Great car weekend, after the winter driving school on Saturday (see other post) I finished up stage 2 of my AMI cable re-route project on Sunday. People on here have done much more impressive versions of this, but I was happy with the way it came out. Used two CableJive DockExtenders, a 6' and a 2'. Routed the cable out the back of the glove box, under the center console trim and through the back of the compartment under the armrest.
Stage 1 was last weekend, I removed the glove box (link below, mine had 10 bolts vs. 7 in his but they were easy to find) and carefully expanded a hole that was back there using a drill and a file. Then I routed the 6' cable under the center console and just left it sticking up next to the passenger seat belt.
That worked fine but I wanted to make it better. Under my armrest there was a blank where some cars have an AUX input, mine had a removable felt cover. I was able to drill a hole in the center of the cover, slit one corner with a dremel and then fit the cable through. Not perfect but looks fairly OEM.
To route the cable I removed the rear A/C vent and ashtray (link below), from there it was fairly easy to snake the 2' extender through the blank and connect it to the 6' under the center console beneath the vent. You can see the connection below with the vent/ashtray removed.
Thought maybe all these connections would reduce sound quality, tested it beforehand and couldn't notice a difference but I'm far from an audiophile. MP3s and Pandora sound great to me through the B&O and I can now easily keep my iPhone in that slot in the console.
Very nice. I have not seen any write up or pictures with that AMI version, which is what I have. The other write up on the forum has that older box in the glove box that you can remove. I have the extension cables and ready to do this mod, so I might be asking some questions eventually. Great job!!
Very nice man! I've been wanting to do this exact same thing for a while. Why did you need two extension cables? Would it not work with just one routed from the glove box to the space under the arm rest?
Wow, you beat me to the write up! I did the exact same thing, except I have the 3.5mm ami cable, and run it to my droid phone. I popped out the rear vents just as you did, and ran it through. All in all, took about an hour. Good job
Thanks guys, hope it's helpful. Def seems easier on the '10+ glove boxes like mine with no AMI box to deal with. Prob the main step to be careful on is drilling the glove box hole, as the space I used is right by a thick bundle of AMI cables running on the back of the glove box to the MMI interface I imagine. The whole thing took me several hours, but I mod really slow when doing stuff the first time, especially when removing trim pieces held in by clips. They always feel like they are about to break right before they pop off, so I take my time.
On the cables, if you look at the last picture, where the connection occurs was about as far as the 6' cord would go, as far as I could tell. So I don't think it will reach, at least with my AMI setup with the cable on the far right side of the glove box. You could probably make it work with one cable by drilling/cutting a new hole in the armrest compartment on the front near the cup holders. I thought about that at first, I think you'd want to remove the whole center console to do that, which is doable but more work. I decided to just order another cable, which sort of sucked as they are $25-$30 each.
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