e30 car stereo help needed : converting back to stock

[grantdavis28 8]

Hey guys, This may be a long post but I will try keep it brief.

I currently have in my e30

-5.25" infinity components in the kickpanels, running off a 250w shitty sony amp

-5.25" alpine 2 way cheapo speakers in the parcel shelf under grills

-a panasonic 1200w amp running a 10" JBL sub in a custom box in the boot, the custom box is just sitting in the boot so easy to remove with the amp mounted to the back of the rear seats.

-all this is running from a (at the time) really good Panasonic CQ-C7303U headunit.

So heres my problem. The head unit is f**ked itself, it skips on every bump i go over the connections inside the unit are abit shitty, the faceplate has a broken clip so doesnt contact well. and just recently all the leds in the screen just dies so I can no longer see what im doing, that and the ipod connectivity is so terrible I dont use it.

I also never crank the music anymore and think I could happily do with out the sub and get more boot space for kiteboarding gear.

So what im wanting to do know, which is what I need help with, is installing my original BMW alpine tape head deck. but i want to confirm a few things with you guys first:

-Does anyone have a tutorial on the aux input mod that has been done to solder it into the tape deck connections?

-Can i still run the small 250w amp but using just the speaker cable inputs to get better sound out of the component speakers?

-Is this a completely stupid idea and I should just leave it and by a new headunit?

I really like how right now apart from the headunit the car looks stock and I would like to get it back to that, hence the install of the original head unit.

any help would be very appreciated! plus any thoughts on what I should do otherwise.

Cheers

Grant.

Edited March 23, 2014 by GRUNTS

[grantdavis28 8]

Im pretty sure this is the original head unit I have.

[Neal 544]

Picture of back ?

[grantdavis28 8]

I have to confirm as my original one is in storage atm, but im pretty sure it looks like this.

[Neal 544]

Was looking to see if it had the original Alpine din connector or early cd stacker connection. The first would give you a .5 volt output that could be connected to your sony amp rca inputs giving a cleaner signal than connecting to speaker out.

The second (if it had CD stacker din connector) could be used as an AUX input.

otherwise , trace the tape head to a small PCB board. This will more than likely have a grey screen cable which contains two wires and a braid surround which will go off to the main HU board. This is where you'd tap into to give to piggy back and aux. Make sure that if going down this path you don't use full volume of phone / mp3 player otherwise damage to the electronics may occur if the signal can be 2 volts from the RCA.

[MD13 494]

^ I'd just replace the head unit