@JTKrupa, I can understand your point of view about your situation with your head unit and the dealerships. One thing to keep in mind, is that if you were to have the dealership take care of this for you their parts and labor should be warrantied. Usually GM Genuine parts and labor are warrantied for 12 months or 12, 000 miles. This could be something that you can ask one of the dealerships about. Ask them if you bring the HHR in will you warranty the parts and labor; just food for thought.

Michelle, Chevrolet Customer Service

 

Michele - Thanks for your input, however the warranty item is a moot point. I am the second owner of a 2006 2LT with 127K miles, so everything is long out of warranty. I've owned the vehicle for a little over 2 years as well so the warranty I had from the dealership (balance of factory plus their additional offering) has expired as well.

Any costs would therefore not be covered under warranty.

I think my next step will be to see if I can find anything with the wiring starting at the HU and tracing it back...of course this will only help me find a loose, broken or (god forbid) burnt off wire. If the wire happens to be broken inside the sheathing I'm, as the saying goes, S.O.L.

I can't imagine anything broke because I wouldn't think there was much in the way of flex / movement of said wiring. Everything seems to be tied down pretty well, but you never know until I start digging.

I'm also going to contact the local stereo shop and see if they can assist or if they have encountered anyone else with an even remotely similar issue.

As always, if anyone has any other suggestions, I'll gladly entertain them, because I'm getting tired of having to listen to music by streaming my iPhone (either XM or Pandora, or the local radio morning show) through my bluetooth. Somehow it just doesn't sound the same

 

Ok, so I thlnk the HU IS cooked somehow. I tried resetting the entire car (pulled battery cables and touched them), no dice.

I the pulled and reseated EVERY fuse and relay both under the hood and in the waterfall inside...no dice.

I then turned the key to accessory and pulled the radio fuse (23 in BCM fuse panel). I know it's getting power to that point as I did get a little spit when I plugged the fuse back in.

Aside from pulling the whole waterfall apart and tracing out every single wire from the stereo harnesses back, I think I've hit every check I can do.

At this point I'm not sure it's worth trying to salvage...I'll still talk to the stereo shop this weekend, but I think it's aftermarket time.

I noted a unit I liked from crutchfield, not necessarily for the DVD or the touchscreen, but the native XM and the Bluetooth, but it is a bit steep at $450 for my resources.

I do want a double din sized if at all possible. Cd changer not required...I liked it but can easily live without. I definitely want Bluetooth, and it has to have the ability to integrate with the stock XM setup.

I'm not going to beef up the whole setup, just replace the HU.

Anyone have any suggestions that I might be able to get for less than $300, or am I having a pipe dream?

 

I bought the kit to be able to install a single din radio and it came with a little pocket to store stuff. You can put the pocket either on top of the radio or underneath.

Since you can locate the pocket where you desire I simply left it out, I elected to put a 2 Meter ham radio in the bottom hole instead. I made a plate of cheap paneling to fill the hole. Once the kit got here I realized I did not have the nice pigtails and socket to just plug my after market stereo into the socket in the HHR dash so I ordered them as well. Its well worth the few bucks to get them as it saves lots of time figuring out which wire goes where and hacking the factory wiring which will be to short to do a decent job anyway.

It worked as I wanted it to but eventually I put the original radio back in the dash.

The 2M rig hangs off the side of the shifter console now on a custom made wire bracket. Its out of the way that way.

Running a power wire for my 2M rig was more of a challenge than I like. I was going to go all the way back to the battery but ended up tagging on to the cigarette lighter/power socket wire instead.

That lead is rated at 20 amps and the HTX-212 being a 45 watt radio {ON high power} only draws around 10 amps at full tilt boggy anyway. It has its own inline 15 amp fuse. Anyway it works fine as frog hair.

If you go the aftermarket route you can order a thing to replace the tones you used to have for turn signals and when you leave the lights on, or the door is open and the key in the switch from these guys.

http://archive.pac-audio.com/catalog/PACCAT08.pdf

I was contemplating doing that to make my wife happy while I had the Clarion stereo in dash.

 

Since I'm pretty much resigned to going aftermarket, and since I'm not looking for anything SUPER fancy or SUPER high quality (as I can't afford much) I was looking at a DUAL unit from Wal-Mart. My wife has one in her Escape and it works beautifully and sounds great for the money. She wanted it for the bluetooth and iPod controls.

The B/T sounded a little tinny, but I am pretty sure that has a lot to do with mic placement. I moved it for her to a more soundproofed location and it sounds MUCH better. It was originally mounted in the dash beside the HU but I moved it up to the headliner right above the rear view mirror. Having it up by the cloth headliner absorbs a lot more of the ambient road noise and make the sound a lot clearer. Of course, her car has a fair bit of noise anyway with the tires she has on it.

Anyway, I digress...

This isn't the one she has, but I was rather liking the looks of this one (its a model or 2 up from hers):
http://www.dualav.com/mobileaudio/xdma6540.php

and then this particular harness adapter to retain the factory goodies (chimes, turn signals):
http://www.scosche.com/car-audio/product/1855

and then of course the dash kit to put it in.

