audio input for factory Saturn radio?

A friend of mine got a Saturn Vue recently. He's inside his dash playing around with various things so he can get his amateur radio gear hooked up as it was in the previous car anyway, so I asked him if he could add RCA inputs to the jack panel he's adding.

The radio has no obvious inputs, but I have no idea if the harness has something he can tap... because I can't find out a damn thing about it.

Any suggestions for getting info about this factory stereo? (3 pictures )

Do they have anything for the Saturn at www.rcainput.com ?

If the headunit can control a CD changer then the CD changer can be replaced with Auxiliary Input Converter which would then give you some handy RCA inputs.

That stereo doesn't seem to have CD changer input. In fact, no Saturn stereo that I've ever removed (2 of them) does. I think your SOL.

On the other hand, Crutchfield's Saturn adapter (the plastic piece with the pocket) kit is very good. I think getting a head unit with Aux-in would be easiest. My $.02

Yes it is possibile to do. However, it's going to require tapping into a few wires.

It should be the same for the L series, VUE, and ION, as they all use the same stereo. This is from the L series service manual, but I recommend going to http://www.saturnfans.com/forums/ and asking the question there. Lots of people who work for Saturn / GM, and/or have access to information should be able to find exactly. what you are looking for.

Based on the 2000L service manual..

left front gray and tan
left rear yellow and brown
right front dk green and lt green
right rear lt blue and dark blue

orange for clock
yellow ign
gray dimmer
brown park lamp input

subwoofer dk blue/white and lt green/black

Nil. They appear to have no GM stuff period.

All of those (wires) sound like (audio) outputs or (sense) inputs. The goal here is an audio input.

He seems to have no desire to replace the factory radio, so even if I bought him a replacement HU (which I don't think is really out of the question) I don't think he'd use it.

Basically this was just so I could plug my empeg into his car.

Try Blitzsafe

Yeah. Screwed. His radio is a Matsushita, not Alpine, Pioneer or Delphi.

Is his stereo a CD or is it a tape?

I am spending the week in a rental car (don't ask) and went to Radio shack and got a tape adapter and a 12v cig-lighter adapter and I'm golden for Empeg tunes. Easy as cake.

If it's a CD, then what about an FM modulator?

Tape adaptors are ass. So are FM modulators. Both rejected out of hand.

Tape adaptors are ass. So are FM modulators. Both rejected out of hand.

...but appear to be your only options at this time, short of replacing the stereo.

(I looked at the third photo, since it's a CD player, your ONLY option short of replacing the stereo is an FM modulator.)

Or opening the thing up and finding solder points

Or opening the thing up and finding solder points

There's a thought. If he'd let you tinker with it... somehow I doubt that, though.

Actually I bet I could get him to do it himself, but that's another story.

One of the guys on the mp3car bbs did this a couple years ago. IIRC, he just found some solder points before the amplifier and patched into them. He had to leave a CD in the player to get it to work, but other than that, it worked great.

I was going to do this with the factory radio in the crapmobile (the van I drove to Ohio last year) and ended up deciding it wasn't worth it (it had a broken cassette deck in it) despite the better reception the factory radio got, because I simply don't do enough FM DXing to worry about it anymore. All of the radio stations I used to listen to were outlying Pittsburgh (Beaver Falls, Greensburg, East Liverpool, Blairsville, Indiana, Northern Cambria) and without exception they've all become useless, the last, probably 10 miles out of range of my house, about a year ago.

Here's a link to what I was talking about...it was a pioneer unit, but the priciples are the same:

Telek's head unit hack

Found this.

http://www.tetch.com/docs/vue/

This may help. This applies to all 2000+ Saturns.