I am thinking about buying a 2006 Avalon Touring with the upgraded JBL stereo. Does anyone know if the car is pre-wired for Sirius so that after adding a tuner and antenna the Sirius will interface with the JBl headunit? Has anyone had Sirius installed in an 05 or 06 Avalon? If yes, where was the antenna installed and how is the sound quality and reception? Thanks.
You can get OEM Sirius radio. It requires the JBL radio system. No JBL, no OE sat radio. If you use Toyota's equipment, you will get Sirius readout on the center dash screen (the first 10 characters anyway) and the radio buttons and steering wheel controls will operate Sirius functions. For instance, the "Mode" button on the steering wheel that normally flips through AM, FM1 and FM2, will, when you are running Sirius, flip through SAT1, SAT2 and SAT3. Your 1 through 6 presets on the JBL headunit will, when running Sirius, hold Sirius presets.
The offical requirement in the Toyota service manual is that the antenna be put on the outside of the trunk lid, midway down the right hand side abutting the lip of the trunk. I believe the antenna wire gets into the body of the car by being threaded under the rubber stripping on the trunk lid. The tuner box is officially supposed to be mounted somewhere behind the rear passenger seat near the fenderwell. If your Avalon is built to order, the factory will install it as it goes down the line. Your dealer is supposed to know how to install it as a dealer-installed option. The install kit is two part numbers-- one is the actual tuner box, the other is the "fit kit," which is basically everything else. You can buy them through your dealership parts dept. or from the more aggressive Toyota parts departments that sell online.
The part numbers are PTS31-07050 (fit kit, about $80-$100) and PTS31-00052 (tuner box, about $180-$200). That does NOT include what the dealership will charge you for labor. I am pretty sure "the book" calls for five hours of labor.
I am scheduled to have this installed into my new Limited ... so I can't talk about quality of sound and reception ... but this is the info I picked up doing all the research on it before doing my deal ... so I thought I would pass it along. A lot of the dealerships I talked to were not entirely up to speed on it, since availability only started last summer.
Last edited by Dr.Quality; 02-06-2006 at 12:15 AM.
This was posted in another recent thread: "It is not hidden, but it is hardly noticeable. It is right next to the brake light. Looks much better than the pictures showing the antenna on the trunk. I'm very happy with the installation."
You can get OEM Sirius radio. It requires the JBL radio system. No JBL, no OE sat radio. If you use Toyota's equipment, you will get Sirius readout on the center dash screen (the first 10 characters anyway) and the radio buttons and steering wheel controls will operate Sirius functions. For instance, the "Mode" button on the steering wheel that normally flips through AM, FM1 and FM2, will, when you are running Sirius, flip through SAT1, SAT2 and SAT3. Your 1 through 6 presets on the JBL headunit will, when running Sirius, hold Sirius presets.
The offical requirement in the Toyota service manual is that the antenna be put on the outside of the trunk lid, midway down the right hand side abutting the lip of the trunk. I believe the antenna wire gets into the body of the car by being threaded under the rubber stripping on the trunk lid. The tuner box is officially supposed to be mounted somewhere behind the rear passenger seat near the fenderwell. If your Avalon is built to order, the factory will install it as it goes down the line. Your dealer is supposed to know how to install it as a dealer-installed option. The install kit is two part numbers-- one is the actual tuner box, the other is the "fit kit," which is basically everything else. You can buy them through your dealership parts dept. or from the more aggressive Toyota parts departments that sell online.
The part numbers are PTS31-07050 (fit kit, about $80-$100) and PTS31-00052 (tuner box, about $180-$200). That does NOT include what the dealership will charge you for labor. I am pretty sure "the book" calls for five hours of labor.
I am scheduled to have this installed into my new Limited ... so I can't talk about quality of sound and reception ... but this is the info I picked up doing all the research on it before doing my deal ... so I thought I would pass it along. A lot of the dealerships I talked to were not entirely up to speed on it, since availability only started last summer.
What he said
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2006 Avalon Touring Edition
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Thanks for the information. I am now concerned about the antenna placement, as I don't want it on my trunk. I saw an Avalon in a dealership with XM already installed and the antenna was inside the car near the third break light. I think I will insist that they put the antenna in the car and, if they refuse, I guess I will buy the parts from Toyota and get a car hi-fi place to install it. Please let me know how your install goes and how it sounds. Thanks again.
