How to add a auxillery cable to your 6 disc.

mnetwork

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So I have an 03. Wanting to be able to use music off my phone too. Where exactly do you solder up the 3 wires to a female 3.5 jack? Could you explain the silent cd thing then too? Are you tapping in to the cd output so you need to spin a cd to keep the radio on that source? I'm sold on it, just want to understand it.
That is exactly what is happening. Take out radio, undo some bolts on the side holding the CD changer to the radio. Carefully pull CD changer out. Unplug a ribbon cable connecting the two. Close to the ribbon cable socket on the CD changer you will see marked solder points. The ones you want are LOUT and ROUT. There is also a solder point near those called GND. You could technically use any ground, but they were all close so I used that. I took wire (forgot the gauge right now, but use your judgement after seeing the size of the points) and strip them so a very short amount is exposed. Add a little solder to the tips. And carefully melt that solder to connect it to the solder point. I did red to ROUT, green to LOUT, and black to GND. I used green in lieu of white. Hot glue the solder points you just added wire to to keep the stress low and to protect those spots. Put everything back together and route the wire between the changer and rest of radio and bolt them back together. Then just merge this wire with whatever you want. I chose to merge it to a short female 3.5mm audio cable. I then connected that to the Bluetooth adapter I mentioned earlier. I used little vampire clips to to tap power for the Bluetooth on the radio harness. Make sure you used switched power here and not constant. I used a multimeter to find those and don't remember the color. I ziptied everything up nice and put it back in.

As for the silent CD, the site I gave earlier has a full CD image you can burn. You can also download individual tracks and make your own. I just downloaded the image. You leave this CD always playing. Now you're CD player is your AUX IN. You are tied directly into the CD pre-amps and the sound is perfect.

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mnetwork

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I understand there were slight variations with radios, will the OP's method work with the radio that came in my 2001 cobra? Want to do it once and do it right, i've already fussed with an aftermarket double din and i hated it.
All these Ford radios have this. Only difference will be where the solder points are and possibly what they are called. Easiest thing is to find two points next to each other that have R and L in the beginning of the name. I've seen older docs that called them RCHAN/LCHAN or something like that. It will always be on the CD changer side though.

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1wild-horse

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AWESOME! Thanks mnetwork, that was the perfect description. Exact info I was looking for! So the BT dongle you mentioned, you just pair your phone to it then, no wires? That is bad ass! Just put that on my list. Thanks again!
 

mnetwork

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AWESOME! Thanks mnetwork, that was the perfect description. Exact info I was looking for! So the BT dongle you mentioned, you just pair your phone to it then, no wires? That is bad ass! Just put that on my list. Thanks again!

Yup, the Bluetooth device is just a tiny device with power, ground, and male RCA cables. I just used a female 3.5mm jack on the radio wires I soldered and used a 3.5mm to RCA adapter to connect the two. No wires and you pair the phone and you can play the audio just as you would in a car that comes with Bluetooth A2DP.
 

1wild-horse

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Just finished this morning and I'm thrilled to say the least! Was pretty easy, a little prepping and planning made it simple for me. Here is a picture of the board where you make the solder connections. And thanks to MNetwork for the links and the help!
 

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1wild-horse

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Bumping this with a little update. So, apparently you dont need a blank cd, I flopped cds thinking it would play some Kid Rock and didn't get the Sirius XM app shut down right away and it just kept going. Even tho it was spinning a recorded cd. Could not hear it in the background either.
 

mnetwork

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Bumping this with a little update. So, apparently you dont need a blank cd, I flopped cds thinking it would play some Kid Rock and didn't get the Sirius XM app shut down right away and it just kept going. Even tho it was spinning a recorded cd. Could not hear it in the background either.
I wonder how that is. Does the CD audio come through as soon as you disconnect your aux cable from your device or just when you stop playing? It may be overpowering the CD preouts...

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1wild-horse

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Definitely wierd. It actually keeps playing right over ot until I either drop the Bluetooth connection or shut the app down. I do have the media output on my phone at max volume though.
 

bmccoy11

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orca-image-1508114186964.jpg_1508114187141.jpeg orca-image-1508114198602.jpg_1508114198781.jpeg I have an "Audiophile" 6 CD changer stereo out of my Ford Escape that I'd like to solder an aux cord to. I tore it all apart and the CD changer board looks unlike anything I've seen in these threads online. Nothing on the board is labeled LCH, RCH, or anything similar. Does anyone have a clue where I should solder to?
 

mnetwork

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View attachment 1438801 View attachment 1438802 I have an "Audiophile" 6 CD changer stereo out of my Ford Escape that I'd like to solder an aux cord to. I tore it all apart and the CD changer board looks unlike anything I've seen in these threads online. Nothing on the board is labeled LCH, RCH, or anything similar. Does anyone have a clue where I should solder to?
Is this the whole board or is there more not shown?

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bmccoy11

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Is this the whole board or is there more not shown?

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That's pretty much the entire daughterboard for the CD changer. The other side of the PCB doesn't seem to have anything interesting on it. I even tried looking up the datasheets for the Toshiba IC on this board, I still can't find any raw audio output on it.
 

mnetwork

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I see two solder points labeled "L R38 R" in between the two square chips. That could possibly be L + R pre-outs. You could solder to L and GND (lower right) and output to a little speaker to test.
 

bmccoy11

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I see two solder points labeled "L R38 R" in between the two square chips. That could possibly be L + R pre-outs. You could solder to L and GND (lower right) and output to a little speaker to test.
I'll try that when I get home tonight. Hopefully that'll be the trick, thanks!
 

bmccoy11

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I'll try that when I get home tonight. Hopefully that'll be the trick, thanks!

It doesn't seem like it worked to me, but my soldering may have been shoddy. I don't hear any audio at all coming from my phone with the CD player on. I was having a hard time getting the ground wire soldered to the chassis of the CD changer, so maybe that could have something to do with it?
 

bmccoy11

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Unfortunately, that didn't seem to work at all. I was finally able to generate a silent audio CD and my phone rarely detects that anything is actually plugged in. At this point I'm not sure what else to do, the two PIE adapters that I've tried for this stereo just flat out don't work and this doesn't seem to be going well either. I'm still stuck with a crappy FM transmitter for now.
 

Arod5327

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So I tried this method on my 03 cobra stereo and it worked. Not perfect at all but I could hear a distinct song noise. At first hardly any sound came out, I reattempted it twice but no good clear sound was coming out so I got frustrated and just took off the soldered aux cord, and now when I'm playing music through my CD player, audio only comes out the left side speakers. Im pretty sure I pulled the stock soldered points off the motherboard thing and screwed up the whole right out audio channels :(
I guess ill just be upgrading the stock head unit, unless someone has a spare stereo laying around they want to sell.
 

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