Ford Ranger MP3 Radio aux Input MOD

I recently purchased a new cell phone and wanted to play my MP3's in my truck. My truck has the factory radio in it and did not alow me to do this. I once used a FM linker to play my MP3's but found the music quality very poor. This was my solution to the problem...
This project was a featured artical on Hacked Gadgets Feb 18 2008.

All that I want is a way to play my MP3's on my radio in my truck. I could go out and purchase a new radio...$80.00 Or I can MOD the one that I have to work with my MP3 player. $6.00 That was simple!

To start I needed to remove the radio from the dash. This requires a tool that you can buy from a Auto Zone. They look like two "U".

After pulling out the radio.. I started to look at the circuit. I found no real way to reverse engineer this to work where I can switch from the radio to MP3 player. I would have to switch from CD player to MP3 player.

I then found the Right and Left speaker outputs from the CD player with a AA battery and "popping" the speakers..

I would later find that the silk screen on the CD board told me this....Doooou!!!!

By removing the in-line resistors I was able to find some nice places to pickup my nodes. I ended up replacing the resistors on the relay. (950 Ohm) I chose to use a 12 V DPDT relay to make this route cleaner.

I then needed a place to switch from CD player to MP3 player... I used the cigarette lighter..(dont smoke!)

While that was setting I made the jumpers to the relay...

Now I am able to play my MP3 from my Juke phone on my factory radio!