01acls

One very important thing you guys failed to mention is when replacing the battery you should buy the highest amperage rated battery you can afford. It will make a significant difference in your situation.

I would even spend the extra money and get a gel battery, they will last twice as long. Opima is one such brand.

cdroadwarrior

oo7spy, sounds like good advice that I will follow! Does the low battery condition sometimes result in no codes being set? That part surprised me. After thoroughly cleaning all connections and grounds, the problem seems to have disappeared, but I expect its just an anomoly. Will replace with a new battery. Thank you!

cdroadwarrior

01acls, sounds like good advice as well! I was thinking about getting the highest amperage. Have thought about the Gel batteries, but never acted on it. Is the battery sizing/numbering system the same? I believe the RL's require 24's. Do they fit well?

01acls

Yes I believe the battery will fit bc they had to add a spacer to mines to make it taller... the spacer came with the battery.

You'll be pleasantly surprise the difference it'll make. It's like driving a V8 vs 4 banger. You'll hear the difference in the way the starter cranks and stronger idle. Kinda like how a new car would idle... a strong pulse to the motor.

Yes sizing is the same.

cdroadwarrior

Thanks again for the input on this! Definitely wanting to do this...glad I didn't get a standard battery yesterday. Off of the Optima website, it recommended this one for the 2nd Gen RL, does this look right?

Optima 8025-160-FFP RedTop Group 25 Starting Battery


The price isn't even much more (or more at all) compared to a standard high quality battery. The CCA don't seem particularly high, but it sounds like they deliver it to the car in a more effective and powerful burst (from what I read)?

01acls

Yes that's the right battery for your 2G RL.

Grounding cables being tight is not the same as cleaning them. You need to disconnect the cable and clean the contact points between the ground cable and the chassis/component, even sanding it to get the oxidation/corrosion off. At the minimum at least loosen the fastener and rotate the cable/strap or loosen it and spray contact cleaner in the contact area and rotate it, that will help scrub the contact area clean.

When you are changing the battery, do connect the positive cable and the negative cable together for a short time... say half hour or so to drain the residual current from the computers. That might clear you recurring xmas lights (with the battery out of the car).

Another thing you can do is disconnect the computer connectors, that will dislodge oxidation/corrosion and hopefully giving it a slightly different contact point. The ideal thing would be to spray contact cleaner on the pins and then connect and disconnect the connector to scrub the connection. Be sure to use non conductive electronic contact cleaner. And to be safe do this with the battery disconnected.

cdroadwarrior

Will work on that today! The grounds did look a little corroded on the surface, but were connected solidly. Thats a great idea for the computer. I hope the plastic on the cable connectors aren't too fragile...I always am nervous the plastic will crack (or maybe it was from too many years of working on old BMW's!).

Thanks again!

oo7spy

Buys battery, feels like he's driving a V8. Leaves cables connected for 30 min to discharge capacitors.



It could have very easily just been your ground corrosion, OP.

01acls

You need to learn how to read first because that's not what I said.

oo7spy

Sorry, but a quick starter doesn't get me going like a V8 does over a I4. And you're right, you said "drain the residual current from the computers", but what you meant to say was "drain the stored charge in the capacitors".



:ibsomeonesaysyoudontunplugtheecu:

01acls

Lol thats easy for you to say you're not the one having car issues now are you?

It's all fun and games for us until it's our turn. Lol

TERRY A KHAN

Various malfunctions (VSA/ABS/SHAWD)
I recently encountered these error and as suggested by several members to have my battery replaced.
After battery replacement errors continued for 2 days and then totally disappeared.
Yes, battery replacement does correct this.

TERRY A KHAN

I looked at the Optima line but was not sure if the wire harness lugs would reach the battery terminals.
If anyone has managed to fit the Optima please post some pictures.

cdroadwarrior

Per the group's guidance and advice, I replaced my battery with the Optima group 25 battery from Amazon (Optima 8025). It fits perfectly fine in terms of height and terminal location...IF you put the plastic piece that comes with the battery to protect the terminals for shipping onto the bottom of the battery to raise it up. If you didn't do this, the battery would sit too low and it would be difficult to connect the terminals (with the plastic battery shroud). Other than that...it is "plug and play". I think it was a little shorter lengthwise (along the long axis of the RL), so you have to do a little positioning with the extra space (which was actually helpful due to the LED and other supplementary wiring that is in that vicinity).

As a follow up to the repair, it seems to have worked (as the group wisely predicted), but it took probably a week and one long 500 mile trip to fully change my RL's "bad habits" with the random errors! Very strange...it always seemed to be very random...and after replacing the battery with the Optima the randomness continued for one week but with steadily decreasing frequency...until it was gone!

Great recommendations on the repair and the Optima battery....$140 from Amazon including shipping...not much more than a standard battery....

With regards to the other potential benefit of the battery resulting in my car starting "like a V8", I haven't noticed that yet, as it just seems to start like it should, but I will keep my fingers crossed!

