Too late!
I already installed it. Here's a short rundown of suggestions that I would make to anybody doing this for themselves. This information is supplemental to the documentation and the CD provided by Coastal. Consult Dave's documentation throughout your installation, and you will figure it out.
1) The instructions and pictures are very good, but use your common sense when unscrewing something or popping off a clip.
2) The hardest part of the installation was definitely getting the cable behind the radio and plugging it in. Be patient, be careful, and be persistent. Oh yeah, and unless you have very small hands and/or are extremely careful, be prepared to leave a little bit of your flesh inside of your dashboard. My hands are small for a guy, but not tiny. Ouch, that smarted! But I think it'll heal, and now my Prius has some of my own DNA.
You absolutely have to look up through the vent into the dashboard and get a visual fix on that connector on the back of the radio. Get your target into your mind and imagination so that when you reach in with your right hand from the top (when you're flying blind, because you cannot see what you are doing), you'll be able to find that target. Remember, the tab goes DOWN.
Once you line up the connector correctly with the back of the radio, it will go in fairly easily...you don't have to push with great force.
And best of all (if you can manage this method), you don't have to take the whole damned dashboard apart! It will probably save you an hour or two.
3) The second hardest part of the installation was deciding where to put the antenna. I hadn't realized it was magnetic! Pretty powerful magenets, too; so be careful and don't get pinched. That blood-blister will be turning red very shortly.
I wanted to put the antenna on the center of the roof at the very rear, just behind the radio antenna. But the XM antenna's lead was too thick to fit comfortably down between the hatchback and the roof-beam at that center location. There's just not enough clearance between the hatch and the roof, and the wire would have continually been getting rubbed each time I opened the hatch.
So I had to settle for putting it towards the driver's side of the car, about halfway between the center of the roof and the side roof rail. It's still at the rearmost part of the roof; but it is off-center slightly to make room for that wire.
4) When threading the control cable and later on, the antenna cable, use your good judgement and common sense. Don't thread either one someplace where you know somebody might step, or where somebody might place a heavy object (like in the trunk area).
5) In the back seat on the passenger side, when you pull up the side step-plate, you'll see a thin, clear plastic tube going from the front of the car to the back. I believe this is the rear windshield wiper fluid.
Be nice to this little tube; you don't want it to spring any leaks!
6) Be careful when lifting the back seat up on the passenger side. You only need to lift the rear corner of it just enough to make enough room to thread the controller-cable behind the seat, on its way to the driver's side of the car.
Make sure it's out of the way and that it won't be impinged when somebody folds the rear seatback s up or down.
7) Useless trivia: Want to see your side-curtain airbags without the messiness and dire risk of life and limb required to deploy them? It's easy. Open the hatch and choose a side, driver or passenger. Pull up the weaterstriping at the upper right or upper left corner of the hatch openeing, and push the headliner down toward the ground about an inch or two. You'll see the rearmost end of the side-curtain airbag, all folded up like a baby-blue and white fan...ready to deploy at a moment's notice.
8 ) Activating XM. This was initially confusing for me. I couldn't seem to get it to tune to channel "000"...no buttons would do this, and all it would play was channel 1 - the preview channel.
But then, silly me, after calling tech support at XM, and while waiting on hold, I decided to turn the right-hand knob on my radio, and sure enough, I found that stations 0, 1, and 247 were available. Station 0 gives you your receiver-id. Copy that down, and go to the website to complete the signup process.
9) Before you put the trunk back together, why not pull that spare tire out and put some air in it? You're over halfway there to getting it out of the trunk, and of course, if you can't remember when you last checked it, you know it probably needs air by now. Check it first; it's supposed to have 60 PSI.
10) Finally, after the unit got activated, I spent a few minutes playing with the unit. Wow. I cannot believe I waited so long to get it!
Okay, I'm off to go run some errands; I just wanted to check in with this information for y'all before I procrastinate it all away.
