nh7cy

Tommorow I will be taking an old 65watt car stereo amplifier thats been sitting around my garage, wire it to the car's stock speakers and the battery, and hook it up to my ipod.

I'm anticipating the arrival of my new speakers and radio but until then i need my music!

I'll post updates with pictures if i get around to it.

billthe3

A cheap stereo is having a $20 boombox in the seat next to you. I had to do that in my camry for at least half a year till I got a new radio.

Did you end up finishing all your engine work?

Bill Lucas

How do you plan to control the volume? An iPod is not a preamp.

mavfan

he'll have to set the gain of the amp to a desired level, and use the volume on the ipod accordingly

Glen Watkins

LOL, Reminds me of when I was in High School...

nh7cy

Haha, yeah i'll be using my ipod's volume control for this, and Bill, yes, the engine work is all done, i've been driving the car for a week and plan to get some good pictures out of it next time i go out..

Bill Lucas

My point is that there has to be some kind of interface between the iPod and the amp. The iPod does not have RCA outs for connection to an external amp. This little project is not quite as simple as some may think.

tyro

Get an 1/8" TRS plug to RCA cable, set the gain on the amp and change the volume with the iPod's headphone level.

..And pray that the old amp doesn't f-up your iPod!

white924s

amp shouldn't mess up the ipod, but be careful about how high you set the ipod volume - it could overwhelm the amps inputs causing clipping, saturation and other fun stuff that can ruin an amp

Zporsche944

i did the same thing cept it was a mp3 cd player and a 1000watt referbished 89 dollar amp (that blew after 2 weeks, has nothing to do with the way I set it up just it was a **** amp)

944kid

Ghetto stereo, anyone? This was IT for a few short weeks of E30 ownership:

nh7cy

i've done this before with a cd player and the same set up except it was in my garage and not in my car,. i have a few 1/8inch to rca adapters lying around so its pretty much plug and play, not to mention, the stock 4x6 speakers don't really need that much drive to begin with, although i do wish i i already had my replacements, i know the second i hit the volume those speakers are going to crackle like theres no tomorrow. the inputs on amps are pretty much low level though as they are meant for mostly subwoofer use. if you were to hook up the rca outputs on the back of your car stereo to a multimeter you would find out that they hardly put out more than a regular headphone jack, reason being theres no point in amplifying a signal if its already going to an amp anyway. you do have to adjust the gain though. too much gain and you'll have alot of distortion, too little gain and you won't hear anything.