Shortly after installing my roof rack I noticed that Sirius would cut in and out pretty frequently. Realizing that I had blocked the antenna in the sound bar I thought about my options: 1. remove the rack 2. live with bad Sirius reception 3. come up with a better option. I had another satellite antenna sitting in the garage for a portable unit and used it. Instead of plugging it in at the back of the stock head unit and having to rip apart the dash, I attached at the antenna located in the soundbar. There is a connector under the padding on the b pillar/roll bar. The antenna is now mounted on top of the rack. Problem solved!

 

Glad to hear it worked. I might have to try this. Which antenna did you use??

 

I am also interested since I have an old sportster I never use with a sirius antenna, do you have a pic of the connection or about where it is on the B-pillar?

 

The antenna used was a basic Sirius car antenna that came with my reciever that I use in the house. I am pretty sure that all Sirius antennas use the same connection. The connection was a little hard to disconnect because of the close space that it was in as you can see in the pic and I didn't feel like taking off the seatbelt. When I was plugging in the new antenna it was a little snug but I pushed GENTLY and EVENLY on it and it went in with no problems. I ran the wire under the pads down the rollbars and through the grommet in the back under the tire jack (alread had sliced it for my trailer lights/brake wiring). After that I ran it under the car (avoiding the muffler/exhaust) to the rack mount next to the bumper and up the rack. The longest part was the routing and zip ties to the rack. The connection for the old antenna is the yellow connector in the picture located on the top of the b pillar on the passenger side. I took a trip through the deep woods yesterday and only lost reception once for about a second and bridges that I would loose reception under before didn't loose reception at all.

 

I wonder if this would work just to relocate the antenna. My reception breaks out going under bride overpasses!

 

mine breaks out all of the time im in a dead area with a lot of trees. the verizon people would not stand a chance by me. haha. i am going to try and relocate mine too. maybe attach it to a balloon and let it float about 10 meters above by jeep

 

That seems like a lot of work if you ask me. Did you not consider putting the antenna on the hood cowl?

 

I did consider it but needed more height and wanted a cleaner look. Most of it isn't visible. It wasn't a lot of work and only took about 20 min.

 

I share the exact same thoughts with you on this subject. Its pretty bad. I'm not going to bother with paying for it when it runs out.

 

How about a pic of the antenna location?