TonyCD

Heavy, in all sincerity, how do you maintain an alternator?

thomask

LOL, how can you not know it is beyond me. Most basic ones - don't drive too much (wear and tear) and don't put music too loud (they don't like being stressed too much) also don't use anything that draws power. Heating seats is a big no-no for example, same with AC...
joking .

skides06RL

I have looked all over and this seems to be the best place to ask this question. First some background. I have read pages and pages researching everything that can go wrong with these cars and piece by piece I have kind of been rebuilding my 2006 Acura RL as a hobby. It was in excellent shape when I bought it last year with I think around 222K. Yes I know that is high but it was owned by an older gentleman and had a complete maintenance history with all work done at the Acura Dealership. I thought yes, its going to need a lot of accessories replaced like alternator and wear items.. no big deal. NOT


Ive been doing this stuff on a budget and figure if I have to spend 3 or 4K im in good shape.. I love the car. Ive got a good mechanic that lets me help him work on it and we figure out the problems together. All like 10 of them so far. Heres my latest one.


Lots of bearing noises creeping up. Replaced rt front wheel hub.. Solved a lot of noise but after installing 255/45/17 Tires last month, started getting the same rumble as I had on the rt front. For over a month.. I had no vsa/abs/sh awd lights and as a matter of fact never have had an issue. I decided to have my guy do both rear hubs, I ordered them from parts geek for 50 bucks each plus 80 each labor.. great deal right? Well, I went to pick up the car and every single warning light except the engine light was on and the car drove like crap. After much arguing with the owner of the shop, my regular guy showed up and we disassembled the rt side after the codes read rt rear wheel speed sensor failure. After cleaning the surface where the sensor reads and putting the old bearing back on, solved all the lights but the VSA light. The warning triangle is constant plus the VSA service banner comes on after a half mile or so. I think I have narrowed it down to a "VSA steering center reset" that's needed. It is done after steering angle changes. There is a way to do it by grounding pin 9 in the OBD port on the TL's and RSX's. Does anyone know of how to do this procedure on an 06 RL?


Thanks, sorry for the rambling

oo7spy

Have you looked for the procedure in the service manual?

skides06RL

I read almost every section of the provided on this website last night. There isnt a VSA or ABS troubleshooting or service section. That seems to be the only parts that are missing.

oo7spy

I saw your question in the service manual thread after I posted. The Brake System pdf didn't answer your questions?

One thing you can always try when troubleshooting these electrical issues is to disconnect the battery cables, hold them together for 15-30 seconds, and then reconnect. Make sure you have radio and navi codes first. That can reset the computers and sometimes clear reoccurring errors.

cdroadwarrior

Due to the universal and unbreakable nature of murphy's law, as soon as I wrote the post saying that removing and thoroughly cleaning the grounding cables and replacing my battery with the Optima battery had solved my re-occurring problem with the random "grouped" malfunctions after about a week, they seemed to have returned. Again, it seems to be a little less frequent, and usually I can re-start my RL 3 or 4 times and make the error go away. But sometimes it still seems to happen, and occcassionally (maybe 1/7th of the occurrences) it occurs while driving. Trying to pull the codes reveals no codes set! When the errors occur (including SHAWD and adaptive cruise control), the torque vectoring display shows that I am driving a front-wheel drive car and my adaptive cruise control doesn't work. By extrapolating that the other errors are valid during this intermittent error also mean that the associated systems aren't working, then my stability/traction control aren't working and my airbags aren't working. My "brake" warning light comes on, but I can confirm that my brakes are working, so I assume that it is the ABS function Other than this random set of errors, my RL is completely reliable, smooth, and doesn't leak or burn a drop of oil, so it is rather perplexing.

Any other thoughts on what I could look into? I can say with certainty that the brand-new Optima battery and sanded/de-oxidized grounds (x2) have been thoroughly addressed.

Thanks again!

TERRY A KHAN

cdroadwarrior,
Your post described exactly what happened to me after I replaced my battery and after a few weeks the frequency of occurrence decreased drastically.
This error comes up perhaps once every 2 weeks and since last week the 'AFS' error comes up at ignition.

I think I have already tried most ideas offered in this forum except using Acura battery, perhaps Acura batteries carry a built in chip as with HP pc batteries. This is something I will try very soon.

I do believe that an electronic device is starting to fail and my dealer has no idea what's going on apart from replacing the battery.

Contacted Acura customer support and was advised to see my dealer.
Perhaps someone will get to the bottom of this and there may a fix available.

01acls

^/^^ You guys might want to try cleaning the 120 A battery fuse under the hood or better yet replace it with a jumper wire. See if that does anything.

I've known firsthand that high amperage fuses can be defective.

oo7spy

Other things to check are fluid levels, specifically the rear diff for the SH-AWD light. The AFS light has a good possibility of being real too. The stroke sensor internals in the rear driver wheel well get corroded and lose contact.

skides06RL

I posted above about a rear hub replacement on an 06 Acura RL causing a Service VSA light. Well I found a parts store with a Bosche "Enhanced OBDI OBDII" code scanner that would get into the HONDA specific ABS Diagnostic codes and did a "VSA on Center Reset" which requires level ground and centered steering wheel. And "Poof" no more triangle and VSA light. Yipee!

