I bought my Father’s 2010 Ford Escape. It’s a nice car, but Ford Sync sucks and we have a few issues with the radio. I bought my wife a line-in cable so she can just connect her Ipod Touch to the radio. It works.
However, we faintly hear Sirius radio through the “aux” line-in option, especially when she has it turned way up. She listens to audiobooks on her Ipod and some are so quiet, she has to have the volume up quite loud.
This is the faint pick-up of Sirius that you apparently get when you do not have a subscription. We can’t hear it clearly, but you can hear that it is Sirius.
Is there a way to fully disconnect the satellite antenna? I do not want even the faintest hint of Sirius in my car.
unplug it at the antenna. this requires dropping the headliner, which means removing a bunch of trim pieces first. not recommended.
unplug it at the radio. The radio is a silver box behind the center stack, you’ll have to remove the center finish panel, button control panel, center information display (CID) and pull the radio out. the Sirius antenna plugs into the curry* (dark yellow) colored connector.
yes, the FAKRA connectors have “curry” as one of the official colors to denote how it’s keyed.
edit: FYI this will cause the message “SATELLITE ANTENNA FAULT” to show any time that input is selected, but since y’all aren’t subscribers that probably won’t be any more than a minor irritation.
I don’t know what the interior of the OP’s car looks like, but I’ve pulled the head units out of a few Honda’s and, like most cars, pulling the dash is a huge PITA. Since the OP is looking to do little more than disconnect a single wire, I’d suggest seeing if it’s all possible to just reach behind it and yank the wire. Sometimes you can gain access from either the passenger or driver side foot well, laying on your back and get an arm way up there. You’ll want to pull up some images on the internet so you know what you’re looking for and take a flashlight as well as a camera (your phone) or small mirror.
Other options you may want to explore would be to see if it’s easier to disconnect the antenna on the exterior of the car (is there a shark fin on the roof?) or even better find the box for the Sirius radio and disconnect the output wire or power for that. That box is probably in a much easier place to get at, if it’s not integrated into the head.
I watched a video on how to replace it and saw that. I have no idea if they’re all like that, the aftermarket XM radios I’ve installed weren’t, but the OEM one on the OPs vehicle appears to be. In any case, you can’t disconnect it up there anyways. It’s a hard wired connection at the antenna. Whether or not there’s a splice in the wire somewhere between that spot and the radio, I don’t know, but that’s not where I’d go after it.
At this point it depends on a few things:
Does the OP ever foresee using XM again?
Can he reach behind the radio and yank (or cut) a single wire?
Is there a separate, more easily accessible XM module?
Is he willing to tear into his dash to deal with this?
The last three have been deal with upthread. While this isn’t advisable, if he doesn’t see using XM ever again, he could cut the antenna wire. Keeping in mind, XM does turn on the radio for free from time to time and if he sells the car or wants to turn the radio on, the dash is getting opened…this would be an option. The wire should run through the passenger A pillar. Pulling the whether stripping out and popping it back in is pretty trivial and will probably expose the wire.
I suppose another solution would be to have a mechanic or car radio installer take care of it.
BTW, I did see other people on the internet talking about this exact same problem so he’s not alone.
it won’t help anyway; all of the external audio inputs (aux in jack, USB, Bluetooth) go through SYNC into the same port in the radio. the issue is a bleed-through in a mixer/multiplexer inside the radio.
What happens if the XM radio is tuned to a station that doesn’t have any audio? XM 0, IIRC, is nothing but a display of the radio ID.
I haven’t encountered this issue, so I don’t know if you’re hearing the current station, a random station, noise etc. Are you just hearing the announcer telling you how to sign up for service?
Maybe they’ll cover it without being the original owner? Dunno.
Oohhh… found this:
So, it’s a “feature” not an problem.
What I would do is turn up the volume on the phone which will increase the BT-source derived audio, and hopefully you won’t need to turn the headset volume up.
It plugs inline with your aux cable, and boosts the level coming out of the Ipod so that you don’t have to turn up both the Ipod and the car audio. (I was skeptical. It really works. I don’t work for them, or in the same state)
There may be a connection for the antenna behind your glove box you could look for (before pulling down the headliner or the head unit out). You can usually just open the glove box and sort of squeeze the back of the box to get past the tabs. I have a connection there in my '09 F150 for the sat antenna.