As some of you know, I’m…er…cheap. Ok, look, I’m an old man with a nine-year-old, so there’s not much disposable income anymore. And also as most of you know, I have a bunch of XM Satellite Radios around, all but the first one bought at substantial savings over “retail” (no, no, I don’t have a “guy,” I just am always watching out for sales and such). One of the radios I have is a Samsung Nexus 25…actually, we have two Nexus 25’s (from henceforth known as the Nexii); one I was given as a Christmas Present from my wife and my daughter, and the second was a killer deal from Crutchfield a while back that included a $55 XM prepay card, bringing the price of the unit down to under $15, including shipping.

(A quick explanation about how the Nexus works; there are actually three parts, all required: the Passport, the Nexus, and the cradle. The Passport is the XM Satellite Radio…it contains the Radio ID for which I pay, and is a cool system so that no matter how many Passport-ready XM radios you have, you only pay for the one subscription, and wherever the passport is, there you are (of course, thanks to the knuckleheads threatening to merge, this cool technology will probably be smashed by the Sirius overlords, assuming those of us vehemently against the merger can’t get it stopped). The Nexus is the player, allowing for recording of live XM while in a cradle, and when out it’s an XM/MP3 player only. The cradle is the piece that puts it all together. So if Annie has the car, she can take the Passport and her Nexus and listen live. When I have the Passport, she listens to recorded XM material (she still has like four hours of the St. Patrick’s’ Day Celtic Channel on it) and MP3s (her Marshall Chapman tunes, some Old-Time Radio) while I’m listening live. Both Nexii run off of the same Passport, so this only counts as one “radio.”

Each of the Nexii came with a home kit, but neither of them came with a car kit. Now we’ve had XM radios in the car for a while now (beginning with the Roady2 I activated in September 2004, running through the Tao XM2Go which was also a loyal and faithful servant), so not having one in the car now seems kinda silly. But I didn’t have a car cradle for the Nexus, just two home cradles…which look identical, but have minor differences (only in the home cradle will the radio record scheduled programming, and only the car cradle has an FM transmitter - didn’t need that, since my car is old and has a tape deck). So instead of spending $70 on a car kit for my Nexus, I decided to use the spare home kit in the car.

This sorta assumes the Nexus isn’t your first radio, and you already have mounting hardware in your car (if you don’t, this doesn’t make much sense). It also assumes you have a spare home kit, or are planning to carry your home unit back-and-forth (this is perfect if you want to record The Bob Edwards Show in your car while you’re at work, BTW). Either way, this is about as close to a “0″ on the difficulty scale as you’re gonna find…honest, this is simple. Copious photos after the jump…
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Yesterday when I moved my Roady2 and replaced it, I discovered a problem - no right channel. Now anyone who has studied the Roady2 knows that the one thing that makes it unique among XM radios is its one fatal weakness…the lack of a propriatary cradle connector and the use of reletively standard connectors on the side. I was pretty sure I knew what was wrong, and I have a spare Roady2 in the basement, but I didn’t want to do a radio swap right now (please don’t ask why). To make sure I was right, and to hopefully fix the problem, I needed to…you guessed it…take it apart. Photos and commentary after the jump…
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Ok, most of my faithful readers will probably not be interested in this posting. But you can bet down-the-road someone is going to want this information (I looked for it and couldn’t find an exact match, although I got close enough to work the rest out), so I’m posting it here for posterity, whoever she is.

I do not even want to explain why it was necessary for me to disassemble my favorite XM Satellite Radio, the Tao XM2Go, but it was (and I want to thank the folks at Giant, the makers of the device, and specifically Terry Uhrich, Vice President, Supply Chain Operations and Office Manager Patricia Biazzo for being so helpful in reparing my screw-up - talk about going above-and-beyond!). Anyway, since I was being crazy enough to rip the thing apart, I thought I’d take some photos so if there was anyone else out there who needed to take apart the Tao XM2Go, they could find this using whatever search engine and maybe save a little time.

Before we get out our tools, remember that this will void your warranty, so make sure your unit is at least a year old. Largish PNG photos are to follow, so for those on the front page, click the “More” to continue…
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