So I just traded in my beloved 2002 tl which besides the transmission was the best car ever to me as a young kid buying his first car 5 years ago, it was clean and never let me down but I decided to trade in because I needed a suv and wanted to keep it acuras only , the mdx was big and boring and I like to drive , few things this rdx had two owners and has 83k on it , when I turn on the air it makes like a fart noise behind the dash first and sometimes does that as soon as I turn it on and seems to have a power steering problem because when parking it get hard to turn all of a sudden , and one question on turbo idling when in s mode when on highway I'm not sure if it's an idle or that's just how the turbo sounds , small rattle I hear once and while which I think is the power steering pump other than that I love it so far , any help would be great

 

Congratulations on the RDX! Is yours a tech or not?

It's very common for me to hear that noise behind the dash when I turn the climate controls on. I think it is just the car moving the airflow. Not to worry.

Not sure about the power steering issue. We changed the power steering rack on my mom's 2008 RDX at about 115,000 miles.

As far as your turbo question, not sure exactly what you mean. In "S" mode, the transmission locks out 5th gear, so the engine will probably be spinning close to 3000 rpm or above. The engine is certainly not idling. At that engine speed, the turbo probably being used, and you might be hearing that constantly. I know when I'm going up a hill on a highway, even in 5th gear, you can hear the turbo very loudly.

 

Thanks and yea it's a tech package so far so good hoping to put a lot of miles on it

 

My 08 RDX started making the same type of sound behind the driver's dash when I first start the car. Everything still works, so I figure I will wait until something fails before tearing the dash apart to fix. The power steering fluid is suppose to be lifetime according to the Acura service tech. I don't know their definition of lifetime; but, anything over 5-7 years for car fluids seems a little long. I had an 97 Honda Accord +100,000 miles that did the same thing at the steering limits and fresh fluids corrected the problem (old fluid looked dark and lacked viscosity).

I haven't notice any rattle (yet) at hwy speeds on my RDX. The RDX isn't as quiet on the hwy +75 mph compared to my TSX or MDX. I might have to turn down the stereo and listen next time.

 

Common problem in the RDX. To address the farting sound, which as you say, is air-flow related , see the flowing link. I did this excellent DIY a couple of weeks ago, solved the issue.

https://acurazine.com/forums/diy-faq...-noise-862172/