My experience with the XM magnet based antenna

Earlier last week I ordered from XM the XM Xpress RCi dock and play radio and the FM direct adapter. It arrived late last Thursday and I installed it the next day. Since I had purchased the FM direct adapter, I had to remove the climate control panel and the stock radio / cd player from the dash. There are some very good pictures of how to do this in this forum and they were a tremendous help to me.

Long story short, I plugged the FM direct adapter into the existing antenna wire and then the appropriate lead from the adapter into the stock radio and the other lead from the adapter into the FM terminal on the dock for the Xpress RCi. I never could get the Xpress RCi to connect to XM after activation. The stock radio still worked as normal but nothing I tried ever solved the "check antenna connection" error message the Xpress RCi displayed. I could hook the mag based antenna to the dock and everything was fine. Very good reception with the mag antenna just laying on the dashboard.

After an unbearably long hold time to reach XM customer service, they determined the FM direct adapter (FMDA25) they sold me was not compatible with the Xpress RCi radio!!! Major bummer.

Before they would ship me the correct adapter, I had to UPS the wrong one back! That pissed me off even more but they had me by the short hairs. I was lucky enough to catch the UPS truck about an hour later as he passed by my house.

Since I had such good reception with the mag antenna laying on the dash, I thought I'd see how well it did installed under the dash, out of sight, behind and above the stock radio. It worked great, the reception was as good as it was with the antenna on top of the dashboard.

I drove around a ten mile loop to see how it would do with the truck in motion and still with very good results. The only time I lost signal was under heavy tree cover or an underpass. I don't know if this will help anyone else but it saved me having to install the mag antenna outside on the roof of the truck and the much more difficult routing of the antenna wire along the windshield gasket / trim etc. So I'm enjoying my XM radio without the FM direct adapter.

I drove around all weekend and had excellent reception in spite of the antenna mounted underneath the dashboard, contrary to what the instruction said.



The arrow points to the slot where the antenna will be placed.



A closer view of the slot.



I used a scrap piece of sheet metal to secure the antenna.



Antenna installed in slot.



The dashboard of the 2007 Tacoma without premium sound package.




I have signal reception.

 

Your Abbey quote is awesome.