Anyone installed XM/Sirrus Radio in a car?

Factual Questions
1

I bought a friend Sirrus Radio for Xmas and temporarily installed it using the built-in FM transmitter. In Chicago where dead frequencies are almost nonexistent this is only marginally useful. I’m considering taking the next step and hardwiring it into the stock stereo in the Grand Cherokee. Now, I could pony up and pay Circuit City to do it, but I’m figuring if it’s a manageable job I’d rather do it myself.

Anyone out there done this before on their car? Did you directly wire it into the FM antenna or did you use a aux in? What’s the process? Was disassembling the dashboard the difficult part? What type of inputs/cables does one need to make this work?

Without crossing to far into IMHO territory, is this something better left to professionals?

2

bobotheoptimist bought me Sirius but I don’t know how he did it. I have the boombox one, I know wires are running everywhere into my car. When he gets home I will have him post a reply to help you out. Right now he’s at a Scout meeting. :smiley:

3

I and my SO installed an XM Commander into my car (a Miata), and he also installed the same receiver in his Jag. So long as you know how to cut, splice, piggyback wires, and figure out what wires do what, you should be fine.

Without going into gory detail the steps for my car were: figure out where to put antenna and receiver (the hardest part!), disconnect battery, take apart center console and middle part of dash, move aside carpet to place XM antenna, pull out needed wiring, undo previous splices (after market radio) in order to piggyback in new wires (power and FM interrupt), solder and shrink wrap new connections, slide the black box for the XM unit into the dash, put control/display unit in center console, stuff wiring into place, put car back together.

My radio is old enough that it didn’t have an aux in, which is why we ended up using the FM interrupt. Total time? About three hours or so, but we did spend some time changing all of the wires that were spliced with those twisty connectors to solder/shrink wrap connections.

The experience was similar on the Jag, with some complications because he didn’t want to cut the original wiring.

For the Miata, we only needed to pick up piggyback connectors, flux, and shrink wrap. For the Jag we needed the same and picked up some extra wiring as he didn’t want to cut into the original wires for the FM interrupt. In both cases, the length of the cables/wires attached to the XM modules were plenty long enough.

If I remember correctly, my SO put together a small website with photos detailing how he did it: if you want, I can see if he still has it up and shoot you a link.

<< Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. Study hard, be evil. >>

4

Misread as: Anyone installed XM/Sirrus Radio in a cat?

I’m now entranced by the idea of ambient music that wanders around at will.

5

My SkyFi2 is hardwired into my car stereo.

I got an aux-in adapter to plug it into the CD changer port on my factory radio.

Depending on the car and the radio, you can probably get an adapter for ~$40.

6

It all depends on the car radio and how nice you want it to look. I took the cheap/easy way out in order to get the thing running on x-mas day. Male-male jack into the aux in on the front of the car deck.
Many (or most, maybe) decks now slide right out if you have the proper tool, should be fairly painless to wire it to the thing if that’s the way you want to go about it. Not knowing your car, I’d recommend doing some research to find out how the deck went in before ripping the dash apart.

Couldn’t hurt to ask the nice guys at UltimateElectronics/BestBuy/CircuitCity for an estimate. They can make it look darn nice, and it might be fairly cheap since it’s probably a rather simple job for professionals. I’m a cheapskate, but under $50 might convince me to let them do it.