Sterlin was born with a AM/FM radio and a cassette deck. The audio unit is ready for a CD changer, but none was ever fitted. Radio reception is unlikely to be either reliable or understandable where we are going and what modern day expedition traveller carries cassette tapes? An audio upgrade was certainly required.
In the past we have experimented with fake cassettes with a headphone cable attached to it. This has been a remarkably unpleasant experience and usually losing either the left or right channel. The FM transmitter connector to the iPod was equally as bad. It was time for a proper iPod interface.
We fitted a GROM iPod interface adaptor. This ingenious little device plugs into the back of the existing Alpine audio unit and acts a bit like a CD changer. Just push the CD button on the front of the existing audio unit and magically we have access to all of our music stored on the iPhone, all 40 GBs of it. We can control the music through the iPhone music app interface and even skip through songs using the existing controls mounted on the steering wheel.
The GROM unit is installed in the free space above the glove box, with a cable connecting to the back of the existing audio unit. It was quite an involved job getting the audio unit out and a special tool had to be fabricated for the job. I guess they do not want people stealing the radios. But once the audio unit was removed from the dashboard, it was an extremely easy job to connect all the wires as the GROM unit came with the appropriate wiring harness for the Alpine unit in the Land Rover Discovery II. The GROM unit connects to the iPhone with a Apple-like cable which exits from the center dash board just above the low range transfer shifter. The GRO unit offers an alternative method to the iPod using a Bluetooth connection, but this option is more expensive and we would still need to provide power to the iPhone, which the audio cable already provides. So overall the audio cable seems like a better option.
Total cost of the GROM unit was $120 plus several hours of labor to install it. We are extremely pleased with this particular modification to Sterlin, and highly recommend it.