Thanks for the information. I am now concerned about the antenna placement, as I don't want it on my trunk. I saw an Avalon in a dealership with XM already installed and the antenna was inside the car near the third break light. I think I will insist that they put the antenna in the car and, if they refuse, I guess I will buy the parts from Toyota and get a car hi-fi place to install it. Please let me know how your install goes and how it sounds. Thanks again.
I do agree that the RHS mounting looks sort of odd. In the Southeast, the XM radios are usually installed by the regional distributor -- and they mount them all RHS -- that is what I was told -- and all of the dealerships I visited, the antennas were all RHS. I bet the one you saw was installed by a third party, by a dealer not "going by the book" or something like that. I assume Toyota spec-ed the antenna on the RHS of the trunk (instead of center near high brake light) to minimize any line-of-sight interference caused by the car's roof and C-pillars when you are driving south. [You generally need a Southerly (or maybe it is Southwesternly) line-of-sight for Sirius.]
I am going to ask them to go with putting the antenna OUTSIDE center trunk lid, next to the high brake light. I don't know if they will do it, I suppose it will depend on whether I can get the service dept. to vary from the Toyota official specs. The book says to mount it RHS and I bet it is tough to get Toyota people to vary much from "established best Toyota practice." I am pretty sure I saw other posts where people bought the equip from Toyota parts, then went to third parties and had them mount the tuner box in non-spec locations (to save a good bit of labor time) and mount the antenna whereever the customer wanted. However, I am going to the dealership to do it so that I have 100% closure/warranty if I have any problems down the road. Personaly, I don't want some inexperienced installer that got hired last week yanking around parts and wires in my brand new Avalon Limited. Plus, if they damage something, I doubt I would get any sympathy or warranty support at the dealership. Then I'd be getting the back-and-forth between the two of them trying to solve the problem.
For me, then, better to TRY to get them to go along with MY placement choice, but if not, to just go with it their way. But I have a black Avalon, so even if they go RHS, the black antenna won't look too odd. (btw, somewhere on the web, can't remember where, I once found a company that will color-key paint the antenna to match your car. I believe you could either just buy the antenna pre-painted, or you could pop off the cover of the antenna and send it in to them to be painted.) If my Limited were say white and the antenna were permanently mounted RHS, that's what I would do to minimize the odd appearance.)
On previous vehicles I only ran into signal interference (with the antenna at center/high brake light location) when I was in a "valley" of buildings blocking the Southern exposure. I am not sure, but I believe, that in larger urban areas, sat radio is rebroadcast through "repeater" ground antennas to solve this problem.
My last antenna placement was antenna INSIDE, sitting on the center dash speaker grille. When I did that, I did run into more signal loss, not bad, not too long at a pop, but it became irritating over time. (I wonder why they don't build more buffer RAM into those tuner boxes?) The installer had originally shoved the antenna down between the front of the dash and the bottom of the windshield. I had a LOT of signal loss at that location (apparently from the A-pillars, the roof AND the lip of the hood), so I pulled it up to the dash so it could get a straight shot out the windshield and side windows. My guess-ti-mate after having either an XM or a Sirius antenna in several locations is that you will have some minor but aggravating signal interruption due to the C-pillars and roof if you mount it inside at the high brake light unless you live in a urban area.
I will make another suggestion. If you mount it on the outside, don't rely merely on the magnetic base. It will get scooted around some over time and scratch. Plus mine broke off when it froze inside a sheet of ice ... and then as the sheet thawed, it slid off the trunk and took the antenna with it. The Toyota spec, I believe, is a permanent mount to the trunk (that's what I was told) ... it might be automotive grade 3M adhesive or something like that. There is a third party (somewhere on the web) that sells a little pad that glues onto the bottom of the antenna with some very thin little round rubber "feet" to act as the contact points. The feet are close enough to still allow the magnet to hold. I don't see any scenario where I will be pulling the tuner box out of the car, so I am going to let them adhere it in any manner they choose.
