Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 2003 21:21:08 -0400
Reply-To:     caverat <caverat@ATTBI.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         caverat <caverat@ATTBI.COM>
Subject:      RE - Where to mount Sirus receiver in Westy?
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

 
>> Got my Sirus receiver today and will be installing it in the next day or
>> so. For those of you who already installed it, where in a Westy is a good
>> place to mount the receiver unit?

 
Here's my setup: 

Antenna under the luggage rack over the driver's head, in order to keep the metal luggage rack cleats and luggage rack screw metal receivers out of potential line-of-sight to satellite.  Probably wouldn't cause any issues, but since it was covered by the luggage rack I wasn't worried about it being in the middle of the roof for appearance sakes.  The key thing here is the antenna is designed to be on a metal surface and there should not be any permanent metal surfaces above or in close (few inches or so) proximity to it (for example, a luggage rack on a normal car) that could potentially cause short-term signal blockage between line-of-sight from the antenna to the satellites.  Placing it on top of the luggage rack would cause some reception issues (such as short term and potential at times frequent signal dropouts depending on where the satellites happen to be in the sky at the time since they are always moving), unless you stick something like a square foot or so of the metallic soundproofing stuff (dynamat) you can get at a car audio place or Circuit City/Best Buy on top of the rack and the antenna on top of that.

Tuner/Receiver unit in cabinet underneath sink against wall behind drivers seat.  Outside of the cabinet directly behind driver's seat was another possible location, but I mounted a small self-contained powered subwoofer there.  In the battery box under the driver's seat is another possible location, but I use that area for other storage.  In other cars many people place them in the trunk, but don't hide it under a carpet in order to prevent overheating.  

Antenna wires fed under luggage rack through bottom left corner of front zippered poptop bug screen and down behind the curtain into the back of the cabinet beneath the sink.  Leave a little slack in the wire for when the top is opened.  When it is closed you can hide some of this wire in the rolled up poptop canvas.

Cable from receiver/tuner to display/controller unit from behind sink cabinet into battery compartment under driver's seat to front of seat under carpet up to front of van.

Display/controller unit should be mounted somewhere where it is handy to access the controls for channel changes and to see the song/artist/channel display.  It probably came with velcro to allow a quick and simple mount in an easily accessible location.

I also mounted a small metal cage around the receiver/tuner under the sink to keep pots and cans of food I keep there from potentially bumping into it.  The cage was one of those white wire can holders items made to go inside a kitchen cabinet that I picked up at Lowes.

With the exception of the length of the antenna wire coming into the poptop screen and to the curtain, all items including antenna are hidden from view.  I placed this wire in one of those black wire wraps and got some self-stick wire holders at Lowes to make it look better and to keep the wire in one place.

caverat

89 westy