ok, so i got my original idea from this thread:

http://www.scoobymods.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3064

The problem is that i'm extremely picky and have to have things looking neat and tidy. initially i thought you could just slap a piece of CF on top of the mess and make it look nice and neat. however, i was wrong.

see in the original ipod dock thread the entire back end of the cupholder "slide out" portion is removed in order to allow the dock to fit, this presents another problem in that some rookie could literally yank the dock right out of my dash since its stopping mechanism is also removed when that much plastic is cut out. again, me being picky i couldnt have this so i needed to devise a way to make sure the plastic stoppers stayed in place while making sure the dock fit and at the same time looked pretty.

the only solution to this is to "lower" the ipod dock. i cut about 3mm off the top of the dock and did the same to its support tray. this allowed the dock to either be flush or slightly sunk in under the cupholder allowing it to open and close freely.

Wow! That is a slick setup. Does the dock charge the i-pod or do you have that just to prop it up for easy access? How is the cassette adaptor working out for you? I've tried 2 different brands but they both sound like garbage.

actualy every tape adapter i've tried pretty much sucks as far as quality is concerned, no matter the setting it will eventually get distorted or develop a hiss if u turn it up loud enough. i did this dock mod in preperation for my ddx-7015 that i'll hopefully be getting in the not so distant future.

Nice....but dont you want it facing the driver?

exactly my question

thats pretty much the worst part about this. as you can see form the pics the dock is too wide to fit in at any sort of an angle so it just kinda points that way, its really not hard to see at all. the only benefit is suppose is that i dont get blinded when the backlight comes on... but thats just me making excuses.

aside from the angle the stereo jack on the back of the dock has horrible output, its super loud and super distorted and the volume cannot be balanced from the ipod directly, so i still ahve to plug the adapter in through the top of the ipod. the "data" port next to it however works great, so like i said before, for now its jsut to hold the thing untill i get my headunit.

so, if your thinking about doing this i'd say dont waste your time unless you plan on getting some sort of headunit with ipod integration. otherwise its just a huge waste of time for a little bit of car eye candy.

isn't the jack on the back of the dock just a line-out? I played around with a dock with my old ipod and it outputed pretty good sound to home speakers. In theory the audio should sound better when you control the volume with your deck versus the ipod itself.

your mod is great craftmanship-wise, but I too am baffled why you would install the thing facing away from the driver. It may be facing towards teh passenger, but it's pretty awkward to browse music leaning forward and having the ipod vertical, most people will want to pull it off and then you get to deal with speaker pop. Someone here did an install in the little tray that pulls out by the shifter, and the dock fit in it perfectly after they got done with it, and wasn't in view all the time. I like your concept, but don't like the idea of the ipod flying out at eye-level if you get in an accident. The backlight at eye-level is also going to be annoying if you have a newer ipod with a color screen.

It looks like he would have had to hack up the dock if he wanted it to be oriented towards the driver (from the pics it's a tight fit between the rails of the cup holder)