Sirius SIR-GM1 Installation w/ Pics

[NightRain]

I installed this kit this morning in my H3 without XM and I have to say it was pretty easy. Took me about 90mins including activation. I'd say about 1/3rd of that time was mounting the antenna and hiding it, and about 15 minutes finding my credit card and calling to activate.

I'm very pleased with it using my stock stereo. It gives me SR1 and SR2 each with 6 presets. I got this mostly for the NFL stuff, but will also listen to some music channels. I get a pretty good display to let me know information about the content playing, it isn't perfect because it is limited by the H3's stock display.

I wasn't sure where to mount the receiver at first, but I ended up mounting it on the back wall behind the upper part of the head unit, mostly behind the air vents just about the head until. I used two sided mounting tabs (about 9-12 of them) and stuck it on there good. I ran the antenna wire up the plastic on the passenger side floor and behind the glove box over to the receiver. Then the plug to the headunit came from the left side of the receiver (drivers side) down to the head unit. I used quick taps to tap into the orange and black wires for power like found here: http://www.delcity.net/delcity/servl...id=9111&page=1

If I were to do it again I could do it in under an hour for sure becuase I could easily hook it up inside and mount it in under 10 mins now, this time I spent at least 10 mins finding the right place to mount it.

Over all I'm very pleased with this product, an optional display would be nice for those who would like a more detailed display. What I would like the most is a remote though, 12 pre-sets isn't much and changing channels is a bit of a pain. I set my presets with close channels in mind. (for example my girlfriend likes country so I let here have 1 preset for that SR2-6, she can select that and then can go up 1 or 2 channels if she wants a different country channel).
I find it would be easier if I could use a remote to type 124 for NFL radio instead of having to jump through channels. It can be annoying when you want to jump around live NFL games since they are all over the place on the channel lineup. No last channel on GM headunit is a drawback too, I would have liked a remote for that too.

Overall I give it a passing grade

8/10 for ease of install (could have had an adapter so we don't need to cut into stock power)

9/10 for clarity and quality, rivals my MP3 cd's, better than FM (although talk radio sometimes seems lower quality), but not quite as good as original CD's. Equal to stock XM I've heard in other GM vechicles.

9/10 Visual appeal, antenna is hardly noticible and headunit retains stock appearance making for a clean setup

7/10 for user interface, this mostly falls on GM since the headunit doesn't have much flexibility and stock XM wouldn't control any better. I would have liked a remote even if it was optional a IR lead could easily be mounted to allow a remote interface to work, or even better make it bluetooth.

Overall I give it a 8.5/10 after my initial usage, I haven't had any siginal drops or anything yet and I'm very pleased so far. I recommend this highly.