Finally Completed The XM Radio Installation
Chrissy gave me an XM Radio kit for Valentine’s Day. Not the last one, the one before that. She already had XM in the CR-V, so she got me a set to put in my car. I just never got around to having it installed by the Honda dealer. The box had been sitting in my office for over a year when my neighbor, who works on cars, told me that he could install it pretty easily. A few months ago, he opened up my dashboard and ran all the wires together. Unfortunately, I was missing a few pieces that were required for adequate installation.
The first piece that I needed was an FM adapter. The XM receiver has a built-in transmitter that will send the satellite feed to your radio on whatever unused frequency you chose. It just wasn’t a very strong signal, so the reception was mostly static. The FM adapter would plug the XM connection directly into my car radio. As an added bonus, the adapter came with a female power adapter that hides behind the dashboard. With this, I wouldn’t have to use the power outlet in my dashboard for the XM receiver (I usually use that one to charge my cell phone).
The other problem was that there was no good place to install the mounting bar that came with the kit. I could have the XM radio in the car, but I would need to drill holes into my dashboard to get it there. Worse yet, no matter where it went, the radio would block a good portion of the center console. Gain a radio, lose access to my air conditioner controls. I solved this problem with a metal mounting bracket that was made for my Acura. It would position the receiver well to the right of my console and not require additional holes to be drilled.
My neighbor was nice enough to install the new accessories yesterday. Now the reception is fantastic and the XM radio sits nicely alongside my regular radio. I was playing with the channels on my way to work today (even with 250 choices, I’m still partial to news channels). I still have to figure out how to work the controls though. They’re all tiny: tiny little buttons and a little knob for tuning. I’ll figure it out soon enough.
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