It has bluetooth and A2DP support (2 features I really want). No, its not "integrated", as in there is not a built in microphone anywhere), but I was figuring I could put the mic up by the moon roof controls - they provide a long enough wire to do this - and that should handle car noise. Our cars are pretty quiet in that aspect anyway.

I don't care about the "loss" of the changer, as this has the aux in and USB in. Not too mention I never really used the CD much (even though I had it loaded if I wanted to).

My only question would be as to whether or not it would work with the factory XM tuner on the car. I don't want to have to buy an external tuner when I have one already there (or is the actual XM tuner part of the stock HU?).

I supposed if I can't retain it from the HU's perspective I could lower my subscription to be online only (if they offer it) and just stream it via the A2DP capabilities via B/T...

Also, I'm assuming the above harness would retain all radio functions - specifically the sub since its not wired through any sort of pre-amp out off the stock HU. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

This setup would put me back about $250 and the cap on what I can spend is $300.

Yes, I know DUAL are typically thought of as "crap" in the car audio world, but I'm no longer in that arena as heavily as I once was so I don't need top of the line equipment. I just need something that works and sounds decent.

Bottom line, I believe this HU, wiring harness and dash kit should be enough to get me back up and running, giving me back my chimes and blinker noises, keeping my XM intact and also giving me some new "goodies" (B/T w/A2DP and USB). Am I wrong? Thoughts?

 

OK - so I put the replacement HU in today (DUAL XDMA 6720).

I bought the install kit to retain my chimes (only my chimes for now) - will eventually add the goodies for turn signal 'click' and to "recover" the use of my steering wheel controls, BUT I have one big issue right now.

When I plug everything in and turn the car on - the radio powers up. I will switch modes, accept a CD, etc...however, I have no sound and nothing is being shown on the HU display. The unit is on and the backlight for the display is on...

I still need to get the antenna adapter for it - could this be affecting the lack of sound / display on the unit?

I have the "premium" pioneer system with the sub and amp. I did notice that the wiring kit only had a power, ground, retained power (red, black, yellow) wires and then the 8 speaker connections. Is the harness the issue?

I did some digging around here and found some stuff that indicates I may not be getting a signal from the HU to kick the amp on? If this is the case how do I make this work?

I'm really getting frustrated with this BS. Why the hell does GM have to make it so damn complicated?? If there is anyone in the eastern PA area that knows how to make this work I'll buy you lunch / dinner to help me out!!

Yes, I realize its a lower brand HU, but it has all the options I want.


One more thing - since my HHR has factory equipped XM and the HU is XM ready (says it needs the connect tuner from sirius xm), does what I need already exist in the car somewhere? The unit from XM is a little tuner box and the XM antenna. I'm thinking what I need is hiding somewhere and I just have to plug it in. Of course, this is pointless if I can't get any sound / display from the HU.

Please help!

 

So I did a little more digging within the forums here and wasn't able to turn up much...

Then I called Scosche tech support - the guy there helped me in about 30 seconds.

If anyone opts to get the same install kit and harness (GM2500i kit and GM13SR harness) - it works great and I got it for $60 at Wal-Mart.

If you have the pioneer "premium" system you have to jump one wire across the factory/harness plugs...the head unit's remote turn on lead needed to be jumped all the way across the connections and be tapped into the pink factory wire - its in Pin3 position (starting from top right going left is how they are counted).

I tapped into this with the remote turn on lead and viola - I'm in business.

Thanks again to everyone who contributed on both of my threads with this!!

 

Thanks for the update, the information should help someone else down the road.

 

So...

I've had the DUAL XDMAR6720 for several months now and it has been working quite nicely as far as meeting my needs. There are a few things I'd change about it but then again, isn't that the case with everything?

Anyway - I was driving to work this AM, had my phone plugged into the USB port listening to a podcast and out of nowhere the radio cuts out. No lights, no sound, no display, no nothing!!

I haven't had a chance to check the various fuses and whatnot just yet (as I'm at work), so I don't know if it's a case of another dead stick radio or just a blown fuse. I am going to check on it later this evening. I hope that's all it is.

Before anyone starts in on the "DUAL is crap" approach - I happen to like the way it performs and sounds.

Anyway - I don't know if anyone else out there has run into any issues with an aftermarket stereo (brand doesn't matter) suddenly cutting out like this. If so, what did you find?

Anyone have any suggestions other than checking the connections at the harness along with the fusing? Could it be the load the iphone 4S pulls from the unit along with the power the unit pulls is more than the fuse can take? As I said I haven't check them yet (I'm still at work).

 

Was finally able to tear apart the waterfall to get to things. Knew it wasn't the BCM fuse since the door locks and such worked (aren't the connected under the same fuse?)

Turns out the on-board fuse blew on the unit. Just need to wait for the wife to get home from work so I can head over to the black hole that is Walmart and pick up a mix bag pack of mini fuses, put one in and wrap everything back up.

Of course if the unit doesn't power up with a new fuse then I'll be annoyed! I'm guessing that won't happen though.