| kman |
I have a 2007 Pilot EX-L with Nav and XM. I've been suffering through using my Sirius radio via FM transmitter for the past year (after using a cassette adapter in my old 2004 Pilot) and my upcoming birthday gave me an excuse to get that auxillary input device I've been eyeing for the past 12 months.
The USA Spec PA11-HON2y seems to be a favorite around here and I seriously considered it. But while I sometimes use an iPod in the car, I really just wanted the aux input for Sirius. When I want to use an iPod, the headphone jack would be good enough seeing as I don't need playlist or charging support.
So the BlitzSafe HON/AUX DMX V.2x seemed to be exactly what I needed and the $75 price tag was a little better than the USA Spec's $110.
I probably *should* have gone through Enfig Car Stereo to buy the Blitzsafe (in case I had any problems) but seeing as my wife was buying it for me, it was just easier to get it off eBay for $75 plus free shipping. And I might add, the shipping was impressive...it only took 48 hours to get here.
The other big part of my install was that I wanted a for-real aux input jack - like seemingly all other 2007+ cars have nowadays except for the Pilot. I figured I could get a 1/8" audio jack from Radio Shack, drill a hole in the seat heater trim, and attach it there. This is exactly what I did and it turned out great...pictures follow.
Thanks to mrtrik and all the advice and pics on the "My USA Spec / Ipod Install for 06 EXL w/Nav" thread! Those pictures made the installation process a whole lot less nerve-wracking.
Also thanks to jlee2070, whose suggestion of drilling a hole in the bottom of the seat heater trim gave me the idea to just drill a hole into the front of the trim to put an aux jack.
Pictures:
Here's the BlitzSafe as I received it: |
|
|
| kman |
| Here's the BlitzSafe outside of the packaging: |
|
|
| kman |
The idea here was that I would cut off the 1/8" male connector from the 3' cable, strip the wires, and solder them into the 1/8" female jack.
It wasn't the prettiest soldering job - especially since I couldn't find my soldering iron and had to use some low-heat solder strips I had in the toolbox. But they did the job and I didn't scorch too much of the mechanism. |
|
|
| kman |
| Here's my radio to begin with. It's an '07 Nav w/XM and a built-in 6-CD changer. |
|
|
| kman |
| Thanks to the instructions mentioned earlier, prying off the silver side panels was pretty easy: |
|
|
| kman |
| Here I have the seat heater trim removed and the radio is ready to be unscrewed and pulled out: |
|
|
| kman |
| I pulled the radio out. My radio wouldn't pull as far out as some of the other pics have shown but I was able to get it out enough to be able to reach behind it to access the right cables: |
|
|
| kman |
| So I unplugged the correct cable, plugged in the BlitzSafe, plugged the orginal cable into the BlitzSafe's Y-cable, and then tested all my cabling to make sure I could get audio out before I put it all back together. And sure enough - it worked! All I had to do was press the "Aux" button on my radio. |
|
|
| kman |
| With the BlitzSafe working, I went ahead and secured the RCA-RCA cables together with electrical tape: |
|
|
| kman |
| Then I secured those cables against the BlitzSafe: |
|
|
| kman |
| With the cables done, I now had to find a place to stow the BlitzSafe. Since I didn't need any future access to the box, I didn't need to route it into the glovebox. There were two spaces that looked possible - one on the lower left and the other on the upper right. I chose the upper right and tucked it away: |
|
|
| kman |
| Another view of the hidey-hole: |
|
|
| kman |
Now came the fun part - drilling into my console. There were four places on the front of the seat heater trim where I could fit the aux jack. The biggest area was to the left and right of the power outlet. But I was worried about interference from the power cables so I decided to go with the area on the far left by the driver-side seat heater control. Is the smallest area available, but big enough for the job.
