Flashback - It's 2006. Jean and I drive home in our new used 2003 Subaru Legacy with 6 disk CD changer. Cut to months later - I'm looking online for a how-to for Legacy auxiliary inputs. No dice. This particular model year has a proprietary interface and nobody has reverse engineered it. Only solution for iPod goodness in the car: iTrip FM transmitter. Years of static-y music follows.

Flashback - early 2010. Riding in the car with friends, Jean asks about whether there's a way to connect the iPod to the stereo. Friends antagonize, saying, "there's got to be a way to wire in an aux in cable." I insist there's no way, since nobody has reverse engineered the interface. The only solution would be a new car radio. Skeptically, friends and Jean leave it alone. Cut to months later - I'm looking online again for a solution. Bingo! Someone has produced a custom circuit board to splice in between the radio and the cd changer with RCA jacks for an aux out to an iPod connector. Hm, it says that 2003 Legacy/Outback will work. Does that mean Legacy & Outback or just the Outback version of the Legacy. Eh, it should work. 

Present day - So you've probably already figured out that it was a bit of an ordeal, but I managed one of the more complex modifications I've attempted in a while. I got the kit last week, which consisted of a breadboard, filter, and RCA to iPod dock connector cable (with wiring for power so it can charge at the same time). On Saturday afternoon I started the project, and finished last night at around 1am. I took several breaks to spend time with friends and even drive around a bunch, meanwhile the inside of the car looked "really ghetto." Total time was probably around 7 hours.

The heart-sinking moment came when I finally took out the harness for the stereo, brought it inside (after having to drill out a stripped screw - man those brass screws are like butter sometimes), took apart the casing for the CD changer and found that the kit wasn't designed for my stereo after all. That's where I stopped on Saturday, and after a fun night, I woke up the next morning rested enough to decide to poke around some more. I took apart the head unit instead, and found a compatible connection for the ribbon cable on the board. Success! Well, no, because there was no room inside the unit to secure the board. So I spent another 45 minutes puzzling out where on the outside of the system I could zip tie the board and have enough slack ribbon to run the connection. There was 1 spot but it was just a centimeter out of alignment enough to dislodge the connection if the wrong pressure was put on it. I tied it in place anyway, put it back in, and a few tries later had it in just the right spot for it to work. I connected the power line by patching into the cigarette lighter port and grounding to an existing grounding screw and put the pieces back together and it was done! 

Or so I thought! After the first test drive, the security module re-seated lower and dislodged the connection, locking up the stereo (it wouldn't turn off! eek!) so I had to go home, take the panels off again, unplug the stereo from behind, find a new spot for the security module, put it back together and test it out again on super jarring roads. This time it survived the meanest pothole I could find and 20 minutes of driving so I called it a night, satisfied. 

The finished product is pretty sweet. This particular kit is a hack in itself - it ties into the audio feed to the entire stereo, so it came with a CD full of silence that you have to switch to when you want to play the iPod; but it's easy to mix it in among the 6 disks in the changer. The sound is amazing - full quality digital audio through the stereo. And with the powered iPod dock connector it works with an iPod and iPhone, charges it at the same time, and lets you control the volume levels on the head unit. 

TL;DR - Someone finally made an iPod connector kit for a late model Subaru car stereo. It was for a different kind of stereo but I made it work anyway because I'm awesome.