I have been a little jealous of a feature that the wife's minivan has. No it's not the power sliding doors or the heated seats. It's the little 3.5mm jack and usb port that her radio has. I have tried a bunch of FM Transmitters to get the same effect, but the reception is horrible. Probably due to the fact that we are right between St Cloud and the Twin Cities.
So what I did this morning was to rip apart one of these FM transmitters and see if I could find a schedmatic or something online and try to mod it. From the way it looks the antenna is routed through the headset jack. So (in theory) a longer or better placed cable could do the trick.
With the help of the Panavise InDash website I found directions on how to pull out the radio. I have done it before while working at Verizon, installing a speakerphone kit for a customer, but I always like to have the directions handy, just in case. So the next step is getting the car up to temperature so I can start pulling at panels.
I think that if I can route the cable into the dash, behind the radio, and have it pop out right where my phone mount is it will not only look nicer, but it just might solve my reception issues. Stay tuned for an update on how badly I mess something up. lol.
I got it all run through. cable sticks out enough to plug into the FM Transmitter and into the phone on the other end. Sounds horrible at full volume on the phone, but is decent at 3/4 volume. Pictures coming soon!
ReplyDeleteI haven't gotten around to pictures... The Vue has been sitting because the battery is getting really bad on it. It died with the interior light on for 15 minutes the other day.
ReplyDeleteI guess to be safe we will just drive the other car around, until we get our tax return back...