Last edited by Dr.Quality; 02-07-2006 at 08:53 PM.
The factory installs the XM antenna inside the car, on the rear deck next to the HMSL. I wasn't happy with the occasional drop-outs in my '06 Limited, so I installed a Terk mini-XM antenna ($35) on the roof, just above the rear glass, fed the fine wire under the rubber gasket around the glass and right into the trunk to connect to the receiver. Looks pretty decent, the new antenna is just a bit larger than a quarter, no wires show, no holes. EXCELLENT reception now, everywhere but in the Eisenhour Tunnel.
You generally need a Southerly (or maybe it is Southwesternly) line-of-sight for Sirius
Sirius' "Home Antenna Placement Tips" page actually shows the opposite, but it can vary quite a bit depending on what part of the country you're in.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr.Quality
btw, somewhere on the web, can't remember where, I once found a company that will color-key paint the antenna to match your car.
You may be thinking of ColorMatchAntenna. Unfortunately their Web site address now redirects to "The Sirius Store" and it appears they are no longer offering the custom painting service.
By the way, Dr. Quality, thank you very much for your "2006 Avalon Tire Upgrade Options" post -- it's very informative.
I e-mailed Toyota about sirius antenna placement and they responded back that the antenna should be mounted "underneath the front windshield". I had separately read that Sirius has an antenna called SIGMA that mounts on the front windshield above the rear view mirror. I don't know if this is what Toyota meant when it said underneath the front windshield. Does anybody know? THANKS.
Ok. I just yesterday (Fr.02.10.06) had the dealership add-on the OEM Sirius kit. [See myprevious post for the Toyota part numbers.] The antenna WAS mounted on the inside of the windshield! For some reason, I have TWO gizmos mounted to the glass!
One is just to the right of where the rear view mirror is attached. It is rectangular, a little smaller than a pack of cigarettes and 1 inch deep. To the right of that is a SECOND gizmo, that is trapezoidal in shape. The longer end abuts the headliner/window edge and that edge is about 5 inches or so, the shorter end is about 2 inches long. It is also about 1 inch deep. Why all this is required ... instead of the usual smaller single "chunky bar" antenna ... is a mystery to me.
And I didn't ask ... what's done is done. I suppose it is possible that one of these gizmos is doing something else than acting as antenna. But neither is the tuner box. That was installed just as expected, behind the rear passenger side seat/trunk fenderwell area.
From the driver's side, this set-up is almost not noticable ... the rv mirror hides it from view. Also it is not very noticable from the outside. The set-up is behind an extended patch of OE window tint that presumably helps to reduce glare when looking at the mirror. From the passenger seat, it is IMHO pretty ugly. Were it mounted it on the driver's side, it would drive me nuts looking at it all day.
Though it is hard to believe this is so ... with all that antenna up there ... but so far I AM getting some minor dropouts (half second or so) at some underpasses. Sound quality is excellent, though. With that little Terk mini-"chunky bar" antenna external trunk on previous cars, I never had dropout. It is tempting to wish it were there ... instead of these gizmos ... but (as I said in another post), I do like the idea of having the dealer/warranty "boxed in" ... if I have any troubles of any kind down the road, I don't want them hopping on any non-OEM equipment or installation as the excuse.
The OE kit does work with all the buttons on the wheel and the headunit. As I expected, you only get Sirius readout of first ten characters. No scrolling that I can find. There is a button on the headunit called "text." Flipping that will show 1) station #, 2) station name, #3) song title, 4) artist. No scrolling text is something Toyota ought rethink (along with that antenna set-up) when they spiff the car up during the model cycle.
UPDATE: I have had the Sirius radio w/ SIGMA antenna installed for about a month now. I do have a persistant dropout problem when the car is pointing the wrong way (so that the antenna/sat line-of-site is blocked by the roof. I wanted a dealer install so that I would have full warrenty "closure" (sure that Toyota would have to handle any defects/failures) ... and I didn't want anyone else monkeying around with my new car's electronics/dash. But in terms of reception/dropouts, I now believe the best way to go is to position a standard "chunky bar" antenna at the center rear of the roof near the glass seal, do a neat job running the line through the seal and then running the wire through the roof headliner ... that means you just buy the Toyota part number for the tuner box ... and I think that will mean that you can skip the Toyota part number for the "fit kit."
