When you choose to daily drive a used car which is more than 20 years old, you’ve pretty much accepted the fact that there’s going to be a few modern necessities you’re going to have to do without. And more often than not, the problem exists right here with the stereo. If ya lucky, your car might have a CD player – but when was the last time you ever purchased or burnt one of these? Or even worse, your only external source of music might have to come from one of these… the cassette tape.
But the biggest issue here doesn’t really relate to the media that you’re using. The main issue is of course a complete lack of bluetooth audio streaming. The ability to stream your favourite tracks from sources like Spotify or YouTube is an absolute godsend in today’s modern world. And to drive a vehicle without this ability is like stepping back into the stone ages.
Now of course it is extremely easy to upgrade your car’s head unit. You just have to pop down to your local automotive parts store and pick up any number of head units which they have available. But to me the biggest issue with these head units is they look utterly shit in any car built before the mid 1990s.
So, if you wanted to keep your car’s existing head unit, you probably think your next step would be to buy one of those FM transmitters which plug into the cigarette lighter. Or perhaps even worse, one of these cassette tape adaptors – which leaves you with an auxiliary wire hanging out of your car’s head unit. Like a tapeworm out of a dog’s ass. But the problem with both of these options is they rely on dated technologies to get your music into the head unit of the car. The audio quality suffers as a result, and you’ll never truly be happy.
But what if I told you there’s another option? After one relatively simple and cheap mod, that you could stream audio directly from your iPhone or Android device into your car’s head unit. Let me show you how.nd install it into the vehicle. And that’s the end result. Now the process may differ depending on which head unit you’re working with – but the end result is going to be the same. You’ve got the bluetooth module which needs to be hardwired into your head unit’s wiring harness. And you have your 3 signal wires – your white, red and black, which need to be attached somewhere on to the tape module inside. It’s really as simple as that – so let’s go try it out.
So! We’re back in the Fairlane with our new bluetooth-enabled factory head unit, and from the outside it looks as though nothing has changed – which is the real beauty of this mod. Because I’m able to retain the existing 1990s facade, but with a little bit of modern technology thrown in. Let me show you how it works.