Monday, June 26, 2006

Satellite Radio x2

Ever since I bought G8RMNI I’ve had to go without Sirius satellite radio. I know the stock stereo is Sirius-ready, but if you’ve read my past installation entries, you’ll note that I removed the stock system a day after I took delivery of the car.

In my old car (a 1994 Honda Accord) I had a Sirius One plug-and-play unit that my ex-girlfriend had given to me for Christmas. I listened to Howard Stern on it the day he first went live on satellite and I have been missing his hilarious bits ever since I sold the car.

1994 Honda Accord

I kept the Sirius One unit, but never had plans to install it in G8RMNI since I wanted everything fully integrated in my new car. As a result, I put the unit up for auction on eBay. You can bid on it here.

Since the AVIC-N3 has the ability to play a Sirius feed (with limited functions), it was just a matter of time before I bought a tuner and figured out how to integrate it into my system.


On Saturday I bought a direct connect unit(SIR-PNR2) from Best Buy and began to install it. The install should have taken fifteen minutes, but I blew a fuse and had to wait until the next morning to get some replacement fuses.

Long story short:

I hid the tuner behind the front passenger floor carpet, next to the XM tuner and iPod adaptor. The IP Bus from the Sirius tuner connects to an input on the iPod adaptor. I replaced the stock 2-amp fuse that came with the tuner with a 15-amp fuse (since I had blown this same fuse yesterday when I failed to make sure the car was ‘off’ before I cut some wires). I then spliced the power wires (yellow and black) from the tuner to the iPod adpator’s yellow and black wires. I also replaced the iPod adaptor’s fuse with a 15-amp fuse so that the load would be manageable.

I mounted the Sirius antenna on the dash with some Velcro next to the GPS and XM antennas.

It works great. Now I have Sirius and XM in my car and all of the wires are hidden away. Check out my video to see the two tuners in action.


No comments: