I saw one of these little gadget boxes advertised on eBay UK -

The advert said it was for integrating an iPod into a Suzuki Grand Vitara's built in the dash stereo, so I figured it might work with my iPhone as well, as that is basically an iPod as well... so I bought one to give it a go, I figured if it didn't work I could either buy a cheap iPod to go in the GV, or sell the gadget box back on eBay... ;)

So, here it is, a little box of tricks and two cables... the multi-coloured one goes into the back of the stero, and the black one plugs into the iPod, and hopefully an iPhone...

Closeup, bit blurry when I upload it to the PC, but I'm not dismantling my dashboard to take a better picture of it :p

Here we go, deep breath, and start taking an almost brand new GV to bits! :o

The two big silvery strips up the sides of the centre console easy out quite easily, starting at the bottom pop a sharp thin blade under the edge of it, just to lever it up, and then slip in a small flat screwdriver just to lever it a bit more, and then when you can get a finger in you can gently ease the silver strips out - they are just a tight fit... they will come out... carefully! ;)

And then whip out the eight pozi-screws that hold the stereo and all the aircon controls, etc... as the two pieces are connected.

This is what we're aiming for, to get the multicoloured cable into the back of the stereo - it's the one on the left above.

I disconnected all the plugs and pulled the whole centre console piece out, as I want to drill it (!) to fit a bracket for the iPhone... read on ;) There's four plugs to undo - the green and grey ones do all the four wheel drive and heater / air-con controls, and the blue one is the stereo, and there's an aeriel connector as well, and that's it! Then the whole centre piece can be removed...

And here's the back, no reason for this picture other than I thought it might interest someone to see what's behind it all! I thought before I took it off that there'd be heater cables and things, but nothing mechanical there at all, it's all electronic!

Now comes the brave bit - taking a drill to the dash! I drilled a hole just big enough to get the small black connector through, so that it can connect into the gadget box concealed behind the dash...

Then I fitted a grommit to conceal the hole... I obviously had to cut a quarter of the way through the grommit, i.e. to the hole in the middle, to get it over the cable, you can just about see the cut to the left... i.e. at the nine o'clock position.

Then I drilled a further four smaller holes to screw the bracket on using small self-tapping screws... must point out at this point that all five holes have been drilled into the round blanking cap, so that when I trade the GV back into the dealer they just need to replace the blanking cap... ;)

I then attached the gadget box to the dashboard with a huge tie-wrap to keep it in place and stop it rattling.

And then reassembled the dashboard and eased those big silver strips back in again...

Nice and neat install, and easy to take out later... just that blanking cap to replace one day...

Now, let's see if it works? (Of course it does, I wouldn't have drilled the dash without testing it all, would I ?!)

A warning message pops up saying that this accessory is not designed to work with the iPhone, but it works perfectly, so just click on "No" and the message disappears and everything works fine! ;)

So here it is installed and working... with Bon Jovi playing... of course!

Notice how you can still see and get to all the other controls perfectly, and it's out of the way of both your knee when it's resting on the centre console, and your hand when you're changing gear ;)

Notice also how the stereo in the dash now says "CDC Disk 1 Track 1" that clever little gadget box fools the stereo into thinking it's got a multi-disk CD player connect to it... somebody clever's designed this!

So, we have track lists on the iPhone (or iPod) touch-screen for track selection, or...

... you can use the controls on the steering wheel to go up and down the tracks too!!!

Chuffed with the install... quite neat if I do say so myself! ;)

So, endless digitally-perfect music, which can be played random by "CD" / Artist / or all the tracks on the iPhone (or iPod), so you never get bored of the single CD in the dash! :D

And, being as it's an iPhone... you can also surf the 'net and check your email!

That's my favourite site - www.shropshire-suzuki.co.uk - see you there for a chat! I post as "Bob", come and join me on the friendliest Suzuki discussion board on the 'net! ;)

And Google Maps! Should get even better when the 3G iPhone comes out in July (in the UK).

And, videos of course (although not when driving of course!)

But the reason I wanted it mainly was for music! touch screen track selection and endless random playing... perfect for cruising along in the GV...

Enjoy! ;)