if your looking for a cleaner install, i'd pick up an aftermarket reciever like pioneer or sony, both of which have built in XM tuners as well as some other nice features and are priced starting around $130 US and up. then i would get the Terk Universal Tuner which should be about $50 US, and add an adapter for your reciver (they make specific ones for differnent brand of reciever).
the install requires some minimal skill (you should know how to install a stereo at the minimum) and might take you an hour tops depending if you have all the right tools: wire cutters, electrical tape, phillips head and flat head screw drivers, maybe some hex wrenchs, a flashlight.
for the following i assume you have removed your stereo and are using an aftermarket replacement. normally the easy part is positioning the antenna, usually placed on the roof of the trunk so it will recieve the best sattelite signal. your next job will be to run the antenna wiring from the rear to the front (this can be time consumming but you can make it look stock if you route the antenna wiring through the trunk lid, under the rear seat, and then under the kick panels and up into the dash via the center console). hook the antenna wiring up to the universal tuner which may be located within the dash if you have space. then you may connect the universal tuner to the appropriate adapter for your reciever. finally connect the adapter to the reciever itself with the supplied cable.
now to power everything up:
assuming you've installed you aftermarket reciever, you want to take the power lead (yellow -from the battery) and splice it so both your reciver and your tuner recive power. you may use the same ground for both the reciver and the tuner.
side notes: the reciver adapter and the tuner connect via RCA audio cables, the adapter and the reciver connect via [an IP-BUS connector in pioneer; possibly similar with Sony, Alpine, etc.], this is the same plug you would plug in a CD- changer or an MP3 player into. check the power drain on your battery! some cars vary in how their stereo electronics are set up and hooking the power to the receiver and tuner might drain the battery if things are not hooked up correctly. after the install is complete, turn on the radio (this will also turn on the XM) and position the antenna if need be to recieve a good signal. the car should be parked out side, with an unobstructed view of the sky if possible. tune the stereo to XM channel 1 i believe and you should hear people talking about activating your radio, etc. this is the preview channel, if you hear this then you are good to activate your XM service. i recommend going online to XMradio.com and setting up an account, they might waive the activation fee if you do this online. go through the motions on the web page and let your radio stay on for atleast an hour -and make sure its tuned to channel 1. your channels will begin to download and within an hour or so you should be able to browse through about 250 stations. you might notice signal loss when travelling though tunnels and under bridges or though cities with large buildings that obstruct the sky, also in some rural areas the signal might be weakend somewhat. overall expect audio quality to be that of an mp3, about 128 kb p/s so it won't be CD quality. i've had mine for about 2 years andabsolutly love it, some of the DJs are annoying (like Bhodi on XM 48) as he seems to be ignorant as well as some of his callers. you will not likely get any advertising on most of the music channels except the ocassional XM radio product being hawked - again on XM 48.
if you have any questions then feel free to ask and send pics if possible. look to spend close to $300 for everything, initial setup and tax included. the subscription rate is $13 per month and $9 per month for subsequent radios.
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24-06-05
Linear Mode
