My understanding is that the front of the ipod is white plastic glued to clear plastic, rather than clear plastic with white paint as with the iBook. This pretty much rules out any change of color except painting from the outside (which would most likely look really bad).
As for disassembly pics of the ipod you can get a basic guide
here or if you REALLY want to know exactly what everything is you can buy a full Disassembly Reverse-Engineering Report for only $1950
here.
