iPod and the Mini Cooper

After I had loaded 7000+ songs onto my iPOD I was determined to banish CDs from my car. My car had recently been broken into and about 30 CDs were taken. In addition, swapping CDs during my one hour commute was just dangerous.

I'm driving a Mini Cooper, now with over 30,000 miles on it (fresh off the boat in April 2002!).

I did quite a bit of searching to piece together how to do this, so here it is all in one place for those who join us from a succesful Google search!

First of all I recommend avoiding the FM transmitter option, both analog and digital tuners. The sound is compressed and you'll inevitably hit some interference during an extended commute.

Rather, you want to wire in right to the head unit of your car stereo. On a 2002 Mini there is no easy way to do this. On a 2003 Mini and beyond your dealer can install a cable kit so that your AUX cable is available (although the default is that they run it to the glovebox - why??).

On a 2002 Mini what you need to do is use the CD changer input and turn that into your AUX input. Biltzsafe makes a special cable to do just this for about $140. You can buy the cable right from Blitzsafe and install it yourself. Howevere, I found that a nearby car dealer got a much better price from Blitzsafe and the cable plus install was less than what it would have cost me to buy just the cable directly. You'll need to connect the cable near the rear hatch panel and run it to the dashboard so a professional install is recommended.

That will give you a left/right RCA cable into your Mini head unit. When you hit the MODE button on the radio to CD-99, then you're now in AUX mode. Easy.

Now pick up a Belkin auto-adapter, about $50, and connect that to the RCA cables with a headphone to RCA adapter cable, about $4.

On my Mini I also added a 3 to 1 auto power adapter and put all the wiring back behind the center column near the carpet. All that sticks out is the Belkin iPOD connector and a phone charger cable.

Caveat - you may get some noise interference if you are charging your phone while you are playing your iPOD. For the cleanest sound, unplug your phone. Engine noise is virtually non-existent otherwise.

I drop my iPOD into the cup holder, plug it in and I'm off! Total cost (not including iPOD) was about $200 and worth every penny. When i get to work I unplug it and drop it into the cradle on my desk for sound during the workday. Cool.