The adapter plate merely sits between the plastic cupholder and the cupholder trim. There is no trick to it, it just sits there, and fills the space where the rubber piece used to be. As long as you use the right thickness of plastic, It will be held in place by the upper trim piece.

I don't have any photos with the electronics attached to the dock, because that dock has was sold after I totalled my R53. You just epoxy the connector to the bottom (you may have to zip-tie the clips on the side as well).

Here are a couple of photos of the dock without the electronics. The one on the right is for the R53. It is the original dock in the first post that was made from an actual ipod dock instead of just the dock plate. The one on the left is one that I was working on for my R56, but it does not utilize a DICE-like device, it is simply a dock (I don't have the ipod control in the new car). I have included the photo In case anyone wanted to go that route with an R53.

 

ok that helps out alot. I want to try and use a universal dock so that i wont be limited to just 1 ipod as i have several and others i know have ones so if they want to listen in my car they can. I see on the on on the left it looks to have a dock already installed in it. Can you tell me more about that? Did you build that or mold it or something it looks very professional.

 

Putting the universal dock in the cupholder may yield a few problems. First and foremost, the dock electronics may not actually fit while allowing a dock cable to be connected. Second, the iPod dock is not a passthrough for all of the pins on the connector, so if you are using a DICE or the MINI solution, it may not work at all (it didn't when I tried it).

The dock on the left is too big for the first gen MINI. It is one that I was experimenting with for my R56. It is simply the inside of my iPhone dock epoxied to some ABS and then attached to the underside. It is worthwhile to note that I did actually break a component from the circuit board when I took the iphone dock apart due to the way that apple puts them together, had it not been for a friendly electronics engineer at work, It would have cost me another $30 to try again. The R56 cupholder is quite a bit bigger than the R53, so the dock itself does actually fit, but it doesn't look like I can fit the cable in there too without cutting a rather large hole in the cupholder.

Both were both built using the same method in the first post. I highly recommend using the plastruct bondene instead of glue, as it does not leave a gap between the two pieces, It kind of melts the two plastics together From there it is just a good deal of sanding and a little painting to make it look good.

 

yeah i have taken both apart and the universal dock was easier to take apart than the iphone dock. Funny thing you should mention it not working for my current car (04 VW jetta) i bought a ipod adapter just like the Dice from a company called Blitzsafe works the same way and if its plugged directly in works fine, through the iphone dock it only charges it doesnt play, and through the universal dock everything work just like when its plugged directly in. So i have tested it and only the universal works apparently.

 

Nice work

 

Hmm, I'm interested in the cup transmitter from Amazon. However, it seems from several reviews that the sound quality is bad if you have a lot of radio stations around you. I drive a lot between Columbus and Dayton and am wondering if I'd have to constantly be changing the radio station to find a clear channel or not.

On a scale of 1-5 (5 best), how would you rate it, Dawger101?

 

Looks great, so there is no way this will work for the r56? :(

 

After installing my double din, I'm jumping on this. Thanks for the idea!