Last edited by Dr.Quality; 03-12-2006 at 12:05 AM.
Sirius' "Home Antenna Placement Tips" page actually shows the opposite, but it can vary quite a bit depending on what part of the country you're in.
You may be thinking of ColorMatchAntenna. Unfortunately their Web site address now redirects to "The Sirius Store" and it appears they are no longer offering the custom painting service.
Thanks for updating & double-checking those items!! Regarding direction, you are absolutley correct. It is a northern line-of-sight that is required ... and my experience now with the car confirms it. I might have been thinking about Dish TV or something like that, my error. The colormatchantenna website, that must have been it. A clever idea ... too bad they don't still make them.
Last edited by Dr.Quality; 03-12-2006 at 12:07 AM.
Ok. I just yesterday (Fr.02.10.06) had the dealership add-on the OEM Sirius kit. [See myprevious post for the Toyota part numbers.] The antenna WAS mounted on the inside of the windshield! For some reason, I have TWO gizmos mounted to the glass!
One is just to the right of where the rear view window is attached. It is rectangular, a little smaller than a pack of cigarettes and 1 inch deep. To the right of that is a SECOND gizmo, that is trapezoidal in shape. The longer end abuts the headliner/window edge and that edge is about 5 inches or so, the shorter end is about 2 inches long. It is also about 1 inch deep. Why all this is required ... instead of the usual smaller single "chunky bar" antenna ... is a mystery to me.
And I didn't ask ... what's done is done. I suppose it is possible that one of these gizmos is doing something else than acting as antenna. But neither is the tuner box. That was installed just as expected, behind the rear passenger side seat/trunk fenderwell area.
Isn't the other antenna for the Navigation system? I don't have XM or Sirrus and I have one of those antenna's.
Would you mind letting us know what Toyota charged for the instalation? I am thinking of having this done myself. Thank you, James
Tough question. For me, the add-on was ... more or less ... wrapped up in the total deal.
PARTS: The invoice from the parts department reflected $319.93 retail for the two parts (the tuner box and the fit kit which is everything else). That includes tax. Some aggressive Toyota parts depts sell items off their websites. ToyotaPartsDelivered.Com prices the two parts at $261.00 retail, no sales tax (outside of New Hampshire), before shipping/handling.
LABOR: My service dept. booked it as 2 manhours. (But remember, they may be covering some labor dollars with the total car deal.) I was told (via several sources) that Toyota shows it as FIVE hours of labor in their book. ToyotaPartsDelivered.Com website prices installation at $117.00.
One thing that should be kept in mind is that labor utilization in a shop might well affect pricing. If there is a lot of idle labor about, there is incentive to underprice/undertime labor--said another way, a shop makes out better billing out SOME labor that would otherwise be idle ... better than billing out NO idle labor at all.
My dealership has just started a promo for certain accessories, including XM radio, installed for $363.00, before "fees, taxes and shop supplies."
When I was shopping the deal, the worst pricing broke out to be $697, installed.
Sirius MSRP is (according to the Toyota website literature, for example) is $449.00, installed.
I don't think anyone should plan on getting the OEM parts + installation for much less than $350 or so. If you are looking to install sat radio for $250 or less, you can, of course, go with some kind of non-OEM kit off a retail shelf (Best Buy, Circuit City) and pay whatever they are getting for the install. My more recent experiences in such bays (with my last two vehicles) were, taken in total, pretty bad. Or you could order the parts and DIY installation. But for a few bucks more, you'll not only have the dealer doing the work ... the work should be umbrella-ed into the new car warrenty.
Last edited by Dr.Quality; 02-17-2006 at 11:38 PM.
Does anyone know if Toyota is planning a fix to the JBL/Sirius combo so that more than 10 characters are displayed? I find the minimal display quite annoying--I'm missing information on the music (such as year released) and comments on the Stern channel. Also, me Text button does nothing on Sirius--but all the lines (the first 10 characters) are displayed on the GPS screen. Does anyone have a Sirus/GPS combo where the Text button works?
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