My Sirius Sportster install on my roomate's Mustang

[Nitrousbird]

http://www.cofba.org/users/nitrousbird/Sirius/Full%20View.JPG

 

http://www.cofba.org/users/nitrousbird/Sirius/Medium%20View.JPG

 

http://www.cofba.org/users/nitrousbird/Sirius/Antenna.JPG

 

How and why I did what I did:

 

Since my Jimmy is dead with a very very broken motor, I'm sporting my roomate's lightly modded 94 Mustang GT. Loaded w/ the Mach 460 stereo.

 

Everything installed quickly, and can be fully removed in about 3 minutes (of course I can pull the Sporster unit itself in seconds and take it with me for security reasons).

 

Antenna: I put it there because it was easy. Reception has been good. Drop outs have been very minimal; only slow drives under bridges in areas without repeaters have I ever had it drop. In most weather conditions, I have full bars of Sat. reception. In bad weather (past couple of days...heavy rain/cloud cover), I have a mix between full and half bars of reception, though my Ter. reception has been better, but no dropouts because of the weather. The wire easily stuffed behind the HVAC/Radio trim panel. The antenna mounts with a decent quality double sided tape I bought at Autozone....this stuff doesn't leave any residue when removed, which is a plus.

 

Sporster Unit: I placed it there for several reasons. The biggest was this is the best place I could put it to not be extremely visable outside the car (ie: on the dash), it is easy to read/access there, doesn't interfere with much of the leg room of the passenger, and was close to the power socket/antenna wire. I can still use the CD player as well. The cradle is mounted to a metal "L" bracket, which I drilled a hole in to mount the mounting screws for the cradle. The bracket mounts to the shifter trim panel using the same double sided tape I used for the antenna. So far it has held up very well. The wires all stuff behind the shifter trim panel so they can't be seen.

 

Why Sirius: I listen to Stern every morning that I'm awake and by a radio, and since he is moving to Sirius, it only made sense. They also aren't into paying for "premium" services like XM is, and I fear XM may be going even further towards that. Sirius also has a repeater near my house = you can slap an antenna anywhere in my house and get reception. I'm not saying XM is bad at all; the $2.96 less a month is good, and the XM Delphi MyFi and SkyFi2 and better than anything else available to Sirius or XM in terms of portable units. I wish Delphi would offer a Sirius unit.

 

Why I choose to purchase the Sportster: It was a toss-up between the Sportster and the Audiovox PNP3. I would only consider the new 2.5G series of portable receivors. The XACT and JVC units are too small. The Sanyo is just lame. I couldn't find any place locally that carried the Blaupunkt and Kenwood units, and I wasn't about to purchased one without playing with it. The Sportster and PNP3 are pretty much identical, but I was able to get the Sporster for $20 cheaper ($125 w/ car kit, plus I have a $30 mail in rebate w/ Circuit City), so that's why the Sportster won out.

[JaSSon]

what do you mean by paying for a premium? Is XM more expensive?

[cNeutron]

for xm if you want opie and anthony or the playboy channel its 2 dollars more a month. I work at circuit city on morse rd if anyone wants to get one installed in their car we have the best installers have laze or jay do it. nice install by the way. If your friend wants we can hardwire it also so you dont lose your cigarette lighter.

[Alex1647545498]

I got Sirius also. I got me and the wife the Xact model because they're not as big. Personal references I guess. I partly bought it because of Stern too. It's really nice for me since I'm in my car 1/2 of the work day.

 

Nice install! graemlins/thumb.gif

[Buckeye1647545503]

what does a set up cost I would like to get one for the trip to Az. and is that the unit that you can put in a radio at home as well?

[Alex1647545498]

I got mine at best buy and it came with the car kit for around $140. Had a $30 mail in rebate at the time.

 

When you register if you put the promotion code "howard sent me" or code 069 you get 3 months free.

 

It's like $12 something a month and $7 more each for other recievers on the same account. Up to 4 total.

[Nitrousbird]

Originally posted by dark horse:

nice install by the way. If your friend wants we can hardwire it also so you dont lose your cigarette lighter.

Well, my friend doesn't have much to do with it, since it's my setup (though if I get my promotion at work, I may buy the car from him). I can easily do the hardwiring myself; it is simple to do. Not that I really need the lighter spot, as there is another one in the center console ash tray compartment as well. If I do buy the car, I may re-wire the socket to power on with the ignition, so I don't have to turn off the unit manually.

 

Originally posted by buckeye:

what does a set up cost I would like to get one for the trip to Az. and is that the unit that you can put in a radio at home as well?

My setup cost $125 ($134 after tax). That included the Sportster, remote for the Sportster, and the car kit. Then I had to pay a $10 activation fee when I activated the unit. I also prepaid for 3 months ($12.95/month + tax), and this allowed me to qualify for a $30 mail in rebate.

 

To use the unit in the house, you either need the home kit or the boombox. The home kit is basically the car kit with a slightly different cradle, an antenna more oriented for home mounting, and a 110V plug instead of the 12V cig lighter plug. The boombox is self contained and can run on electric or batteries. The home kit is about $50, the boombox $100.

 

IMO the Sporster boombox sucks. I played with my other roomate's for a while, and the sound quality was pretty sucky, and it didn't get very loud. I ended up just turning on my home stereo and using the FM modulator on the Sportster to feed my home stereo.....basically turning it into a fancy home kit.

 

Good news for Sirius; Pioneer recently announced they are now supporting Sirius too; the used to be exclusively XM. From what I've gathered so far, this will mean that all "XM ready" head units will now be "XM and Sirius ready" meaning the only difference is you'll purchase the Sirius external tuner instead of the XM unit. That's sweet news for those of us using Pioneer head units. (my car has an XM ready Premier).