Jonion

Hadn't read this thread before but check out my new thread :

https://acurazine.com/forums/second-...lanced-934366/

Could be the same problem. Symptoms are close enough but maybe you haven't done the mileage ours has since the problem started. Ours does 800 miles every week at least so may have done 2-3k before the problem became obvious.

cdroadwarrior

Thanks for the idea! I removed it last night and cleaned it thoroughly with DeoxitD5 (the exposed metal connectors), as well as carefully cleaning the connections in the relay/fuse box. The connector that goes straight down off of the fuse appeared to be covered in DieElectric grease...is this normal/OEM?

After reconnecting, I got the error on the initial restart, but not on the next 3 starts...so I am hopeful! If nothing else, it is one additional potential root cause that is able to be substantially "checked off".

Thanks again for everybody's help!

cdroadwarrior

That sounds like a great scanner! Any specific model number? I wonder how expensive they are?

cdroadwarrior

First of all, thanks again for the great suggestions! This problem is definitely perplexing...I am used to "process of elimination" with car repair, with the assumption that there is one thing that is the true root cause.

With this, I cleaned the grounding wire connections, and it went away completely, but then came back diminished.

I then replaced the battery, and it went away completely, but then came back diminished even farther.

I then thoroughly cleaned the high-amp battery fuse, and it went away, but then came away even more diminished, but it still returned. Now, it seems to come back during the first start of the day and go away after a few sequential re-starts, and then stay away completely for the rest of the day.

And still, no codes are being set! Any further ideas? Again, thanks to you all!

01acls

^ what is the manufacturer date of your 06 RL?

cdroadwarrior

Its manufacture date is 08/05 (but a 2006 model year Technology Package with CMBS).

Were there some specific manufacture date issues that could be affecting this?

Thanks for your help!

cdroadwarrior

I think I may have figured this out...and it appears to be a completely different root cause! I wanted to post it here just in case it could help anybody else.

After replacing the battery, thoroughly cleaning the two grounding cables, and cleaning the high-amp fuse, the problem still persisted. Each time I did these interventions, the problem would get better, disappear, then come back worse or differently.

After getting pretty discouraged and frustrated, I finally asked myself what could be causing any voltage issue that could be causing these phantom issues.

Other than this issue, my RL has been rock-solid reliable, so I really wanted to figure it out.

A few months after I bought my RL, I bought a ScanGaugeII and had it nicely mounted above the change tray. I really liked having the additional info.

I started wondering if the ScanGaugeII constantly drawing some power out of the OBDII port could be causing this. I disconnected the power from it, and the random errors went away and have stayed away (thus far...knock on wood!)

I then started doing some research, and found that Prius owners who had the ScanGaugeII had experienced these same phantom errors, and it turns out that the gauges come with CAN cables, which have some additional connections/interfaces that can cause some of these errors. ScanGauge recommended a different cable (ISO) that would correct the issue.

I called ScanGauge today and they looked it up in their system, and had me confirm through the ScanGauge that my RL uses ISO instead of CAN, so they are sending me a new cable (as I would still like to use the ScanGaugeII).

I wanted to post this just in case any other RL owners use the ScanGaugeII and don't have to go through the same saga that I did. I appreciated all of the guidance of the group and feel better with more secured grounding wires and a new battery, so it was not wasted effort/investment.

I just hope this fix "sticks"...happy for the Prius messageboards who explored their similar problem!

01acls

Yes, a recall about the VSA... but on the 2005 RL up to June 31, 2005.

Your RL is a 2005. Normally anything within 3 months of end of the year will be consider as next year model, unless it's an early releast.

You might ask for a good will repair if your VSA comes back for a reunion. Lol

01acls

Correction

Recall for the RL VSA is up to the manufacture date of June 29, 2015.

TERRY A KHAN

Replaced my battery a few months ago and these errors still continued until a few weeks ago the AFS came on and stayed on. My old battery was good but that's too late now.
Took advantage of this since the AFS would not go away and my dealer replaced the defective stroke sensor 33146-SJA-003.
The AFS error went away and the active headlites start working. Now that my dealer understood that there is a problem, I showed him a copy of TSB 09-025 Steering Angle Sensor Causes False SAS,CMBS messages.
Today the SAS 35251-SJA-A52 was replaced, but, it is too soon to tell if the error is corrected so I will post results in a months time.

Jonion

So that is ALL RLs then.

01acls

No, recalls are for RL with manufacturer dates from March 1, 2004 through June 29, 2005.

2015 was a typo. Sorry for confusion.

01acls

TERRY A KHAN

Happy to report that 3 weeks have passed since Acura dealer replaced my SAS 35251-SJA-A52 sensor without any false alarms flashing.
6 weeks since the stroke sensor 33146-SJA-003 has been replaced without any 'Check AFS'
This problem plagued me since 04/15 to 09/15, my entire summer.

cdroadwarrior

Thanks again! I went to the Acura Dealer, and they were no help. They didn't find any open recalls, and my RL was after the recall dates for this campaign. They offered to do some diagnostics, which would be at $150 to pull the same codes that I already pulled...so I declined