Being nervous about drilling into the plastic, I started with the smallest drillbit I had and just moved up one bit at a time until I could get the 1/8" connector through. This first picture is of the first small test hole: |
|
|
| kman |
| I eventually stopped at 15/64". I probably really needed to go all the way up to the 1/4" drillbit because 15/64" was really too tight. But I couldn't find my 1/4" drillbit :-) so I just improvised and managed to widen the hole enough to find the jack through. Here's the final hole: |
|
|
| kman |
| The connector fit through the back of the seat control plastic and then a nut secured the connector from the front: |
|
|
| kman |
Looking at the picture above, if you didn't want to put the aux jack on the front of the seat heater trim, you could pretty easily fit it into the bottom of the trim and that way keep it hidden. I considered that but wasn't sure if the plastic was thin enough to be able to fit the 1/8" jack through and still be able to screw on the collar/nut.
Putting everything back together was pretty easy. When replacing the seat heater unit I just had to make sure all the cables in the rear were pressed up above the trim so it would lock in place. Once it was all assembled, I tested it out with my iPod and then my Sirius radio.
The final product: |
|
|
| kman |
| All told, with drilling and extra wiring, this took me an hour. Doing this in the dark at 9pm at night probably wasn't the best time (daylight would have been nice) but with the help of a flashlight, it worked out fine. |
|
|
| jcantanixon |
Very well done. :claphead:
I may do something similar to add an aux port to my setup. Coincidentally, I used to have that same Sirius receiver in my 05. When we bought the 08, it came with XM and I decided to convert it over to Sirius using the SCC1 and HON-SC1. Although we miss the "replay" function of the Starmate, being able to cycle through the presets using the steering wheel buttons or using the NAV touchscreen to see and change channels is a big plus.
 |
|
|
| kman |
That Sirius conversion kit looks pretty good. I took a look at it a while back but was thrown off by having to use a separate antenna or running a new antenna cable. I was holding out to see what happened with the Sirius/XM merger.
Now that the merger is going to happen, I'll just have to see what the options will be for getting Howard Stern (the only reason I picked Sirius over XM) on XM. I heard an interview with Sirius' CEO Mel Karmizan on Howard's show where he annouced they'd have an option for current XM subscribers to add Howard for something like $3.95 extra per month. But I'm not going to cancel my $12.95/month plan to move to a $16.95 plan with XM. |
|
|
| youbetcha |
Looks great! Here's something to think about adding. If you go to:
http://doityourselflettering.com/index.htm
You can order the letters "AUX" made of vinyl, and attach them right above the jack. I ordered from this site before. The letters come attached to wax paper on the front and back -- so you don't have to line each letter up, just the entire word. You pull off the backing, press on the whole word, then pull the front off. You end up with a very professional, straight look (but I haven't tried it on something that small).
The trick will be to match the fonts/sizes to the heater switches and the power outlet -- same line thickness, color, distance between letters, etc. Their website says they can help with that. And for three small letters you could probably order "AUX" in several close sizes and see what looks best.
I ordered mailbox numbers from them. The numbers have been sitting outside in the elements for more than a year and still look new.
Just an idea! |
|
|
| jcantanixon |
quote:
Originally posted by kman
That Sirius conversion kit looks pretty good. I took a look at it a while back but was thrown off by having to use a separate antenna or running a new antenna cable. I was holding out to see what happened with the Sirius/XM merger.
Now that the merger is going to happen, I'll just have to see what the options will be for getting Howard Stern (the only reason I picked Sirius over XM) on XM. I heard an interview with Sirius' CEO Mel Karmizan on Howard's show where he annouced they'd have an option for current XM subscribers to add Howard for something like $3.95 extra per month. But I'm not going to cancel my $12.95/month plan to move to a $16.95 plan with XM.
I didn't want to run a seperate antenna either. I adapted the factory XM antenna to work with the Sirius Connect.
I have 2 other radios on my Sirius account, so adding the Pilot was only $7/mo instead of the $17 you mentioned for XM. |
|
|
|
