My patience and tolerance for radio music is nearly nonexistent. What makes listening to the radio even worse, aside from having to listen to it in the first place, are all the commercials. I decided losing my sanity behind the wheel of a moving vehicle would not be conducive to my health, and set out to rectify the problem.
Since I’m not happy with having spent so much on maintenance upgrades already, I wanted to obtain a solution as cheap as possible.
I bought this cassette adapter off of eBay to play my iPod. Which ended up being a waste of money, because the sound that came through the speakers was abhorrent. I take pride in obtaining music with relatively high bit rate, yet the cassette adapter was indiscriminate of fidelity. All my songs played at the same bit rate – SHIT kbp/s.
I tried the next option, a FM transmitter. I chose the Eznex EZCube because I read it transmitted strong signals and worked well.
I must have read wrong because it SUCKED. I probably spent the better course of an hour trying all possible station frequencies, to no avail. Static just would not go away.
With 2 failures, but not wanting to give up, I ultimately had to buy the one thing I’ve been trying to bypass… a new headunit. Probably for the better, the OEM deck had those analog shaft controls, a tell-tale sign of stone age era technology.
Normally for the wiring harness, I would solder all the connections and then shrink wrap, but that caliber of work in this case would be akin to polishing a turd; I just twisted the wires by hand and used electrical tape.
In the Previa, the headunit is attached to the surround fascia… The rats nest of wires lying in wait must mean that the original deck was replaced at one point.
Whoever did the hack-job on the wiring harness was without question addicted to psychedelic drugs. There are cables that are joined together, 4 different connector heads, redundant colors, and cables that have simply been cut and disregarded.
The rear speakers currently don’t work until I have more time to figure out the wiring mess, but all the other features appear to be functioning…
I forgot the exact model of the new JVC headunit, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s actually from their current line-up, but most importantly, plays my iPod well (finally).
Now the countdown begins until the headunit gets stolen! I usually don’t lock the van, and even still, a 2-year old infant would be able to break in.