“Check xm antenna” after sharkfin swap

2003 SSEi · October 16, 2019

22 hours ago, RACERX7775 said:

So you have no onstar and no xm. Does your onstar light up red on your mirror? Most of us still want all the functions. Was your antenna a 2 wire or the 3 wire with the gold connector.

Correct. yes I get the red light on the mirror. My Orignal Antenna was the 2 wire purple connector, my new antenna is the 2 wire purple, and 1 wire gold

RACERX7775 · October 16, 2019

So with a little switching from your old antenna to the new one, it will all work. It's easy to do..

Payton34 · October 18, 2019

I also have a 2014 with XM onstar and nav. I ordered a painted silver 2015 antenna. Am I correct to assume I just need to swap the internal parts of the 14 antenna into the new painted antenna. None of the pieces inside the 2015 antenna will work on a 2014?

RACERX7775 · October 18, 2019

Does your 15 have wifi? If not, then yes, the internal parts swap is necessary.

Edited October 18, 2019 by RACERX7775

tsdrumm · October 19, 2019

I ended up swapping all the guts from my old antenna into then new one. Would be way easier to just sand and paint the old antenna cover.

RACERX7775 · October 19, 2019

3 hours ago, tsdrumm said:

I ended up swapping all the guts from my old antenna into then new one. Would be way easier to just sand and paint the old antenna

So. Was it so hard to swap the parts? And most people dont have the paint or wanna bring it to a body shop to have it painted. I bought an antenna in my color for $20 knowing that I was going to swap the inside parts.

lectrician7 · November 3, 2019

On 10/19/2019 at 10:53 AM, tsdrumm said:

I ended up swapping all the guts from my old antenna into then new one. Would be way easier to just sand and paint the old antenna cover.

Wouldn't it have been easier to buy an antenna for the proper year with the right connector. Mine went bad & that's what I did, no issues at all it just worked. It only takes about 20-30 minutes to swap it out.

RACERX7775 · November 4, 2019

12 hours ago, lectrician7 said:

Wouldn't it have been easier to buy an antenna for the proper year with the right connector. Mine went bad & that's what I did, no issues at all it just worked. It only takes about 20-30 minutes to swap it out.

This is for the people who have the black textured antennas who want to replace them with the painted antennas. I think in 14, there were no painted antennas...

tsdrumm · November 4, 2019

So here is how I did it. Credit really goes to member Viktorrocks15 who sold me the antenna. Now I will say, if I were to do this all over again, I would take the cover off my existing antenna, and smooth and paint it instead of going through this swap.

The old style antenna has a two pin magenta connector. The newer style antenna has the magenta connector plus a second one pin gold connector. I had read somewhere that the gold connector was for the WiFi hotspot that was added in ‘15. Made sense at the time, but that is incorrect. The gold connector is for the XM. That’s why everyone with a ‘14 gets an antenna error after this mod. Because the antenna is no longer plugged in.

Start by removing the little philips head screws that hold the cover onto the base. The new antenna has six. The old one has five.

tsdrumm · November 4, 2019

These are the electronics inside the old antenna. The small black one at the bottom is marked “XM” and has one wire that goes to pin 2 on the connector. Not sure what the top thing does, but it’s wire goes to pin 1. Some people have done this by only swapping the XM piece and claim everything works as it should. I’m a “it has to be there for a reason” kind of guy so I swapped both pieces.

tsdrumm · November 4, 2019

These are the electronics inside the new antenna. These all get relegated to the trash bin.

Edited November 4, 2019 by tsdrumm

tsdrumm · November 4, 2019

On the old antenna, mark the wires and pin locations, then with a little regular screw driver pop out the white clip that holds the wires into the connector.

Take out all the little screws that hold the two circuit boards to the base plate. The end on the wires are too big to pull up through the wire hole in the base plate. Then use something to cut a slot in the old antenna base plate (I used a dremel with a cut off wheel) so that you can get the wires out of the base plate.

Edited November 4, 2019 by tsdrumm

tsdrumm · November 4, 2019

On the new antenna base unscrew the two circuit boards. Cut the connectors off all three wires and toss it all in the garbage. Now take a drill and make the wire hole in the new antenna base plate big enough to fit the wires of the old electronics through the hole. I used a 1/4” drill bit.

tsdrumm · November 4, 2019

Time to swap circuit boards. The XM one is easy, it is a direct swap. Same size, same screw pattern. The other circuit board is not. The one from the old antenna is much smaller and none of the screw holes align with the new antenna base. So I gave my son the circuit board from the new antenna and he 3D printed me an adapter plate for the old circuit board. Here it is installed.