New iPhone, Ancient Car

Like many overextended young people, I have a relatively new iPhone and a relatively old car. I love my car (a 93 Camry with 250k) and will probably drive it for another 100k miles (unless I get the oil changed, in which case I might get another 200k). Unlike many young people, I don't have a tape deck in my car to accommodate a cassette adapter, so my options for listening to my iPhone while driving have been limited.

For the longest time, I had an iRiver FM transmitter that I got for 30 bucks 3 years ago. About 3 months ago, I snagged the iRiver cable on something and broke the connection. I tried to repair it myself, but after a lot of black tape and aggravation, I decided a monkey with ADHD would have had better luck.

With no such monkey available, I went to buy a replacement transmitter, only to find that in the past 3 years, the FM transmitter people have recognized the profit potential in their little gadget, and have jacked the price up to the $60 range. Of course, there was no way I was going to pay $60 for technology that was $30 3 years ago.

After much searching, I came across a really crappy transmitter at Radio Shack for only $30. I bought it, and endured a couple of months of the worst podcast and music audio quality imaginable (and this device seemed to actually amplify the usual GSM pop you get with the phone).

Lately, I'd given up, and resorted to listening to NPR full time, missing all my favorite programs, falling behind on podcasts, and basically just coming up with excuses to use my wife's car (which has an aux jack). I had a glimmer of hope when I came across this article:

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/the-complete-guide-to-iphone-car-integration/

However, after reading through all the variations of "get a cassette adapter" and "get an FMtransmitter", I gave up and listened to NPR for a few more weeks.

But then, today, I was wandering about in Best Buy, and got lost in that creepy car audio section. As I scanned the many decks on the wall, I noticed something that should have been obvious to me all along: even the crappiest audio decks these days have a built in aux jack!

So, in fact, I bought the crappiest audio deck for, you guessed it, $60, and went home, where I discovered that changing an audio deck in a '93 Camry is substantially more involved than changing a CD.

After grappling with Google and my screwdriver, I came across this site: http://www.installdr.com/
where I found the exact info I needed to help me change my deck. Took about 2 hours, and I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that the car won't explode in the middle of the night, but my iphone now plugs right into the car, no FM crap, no GSM pop, and only 1 cable (now I can worry about getting a nice little mount to keep it all tidy).