GM XM Radio Kit

[pushrod]

I am absolutely delighted to report that the kit works perfectly in a 2004 H2 with the 6 disc CD radio. Everything works and looks just like the one from the factory that came in my wife's '03 Tahoe. The antenna is permanently mounted where the am/fm radio antenna was on the '03 H2s. The only issue was the bracket, which was for a pickup. The dealer put it in and I have not had a chance to see how they attached the XM receiver behind the glove box.

[Klaus]

I'm glad your install went well.

The bracket worked fine in my 03. The only thing I did was to remove the captive nuts from the bracket and slide some flat captive nuts on the dash support behind the glove box. That way, I could install the bracket with the XM Tuner already snapped in.

The only problem I see with the antenna is the 03s with a sunroof.

[pushrod]

Hey Klaus:

I thought the story of the XM Radio install was over for me, but there is a confusing wrinkle after all. The radio has taken to shutting off from time to time. It completely shuts down -- even the lights on the radio controls go off. It then comes back on in about a minute. The clock resets to 12:00 when it does this. I presume this means all power to the radio unit is cut being cut off and then reestablished.

This morning, on a 1 1/2 hour ride, it shut off twice in the first 10 minutes of the trip, reset twice and then operated fine until I parked. When I got done with business, I started the truck and made a call using On Star before turning the radio on and the radio knobs again went out, as did the clock. After about a minute, the whole thing came back on and the person I had been talking to was still on the phone. Once I was finished with the call, I turned on the radio, set the program to XM, reset the clock and drove about 1 1/2 hours without further problems.

It is almost as if a circuit breaker is getting hot, opening and shutting everything down, and then closing again after a little cooling.

Do you have in your collection of service bulletins anything that might explain my mysterious radio condition? It was not doing this before the XM install, so I suspect it has something to do with that.

[Klaus]

I suspect the 24 pin connector plugged into the back of the radio. If you read the instructions, what you are basically doing is removing the positive and negative wiring from the connector, then adding the replacement positive and negative wiring from the kit, which is essentially a set of "Y" adapters to give the XM tuner power. One of the pins could be loose or bent.

The only other thing I can think of is a loose or broken fuse.

Make the dealer fix it. You paid them to install it, right?

[pushrod]

I did pay them to install it, and they are going to get an opportunity to fix the problem.

Nevertheless, my idea was that a little research on what the problem might be would save me some time. More often than not, with quirky stuff like this, previous vehicles have been returned to me at the end of the day with an invoice marked "could not duplicate problem." I was hoping to point them in the right direction before leaving it there.

[pushrod]

Mysterious shutting-off of the radio problem solved. Work Order reports: "Found poor connection at terminal 1044 terminal loose. R & R radio and tightened terminal 1044 orange wire."

I kind of wish they had done that the first time if paid them to install the XM radio.

The XM radio was not the problem.

[Klaus]

Glad they got it fixed for you.