Saab auxiliary input mod for 1998-2001 Saab 9-3

Important: Only begin this project, if you understand that I am not in any way responsible for any damage that you do to your stereo, car, or self.

This web page describes how to install and auxiliary input on your 1998-2001 Saab 9-3's stereo system, to allow you to plug in your iPod or other music player. If you have a similar stereo that you think works the same as this one, and you want to go ahead and try the mod, be my guest, just remember, do this project at your own risk, I cannot be held responsible for your mistakes.

Update: I am really sorry about all of the spam that has been on this site lately. I have removed the ability to make comments on the site which allowed this to happen. However if you have any questions at all or know of some useful info that could be added to this site please and I will do my best to accomodate you. Again sorry, and thank you for looking.

The stereo.

Most likely, if you here, you have been directed here from Seth Evans' web site. Without the help of Seth, this mod would never have even been considered. Until I read his web site, I didn't even know that my 1999 Saab 9-3 even had the ability to add a telephone, and I certainly didn't know that I could use that to get sound out of my iPod. I strongly recommend that you take a look at his web site before reading this one, because reading his could render this web site unnecessary.

Here's the deal, there are two types of Saabs in regard to telephone capabilities, Telephone Prepared Cars, and Handsfree Prepared Cars. Don't ask my why, but these two types are referred to as Tel 0 and Tel 1 respectively. To determine if your car is Tel 0 or Tel 1, you will need to open up the passenger side panel. This requires a six sided star tool, unless you can get it with a small flat head, but be careful not to strip it. There is one on the outside, and one in the glove box. Once you've done this, remove the side panel, I found its easier if you remove the carpet first. While removing the side panel, you may notice that there is a wire with a big connector on the end attached to the panel. This is what you are looking for. If there isn't a wire, look around for it. It is hard to miss.

The telephone connector	Tel 0 up close (click for larger)

Once you have it, look at the pins inside of the connector, and compare them with the pin out table. If your connector looks like the picture above, with some pins missing, then you, like me, have a Tel 0 car, we are the unlucky ones. If there are no missing pins, then you have a Tel 1 car, and you can head over to Seth's Method which basically involves, buying a Telephone harness, and connecting the wires accordingly. If not, then you have a slightly harder job, which involves rerouting some wires off the back of the stereo.

Pin out Table

Before we proceed, it is important to note, that the connection that we are tapping into, was built to handle voices. Playing music through this connection will not yield the same quality as your CD player. The bass is hardly more than minimal, and the quality difference between the CD player and the telephone connection is not huge, but is discernable. The quality can only be described as good, not bad, but not audiophile quality by any means. The volume goes loud enough for me, but it is not blaring. Also, the connection only has one channel, so your system will produce a mixed mono output, which basically means, that you will still hear all of the sound information from both channels, but both channels will be playing through both speakers. However, it is certainly better than nothing, and I, like I'm sure most of you will be, was certainly willing to sacrifice a bit of sound quality for the ease and convenience of having all of my songs with me in my travels. And now, finally, I can stop burning CD's. If you are not satisfied with this, I would recommend purchasing an aftermarket stereo system with some sort of aux in, or iPod compatibility.

Now, if you have read Seth's web site, then you know that the process is fairly straight forward, it involves grounding the Telephone Mute pin to force the stereo into telephone mode. As you can see on the chart, this involves connecting pins 4 and 5. If you would like to test this out, simply connect the two pins with a small piece of wire while your stereo is on. After a few seconds, you will notice that the stereo mutes the current input, and shows "Telephone" across the screen. If you are having trouble determining which pins are which, you may look at the picture above, or look at the back of the connector, where there are discrete numbers at each corner denoting which pins are which. To make it easy to turn telephone mode on and off, you will need to install a switch between these two pins. I picked up a very nice black paddle switch at RadioShack that blended in with the controls on the car very nicely. My first attempt at this involved connecting directly to the pins with half of a fork connector.

