2005 Echo Satellite Radio Receiver Mounting

[gECHO]

Here's the long story about installing a satellite radio receiver in my 2005 Echo 5 door. Has anyone else tried installing one of these portable receivers in their car?

Two weeks ago I bought a Sirius satellite receiver. I went to use the included suction cup mount, but it ended up obscuring my view of the road too much. I must have spent an hour trying to find a place to put it without having to drill any holes before I gave up. While going for a drive my brother said, "why don't you just put it in the cupholder, the front ones are useless anyway". While I didn't agree with his view of the cupholder's usefullness, I did like the idea of using a cupholder.

After a bit of brainstorming I decided I'd get a large paper cup from a convenience store and fill it with fibreglass resin as a starting point for the base. Having never used resin before I encountered a few problems. I didn't mix the hardener in well enough so there were some tacky spots where the resin didn't completely harden. Also the heat generated during the hardening process started to melt the glue that held the cup together. Fortunately the cup managed to stay together. I got rid of most of the tacky spots by putting on some gloves and wiping extra hardener on the bad spots. After another day I wiped the outside with acetone.

Once the resin was as cured as it was going to get I cut the cup on an angle at the height I needed using a miter saw. I used a hack saw to cut some of the top surface on both sides off to allow access to the power, antenna and locking mechanism of the receiver mount. The next step was to drill holes to attach the receiver mount to the base. Because the back of the mount has threaded holes, I drilled holes all the way through my base and used 4mm threaded rod which I cut to the needed lengths.

Drilling the holes is where I ran into trouble again. The fibreglass resin is fairly brittle and I broke of a large chunk while drilling one of the holes, so I was only able to attach the mount using 3 of the 4 holes. The drilling also appears to caused quite a few stress fractures. Just incase the fractures cause problems down the line, I wrapped the base in black duct tape. The tape will also provide some friction between the base and cupholder.

Here are the results of my inept tinkering:
http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i309/gECHO/side.jpg
http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i3...O/overhead.jpg
http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i309/gECHO/Front.jpg
http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i309/gECHO/back.jpg


It fits in the car pretty good. Tomorrow when its light I'll take a couple pictures.

[stuts]

WOW gECHO the hole time I was reading this all I could do was laugh and think of good old RED GREEN I am sure you know who he is being Canadian WAY TO GO GECHO what a job you did I personally would of not even tried to do it myself but hey good on ya for doing it and getting it done I am sure you have one of the most unique set ups for your Sirius radio so fare so how do you get the sound in the speakers do you have to connect the speakers to it or does it get transmitted cant wait to hear more about it

[gECHO]

Here it is in the car:
http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i309/gECHO/incar.jpg

I still need to pick a place for the antenna. For now I'm just going to use the built-in RF transmitter. When I have some time I'll see if I can run a cable to the inputs on the back of the deck.

[05_Echo]

Originally Posted by stuts

WOW gECHO the hole time I was reading this all I could do was laugh and think of good old RED GREEN I am sure you know who he is being Canadian WAY TO GO GECHO what a job you did I personally would of not even tried to do it myself but hey good on ya for doing it and getting it done I am sure you have one of the most unique set ups for your Sirius radio so fare so how do you get the sound in the speakers do you have to connect the speakers to it or does it get transmitted cant wait to hear more about it

They work off an F.M. freq. and all you have to is plug the unit into your cig. lighter/power point and find a place for the ant. either on your dash or on the outside of your car..