Radio Solution Needed

Hi all,

This is my first post on the forums, so thanks for your help. I am having an issue with my radio. I have a 1999 Passat 1.8L Turbo, and have been using a cassette adapter (I know, awful) to play music from my iPhone. This was actually working quite well for a while until the radio started giving me problems. It started off by intermittently refusing to read the tape, flipping the 'sides' a few times and spitting it out, so I thought it was the adapter itself. I tried another adapter and it didn't make any difference. Then it degraded further and just gave me an error message with a 'boop' and sometimes would struggle to even get the tape ejected. Now I'm at the point where if I try to play the tape, the deck gives me a 'no tape' message even though the tape is in there and there's no way to get it out.

All that said, I'm taking my car to the dealer for normal service and want to know what my options are before going in. I'm definitely ready to ditch the tape adapter and get something better. I went to a local audio shop and they told me that putting in an iPod adapter would cost around $400, which seemed quite overpriced. I don't really need a 30-pin or Lightning adapter, just a simple 3.5mm line would suffice, but I can't seem to find the details of what I need to buy online to accomplish this and ensure compatibility. I've heard that it should be a fairly straightforward operation to put in an aux line where the CD changer would go, so any advice on how to do it would be very appreciated.

Thank you!