I have had Sirius Satellite Radio for almost 2 years, and have honestly only been using it in my apartment. I love it though and listen to it every day in my place. Oddly enough, I get great reception inside my apartment. The last car I had, the RX-8 woulda been a serious pain to put in, so now that I had the truck, I thought it was about time to start using it on the road.

The only thing I had to really do to install this was to put an FM modulator between my factory radio and the FM antennae. This way, while using the FM modulator, I wouldn’t have any interference and the sound would be clear. No big deal, this is a MAYBE a 30 minute job. Well you know shit like this would never go easy for me right.

I opened the truck and removed the top panel on the dash. Then removed the front dash panel easily with my new multi-trim pry tool set which made the whole thing really simple. It also kept me from making any scratches. No problem, I thought now that I see the radio exposed, its a matter of unscrewing 4 bolts and putting the FM modulator. Welp, I bust out my cordless drill to remove those bolts, and get the first one out then …

CLUNK CLINK CLINK CLINK CLUNK TINK TINK

WTF I thought, I looked and the bit at the end of the drill fell off along with the screw into the air conditioning. SON OF A BITCH!

Well its about 8:30, and its getting dark now, all I got is this tiny little flash light to see with:

Of course, before I had started this whole affair, I had unplugged the battery in the truck to not set off the airbags etc so this is the only source of light I have in the dark parking lot. I proceed for the next 3.5 hours to take the whole MOTHER F’ing dash apart in the dark. Managed by luck to get the phillips bit and screw out of the AC and then finish the modulator install. Got it all done at about 11:30 at night in the parking lot. What a freaking pain in the ass, 4 total hours in the dark for a stupid simple install.

Good news is, it worked, and holy crap if it didn’t, I woulda been pissed. The FM modulator works awesome! Now I can finally listen to this thing in the truck. Yeah I know, look at the above, the wires are still laying out, its because I am still deciding where to place the satellite antennae permanently. I am running an experiment for a few weeks to see if the dash will give any big issues. I don’t want to put it on the roof because it will ruin the paint, and I think it looks seriously shitty to have this rat tail running on the body of your vehicle. I wish they would sell the shark fin type that the OEM installs have and BMW uses, but oh well for now, on the dash hopefully it will look okay when I clean it up. I was actually happily surprised too that the suction cup mount proved useful and actually fits inside this slot on the truck’s dash:

KICK ASS!

Man it is so great to have Sirius in the truck. No commercials, no interruptions, and good clean great sounding music. If you have ever been to San Antonio, you will know that this place only has 3 freaking English speaking radio stations! The rest are a hodge podge of Mexican salsa, Mexican organ music, Mexican rap, and mariachi music. Of the 3 English ones, there is only the college radio station and the rock station that is actually semi passable. The problem with the rock station though is that they play the SAME FREAKING 4 songs every day. Literally, I will go to work hearing one song, and go home that day hearing the SAME FREAKING SONG!!! OMG you have no idea how crappy that is and stuck in traffic will want to make you tear your face off. Not to mention sitting through lame advertisements every other song! Satellite radio is a MUST and worth it!