as if someone just yanked the changer out, and I thought all was lost.. but it all turned out better than expected... that hiss from the fm transmitter signal everytime a changed a song was sickening.......one thing I didn't even think about till now is... since I created the connection with a female 3.5mm jack in the trunk, all i have to do is get a splitter to add more inputs for other audio I may want to use...

SMUUUUV

Want to do same thing as you, low cost aux input for my 00 323cic. have cd wire harness, no cd changer. why did you say Alpine system? Is this the same 3 + 6 wiring harness that is pre-installed in all similar model BMWs? If I had to guess the blue and green wire you show in pic and discuss above, is inside the 6 wire harness, then the grayer wire of the 6 exposed wires (the other seems almost silver in my harness). Inside this grayer wire is 4 wires? The blue, green and two grounds?

I'm also assuming that when you press the CD button on your HU, if the Aux device (MP3 player, XM radio, etc.) is on that provides adequate feedback (resistance, noise, buzz, something electronic) to trigger the CD button to activate?

Love the simplicity of what you've done, just amazed that others haven't done similar. Thanks for the additional insights.

Would this work by plugging the jack to the Left/Right/Ground pins of the cd changer slot in the back of the HU?
Do you have to press MODE to switch from radio to your aux device?
Everybody says everywhere that we need the actual cd changer, so I wonder why it works for you. (nothing plugged to the Enable/Reset/Data+ pins of the cd changer slot?)

Originally Posted by Romzr

Would this work by plugging the jack to the Left/Right/Ground pins of the cd changer slot in the back of the HU?
Do you have to press MODE to switch from radio to your aux device?
Everybody says everywhere that we need the actual cd changer, so I wonder why it works for you. (nothing plugged to the Enable/Reset/Data+ pins of the cd changer slot?)

The actual wire that was used was from the back of the cd changer that goes to the radio. I do have to press the mode button to cycle through inputs(radio/cd/aux). You dont actually need a cd changer. They have a few write ups that show how to hook up an aux input directly to the radio. I just had the raw cd changer wires in my trunk and decided to see what I could do with them and it worked fine for me.

I just tried to hook up to the back of the radio, it doesn't work.
I tried left+/right+/ground and left+/right+/right-. (pins 1, 2, 3 or 1, 2, 7)


If I press mode it only shows No Disc (as usual, and there is no AUX, only FM/No Disc, even though I have pins in the AUX slot behing the HU).
I don't know what's wrong :/

Those guys were trying to do something similar but were looking at the other pins like reset/databus+/enable but of course the thread stops without a real answer.
http://www.the12volt.com/installbay/...=1&PN=1#_index