Ok, I got the two units (Soundgate KNGM1 & Kenwood SIR-KEN1) this afternoon and started installaring around 6:30 pm. I will try and detail as best I can the installation process:
1. Remove the front dash cover. Extremely easy as there are no bolts to remove. Simply grab ahold of the front of the dash and kind of tug or wiggle it. It is held on with press in's, so it will come right off. You will need to move the steering wheel all the way down and put the gearshift in 1st gear to get enough room to remove it. It is real easy.
2. You will see 3 bolts holding in the radio, remove them. Grab the radio, be careful of the plastic front, but pull it straight out. Mine did not want to move at all,? but I kept putting on pressure and it moved out about half way. It would not move anymore. I came in and read the forum about removing the radio and it said that the wiring was glued in the back, to pull it on out it would do no damage. This makes you extremely nervous, but I kept pulling. It would not come. I pulled more and it basically popped out. The power plug on the left side had come out of the radio. No problem, except I was worried how I was gonna get it back in when finished.
3. You now have the radio in your hand. You really need a towel or something to lay on the dash under the radio, because the antenna will hold it there, and a towel may keep it from scratching anything.
4. You will need the Soundgate KNGM1 adaptor. A lot of money for what is in this box, but we are paying for the technology and software not the hardware. It comes with a cable. Look it over and you will see that it only goes in one way. Remove the cable plugged in on the back right side of the radio. One end of the plug on the new cable will plug directly into this hole. Then there is another end that will plug into the cable you just pulled out. There is a third end that is white, it will plug into the Soundgate.
5. The Soundgate instructions call for you to have a constant 12 volts to the unit. I used a voltmeter and found that there are a slightly larger Orange and Black/White wire going to the radio power connector. I skinned the wire cover and soldered the yellow wire from soundgate cable to the orange wire for positive 12 volts. Then did the same with the black wire from the soundgate cable to the black/white wire going to the stereo power plug. A volt meter verified that I had 12 volts here all the time.
6. On the other side of the Soundgate there is a place for a round plug that will go to the SIR-KEN1 tuner. I opened the glove box, and if you look at it closely there is a tab that only lets the glove box open just so far, push this tab and the glove box will open up all the way. It gives you access to fish the wire that runs from the Soundgate to the Kenwood Tuner. Go ahead and run this cable and plug it into the Soundgate. Leave the other end hang behind the glove box door.
7. Next you will need to mount the Soundgate. There is not a lot of room in here, but I had some round pieces of velcro and used it to just attach the Soundgate behind the radio on the upper right. There are a couple of places there, just remember as you are doing it that you will have a fairly rigid cable that has to flex when putting the radio back in place.
8. Now you are ready to put the radio back in place. My biggest worry was the power connector on the left. I pulled on it as much as I dared, but really got no more wire to come out. I took the cable and moved it to the right side of a brace that is behind the radio. This gave quite a bit of room. Plug it back into the radio.
9. Slide the radio back in place. The only problem here is that the power cable will try and get hung up between the radio and the brace in back. I just kept moving the radio back and forth, then up and down and it finally went all the way back. Reinstall the 3 screws that hold the radio in. Put the dash front cover back in place. You are basically finished with the radio.
10. Go to the passenger side of the truck and look at the tuner. I found that there are 2 holes in a brace on the left side, behind the glove box. These two holes matched up with two holes on the Kenwood tuner. I mounted the tuner with the cable that runs between the Soundgate and the Kenwood tuner on top. Plug in the cable before mounting the tuner. I found two small bolts and nuts and used these two existing holes and it went in easily. Except for an antenna, there is no other wiring for the tuner. It gets it's power thru this cable.
11. Decide where you want to put your magnetic antenna and run the wire back to the tuner. It will now plug into the bottom of the tuner.
12. Turn on the radio and push the band button till a number "1" comes on the screen. I let it set for few seconds and it said on the screen "updating". This lasted for a few minutes. Then it changed to channel 184, which is a free weather channel. At this point I knew I had things wired correctly. I called Sirius and get your subscription started. Everything worked fine.
Everything works great. The display shows the channel, and will show what is playing if you press the recall button. Like channel 100 shows "HWD100" or something like that. It did no show what was playing automatically, but it may do this, I just did not try a lot of things to see what it can do. The buttons on the steering wheel do change the channels and volume. The only thing I see right now that I do not like is the tuning. If you push seek up or down you are basically going up or down one channel at a time, because they all have a signal. If you use the turn knob to change channels it is kind of slow. If you try and turn it fast, it just quits changing channels. It does this for the factory AM or FM as well, but it makes it slow going from channel 1 to 100. You have to turn the knob pretty slow. The channel presets do not work, so the tune knob is the only way to go between channels. It is not great but acceptable. The entire installation took about 1.5 hours. Real simple, but when you are pulling the radio out and it will not come, and you start pulling real hard sweat will begin to pop on your forehead. I was real nervous, but everything worked out fine.
I hope this helps answer anyone questions that may be interested in getting Sirius right now. If you have any question, I will be glad to help.
Thanks to everyone who answered my question trying to decide whether to buy this kit or not.
Soundgate adapter for the Kenwood tuner..