My modified fork connectors and switch	In the connector

While this way works fine It seemed very feeble to me, I wanted something that wouldn't fall apart on bumpy roads, so I just went ahead and cut the wires from back of the connector. If you do this, make sure that you leave a little bit of the wire on the connector side, in case you ever want to reattach them. If you are uncomfortable with this, then you will need to find a way to connect directly to the pins.

Cut wires	Switch from RadioShack (click for larger)

Now that we can easily switch the source to telephone and back, we now need to feed our audio into the stereo. People with Tel 1, can just take the same approach as we have to the pins 4 and 5, and connect pins 7 and 8 to their 1/8'' jack and be done with it. However if you look, at your Tel 0 connector, pins 7 and 8 are conspicuously absent. Luckily for us, Saab did not take the time and effort to build two separate radios for each telephone configuration. Tel 0 and Tel 1 merely describe which type of connector goes onto the back of the stereo unit. We can still gain access to the pins on the back of the stereo, even if they are not delivered to us via the telephone connector. For this, we will need to remove the stereo unit.

This is a fairly simple process, you will need four metal rods that will fit into the four holes on the sides of your stereo. I used small screwdrivers, you can use coat hangers, or other things of similar thickness. Then use a larger screwdriver to pry out the stereo, it won't come too easy, but don't break anything.

Screwdrivers in holes	Prying out stereo

Now that you have your stereo out, you can see the pin out diagram on top, and if you look at the back, you will see the pins that they represent.

Stereo pin out diagram (click for larger)	Pins on back of stereo (click for larger)

We need to connect wires to those pins to run to our 1/8'' jack. The only problem is that there are connectors that plug into all three of those ports. However, there are no pins on the connectors that we are interested in, so we will have access to the pins through the back of the connector.

The back of the connector with missing pins	Feeding the wire into the back

I was able to feed wires into the back of the connector and bring them out the front so when I plugged in the connector, the wires would make contact with my the pins. However, this is probably not the best way of doing it, with my immediate resources, I found this to be the easiest, and it suits me fine. If you can find a better way of doing this, by all means do it, and please leave a comment to let others know. Some of my thoughts, were to take a female spade connector, but I had trouble fitting this in. Also, I thought that I could maybe remove some of the unnecessary pins such as the pins that correspond with pins 1, 2, and 5 on the telephone connector, but I could not get them out, and I didn't not want to risk damaging the rest of the connector. If you take this route, be careful to make sure that you are removing the correct pins. But, if you go ahead and use my method, make sure that your wire isn't brushing up against any other pins when you plug in the connector, because this could lead to interference, or even a short.

Wires through the front of the connector	The ready connector (click for larger)

Once you have the stereo reconnected, turn it on once before putting it all the way back in. I found that it wasn't working after I put the stereo back, and it turned out that I had bent a pin on a completely different connector, after straightening it out, it worked fine again. If all is well and good, feed your wires down through the side panel and then slide your stereo back into its normal position. Now that you have your wires connected to your stereo, and can easily change the source, all you need to do is connect your iPod. While it's fine to just have a wire coming out with a male plug, I like the clean look of a female port on my dash. I picked up the appropriate female port and wired it up.

Seth's Wiring Diagram(note pins 7 and 8) are our new wires from the stereo.	My jack, I soldered, taping is fine too.

Now that the jack and switch are wired up, get a male to male 1/8'' cable, and plug one end into your jack and one end into your iPod, flip the switch, put on your favorite victory tune, make sure the volume is up, and savor your moment of triumph of proprietary stereo systems.

Now that you have everything in working order, it is time to put the finishing touches on your project. While you could just drape the wires out of the side panel, or somewhere like that, you have done all this work and you might as well make it look nice. I popped out the blank button next to the seat warmer button, and put my jack and switch on it. It looks quite nice in my opinion.

My switch mounted on the button	The final job

Now that I have accomplished this. I am hoping to put some sort of dock connector in the car to allow charging, and line out from the dock connector. I have a few ideas, so I will post this if I get it done. For now, please feel free to discuss this project in the comments section at the bottom. Here are some final pictures.

Saab + iPod + Streetlight Manifesto = Bliss (despite the heat)

There it is.