I've bought a portable XM radio that I would like to use in my car. I currently don't have a radio installed. I would like to hook up the XM radio to an amp to run to my speakers and I know there is some genius in the forum who can tell me how. Just an amp.
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Simon 80 240 307k 18 years. 'White Lightning'

BTDT, and the only drawback is that you will not have a volume control unless you wire one in yourself (run search on google for that). If the volume is fine enough, though, then what you'll prolly need is a 1/8" stereo to RCA cable to patch between the output on the sat.radio and the amp input. Connect the speakers to the amp output, and you're done.

-- Kane
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While I would never deliberately mislead anyone, take into consideration that any information and advice provided was at no cost to you.

What amp would you use and where would you get it?
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Simon 80 240 307k 18 years. 'White Lightning'

Even though I'm going against my morals and helping you install a device that is attempting to put me out of a livelihood, I'm a nice guy. (Heh heh heh...)

The radio should have an output separate for an amp, and an out put using a built in amp.

Unless you are putting some heavy duty speakers, the built in amp should suffice. (If you are using door speakers that actually fit properly in your wagon's doors, they probably aren't heavy duty.)

What's the model of the radio? I can pull up a color code chart for you. (I have access to all that stuff, being a radio engineer.)

You are going to need an adaptor kit to mount the radio in the lower dash place, since your '80 doesn't have the upper dash mount.

Think about it for a moment though, who needs sat radio?!?

(I know I know, I'm a bit biased.)

Hope this helps.

-HearToTemptYou, driving around with a Stock 8-TRACK player, which has been converted to get AM Stereo.
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If you listen to the radio in Portland, OR, you may know me as 'Portland's Favorite Soul Brother!'

Did you decide to fix your car?
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Simon 80 240 307k 18 years. 'White Lightning'

When I can find the time and the money.
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If you listen to the radio in Portland, OR, you may know me as 'Portland's Favorite Soul Brother!'

You need satelite radio if you live in an area with only homogenized country, oldies and top-40. If I lived 15 miles east, I could get a couple of great stations out of Louisville and that would be that.
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1985 240 DL, 1989 245 DL

We travel across country a LOT, and even at home we have only three stations, one Rap/HipHop, one Country (just the new stuff, whick I don't like) and one 'Golden Oldies' station that plays stuff from the 1980's (?!?!?!) and I never did like Disco!

Our main travelling car has the following: JVC AM/FM/Cassette/12-CD changer and XM satellite radio. The only thing you see is the JVC radio faceplate and the XM receiver.

Our particular model of XM receiver doesn't have wired outputs; we installed an FM modulator and ran the stock car antenna cable through it. When the XM receiver is turned on, it kills the incoming standard radio signals and we hear the XM broadcast instead.

We got the XM car installation kit and the Boom Box to use around the house. This past weekend my wife bought herself an XM MyFi (it's like an MP3 player, it has memory to store several hours of programs) and it comes with a free XM Roady 2.

Although XM isn't totally 'commercial free' as they advertise, it does have very good programming, including a ton of sports channels, talk radio, just about any genre of music you can name, and also local traffic and weather reports for most of the major cities.

I'm not totally thrilled with paying a monthly subscription fee ($12.95 for three radios) I think it's worth the cost just to be able to drive anywhere and not lose your station.

I have XM and the home kit. My Blaupunkt head unit has a 1/8th input. I only use the fm modulator if I move the radio to my wife's car.

She pays the bill, part of a never ending Christmas present.

I especially like to hear every Cubs game, even when they loose.

When considering Satellite radio equipment (and I'm just offering this suggestion for anyone reading this as part of the archives), it's a good idea to get a radio that has at least RCA jack outputs.

Having the built in FM transmitter is all fine in dandy, except for the fact that the FM exciters can't make it sound nearly as good as a direct line hook up would.

Legal power FM exciters run at one tenth of a watt, and that ain't a lot of power. Also, Stereo separation is usually only about 6 db between left and right, which is enough to hear some difference, but not much.

If you happen to live in a market that does have several FM stations, there's a good chance that any stations that happen to be on the same frequency as your short range FM transmitter will over power it. For this reason, it's important to lower the car's radio antenna when you are using your short range FM transmitter.

I'm currently working on a short range AM Stereo transmitter, similar to the FM ones. AM has an advantage that it is a lot more efficent then FM, so using a Legal low-power (which I'm going to exceed, but that's beside the point) will sound better then FM would. There is a lot less noise, and there isn't any static.

For kicks, check out my post I made a while back on how I converted my stock 8-TRACK player to get AM Stereo!

http://www.brickboard.com/RWD/index.htm?id=864201

Few changes since that time... I've made several improvements. I can post about them to anyone that's interested.
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If you listen to the radio in Portland, OR, you may know me as 'Portland's Favorite Soul Brother!'

Depends on the time of the day.

I do most of my driving at night.

At night, you can get literally thousands of stations on AM, no matter where you are in the country. If you can't, you likely have a poor quality AM radio or Antenna.

I could live with out FM radio.
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If you listen to the radio in Portland, OR, you may know me as 'Portland's Favorite Soul Brother!'

I listen to AM at night but I tire of the talk radio. I'm too liberal to stomach most of what I hear.

Believe it or not, I listen to more music on AM then anything. At night I can DX 1060 CKMX and 660 CFR out of Canada. I think they are out of Calgary or Alberta. CKMX is even in Stereo.

It's real fun with the AM Stereo radio. It actually sounds pretty close to FM. There is a slight difference, but you wouldn't notice it unless you switched between AM and FM.
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If you listen to the radio in Portland, OR, you may know me as 'Portland's Favorite Soul Brother!'

I'm not getting those. I'm in Indiana, so I'm getting news/talk from Detroit, Chicago, Cincy, Cleveland, New York.

I do listen to late night classical from our local NPR affiliate.

Actually, if you are patent enough, at night you can hear a station on every single frequency on AM radio.

There is bound to be a few music stations in there somewhere.

Here in Portland, I've picked up WGN a couple of times, and I once heard WTAM in Cleveland.
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If you listen to the radio in Portland, OR, you may know me as 'Portland's Favorite Soul Brother!'