Background:
I just received my '08 GT, with factory navigation. I have had NAV problems since then. It stopped working completely for awhile. The dealer couldn't fix it, so they brought it to some 3rd party electronics guy. It sounded as though they were messing with software upgrades. After that, it worked but the GPS signal was present only about 40% of the time (as indicated by the no signal icon). 3 days ago, it dropped out completely again. I went into the diagnostics screen, and it often showed 0 satellites and a status of "No Fix". Sometimes 1 satellite showed up, but still no fix. This is in a very open area, no obstructions. I went under the dash looking for the GPS antenna, couldn't find it. It's pretty buried. I traced one wire from that area to a connector, and tried to push the connector a little tighter. Lo and behold, a few minutes later I got 4 satellites and a 3D fix. The wire looked pretty skinny though, like a ground wire, so that could have been a coincidence.

Question:
Factory NAV owners, what has been your experience with your NAV? Any dropouts? Have you done a satellite count? How many satellites have you gotten, max? I think my max has been 5. Can anyone describe the actual antenna wire, or have any other info on the antenna?

 

The antenna wire is a thin one, with a pink plug on the end that plugs into the radio. I have limited signal sometimes, usually when heading north (I think it's because of the location of my antenna in a non-stock location). The stock location for the antenna is on top of the gauge cluster under the dash.

It does sound like you might have had a loose connection, hopefully that's all it was, and you'll be good now.

 

I have a guy who is selling the new 08 nav radio + all the accessories (ant, dvd, etc) for 900. Should I get it and is it a good deal? Will I have probs. with shaker 500 setup.

 

That's about what I paid, so it is a pretty good deal; you might want to think about portable units before spending that kind of money, though. Personally, I'm not wild about springing the money every year for the nav DVD updates, when I can go online with a Garmin and get them for free on my portable I use for business travel. As far as the Shaker setup, it works fine. The Visteon tech that programmed mine did a good job, the only problem being the fault message I get every time. That error doesn't seem to affect the way the thing works. The tech said it's normal, even though I might bug the guy again to see if they've found a fix yet. Hope this helps.

 

If your going to spend that kind of money, buy a pioneer avic d3, unless you really like the factory look. The pioneer will also play dvd's and the factory can't.