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Real progress on the Sirus radio thing today. It occured to me today that perhaps there is a pre-made piece of wiring harness that interfaces to the wiring in the Taurus to connect the Sirius radio the way I want. So while we were in Knoxville today, I stopped by some stores to try to find such a thing. The only really helpful visit was to Circuit City, who had that general kind of thing, but not for our year of car. One piece of information I took away from that store was a brand name of car stero connection equipment, Axxess.
That didn't quite get me what I want, so I started looking first for our model, and then for the piece of equipment that we needed. I came across installer.com, which didn't have something that said it was for a 2006 Taurus, but did have a widget for a 2005 Taurus, called a FRDR-AUX. That page seems like it's for our car, but the diagram of the radio shows an antenna jack, which our radio doesn't have in the dash unit, which is why I'm looking for this product in the first place. I'm also suspicious, because the instructions talk about 13 and 14 pin connectors, and the connector on the back of the radio that I saw looked like 20 pins to me.
Logjamelectronics.com also has a FRDR-AUX available, which actually mentions the 2006 Taurus, so we're in luck! No more diagrams and no more information, though.
The problem with these two advertisements is that they say their adapter plugs into the data connector on the radio that would normally go to an auxilliary CD changer. We don't have a CD changer, but there's also no empty connectors on the back of the radio. Something doesn't add up.
Still thrashing around, I finally find it available at the manufacturer's web site. It's more expensive there, no surprise. They have an installation diagram, which contains a crucial piece of information that I hadn't found anywhere else: REAR MOUNTED TUNER AMPLIFIER PACK.
So the heart of the radio is in the trunk, which is why the radio in the dash board didn't have the right connectors and didn't make any sense--it's just the head unit.
And here are the connectors:
Now that I know where the bloody radio is, this job will be much more straightforward.