Howdy,

New owner here. Just picked up my late production 07 RDX from Acura of Barrie.

Name or Screen Name: Castor
Country/State/City of purchase: Barrie, ON, Canada
Last 5 digit of Vin: 03453
Color Ext/Int: NBP/Ebony
Month/Yr of purchase: June 29 ,2007
Price paid before tax/lic: $37,000 CDN$
Model Yr of RDX: 2007
Base/Tech: Base in your Face!


Anyway, the car now has officially 67 kms on it. I just sold my 05 Legacy GT (2.5 Turbo).

WHile driving home I noticed an odd engine sound from the RDX - from the passenger footwell area. This is not the turbo spooling (that I like), but a metallic pinging sound.

I would call it pinging on moderate acceleration...I am assuming (logical leap) the dealer filled it up with regular instead of Super and thus the pinging....Checked the manual and it says the use of 87 octane, when super is unavailable won't hurt, but will degrade engine performance. (Obviously)

The Legacy did the same thing when the dealer filled it up with Regular on delivery and cured itself after the tank was replaced with super.

Has anyone else noticed this, meaning is it a fuel issue or is it something else? Is it a common sound during break in? Just curious....I didn't expect to hear that coming from the engine of an Acura.

I'll be calling them Tuesday to express my, ahem, displeasure. Sure would "suck"for the wash guy who cleaned / filled the car up to siphon it all out.

Other than that the RDX rocks...same kind of accel, power, handling as my Leg GT, but significantly better fit& finish, interior room, standard features, and warranty.. SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER. A new 08 Leg GT was same money as the 07 Base RDX MSRP.

Kudos to Acura of Barrie - outstanding dealership to deal with. I would recommend them to anyone.

Cheers, and thanks in advance for any info.

Chris

 

I didn't have that noise for break-in or anytime after that. I now have 7000 miles on my RDX. I did have to put regular gas in once because premium was not available, but I did not have the pinging sound, just less mileage and power.

I'd definitely check that out with your dealer asap.

 

I bet it is one of the exhaust heatshields. There are two big ones under the car, and one of them is not particularly well attached. The one towards the front can vibrate and touch the cat. I just bent mine out of the way a bit and the sound went away.

 

Good answer brizey. Could well be it........................

hey castor...you posted "late production 07 RDX from Acura of Barrie.
Last 5 digit of Vin: 03453" .... that number is VERY low to be LATE production!
I got mine back in Oct., & it was somewhere in the 06xx number's. Has yours been sitting on the lot for awhile?? Just curious!

 

Wow! $37K? So you were able to get it $700 below invoice then? According to the sticky in this board, invoice is C$37700

Or is it because you traded in your Legacy GT to lower the price?

 

Nope...That was the price....I thought it was damn good. Also waived PDI and Freight, and threw in some accessories (mudguards, mats)

I sold my Leg and put the $3000 I made as a downpayment on the RD.

They were really trying hard to sell me an RD....seemed to have a lot on the lot. Probably 15 or so RDX's.

The manufacture date on the door panel shows March 2007...and looking again, the 03 is an 08 in the VIN. I'm going blind it seems. My bad.

 

Damn that's good. Did you have to haggle or anything? Or did you walk right in and they offered it right on the spot?

I suspect that location is really important...I doubt that Acura Markham would give such a great deal. That's like the closest one to me right now.

 

There was some haggling involved...about 2 hours of "intense" negotiations (not really intense, the dealership was great)

At the end we were still off a way from where I wanted to be so I just gave them my cell phone #, told them to call me if they could do it as I was going to a Lexus dealer to look at the RX350 and walked out. One thing I noticed was that there were very few customers....I was the only guy in the dealership for over an hour. When I was at Toyota looking at the RAV4 and Honda looking at the CRV, there were people everywhere and some were waiting for salespeople. Crazy. The Honda dealer and Toyota dealer would barely budge on the price, I think because of the demand.

I got a call literally 5 mins later with the numbers I wanted. I finshed the deal particulars over the phone, gave them my colour choices and that's it.
They had the car ready for delivery the next day.

I find that if you are serious to buy and also serious to walk out, (and they know it) then things generally work out.

I think inventory & unit sales, combined with the 08 release in a few months etc plays a huge part in how aggressive they want to be. Remember, the dealers still have holdback, and some built in profit even at dealer invoice or lower. They just don't make as much, but still make some bucks.

I ended up talking to the owner when I picked up my RD...great guy. Said he'd rather make less and have happy customers, than make lots and have none.

Good logic.

 

I have seen 2 of these that had issues with timing chain tensioners. Not sure if that is the problem you are hearing, but it does manifest itself as a "metallic" noise.

 

Castor, to be honest with you, dealers
tell you what "YOU WANT TO HEAR."
There is nearly no way a guy can tell you he rather make less and have happy customers...
what he didnt include was " I rather make me less and have happy customers...but then again myself, my wife, and kids don't get to eat....tonite..for the 4th day in a row..."
hahahaaha
but then again
their method is more psyholocigal then anything...
so for you to foward information and bring on more customers for them

 

Black...

Timing chain tensioners....any more info on that? It's going in tomorrow when I get off of work. Still making the noise under light/med throttle. Checked the heatshields ( very flimsy BTW ).

Went for a drive...about 20 kms. Still doing it. Very pronounced from the passenger footwell area.

I wonder. Oh well, 100 kms on the car now. I'll post back with the diagnosis.

C

 

Not really, I'm not a tecnician. The timing chain is on the passenger side though.

 

The 1st RDX my GM took as a demo had the issue (this was back in september), I never got to drive the car to hear it but it was described as "too loud". I have seen another RDX that came back with the same "too loud" issue. Both times it was a timing chain tension issue.

The tensioners use some sort of plastic (hopefully really strong plastic) on top of metal. I assume the plastic is supposed to be very strong and allow the chain to glide over smoothly. My only guess is that the plastic was broken or missing, but I don't know what the final fix was.

I would just mention to the service dept that you suspect the timing chain tensioner. That way if they can't diagnose the problem you can ask them if they did indeed check it. Put the pressure on them, I'm not sure what the Consumer Protection laws are in Canada, in Massachusetts they have 3 shots to fix the problem, if they can't it qualifies as a lemon law buyback.

 

Castor is in Canada so the production numbers are different there. 08xxx is pretty new in canada. I doubt they have reached 10000 in canada yet.

 

Ahhh..that makes more sense! Congrats by the way.

 

Hi Castor,

Who did you work with at Acura of Barrie? Maybe i will give them a call.

Thanks,

Steve

 

Well just got the car back from the dealer.

They noticed the "noise" as well.....almost immediately. The service manager, who did the test drive said, "Wow. I hear it. I bet you'd never have bought an RDX if it made this noise during the test drive." I said, "Damn Straight."

So I sat there for 4 hours while they did some checking. I was told there were some TSB's regarding excess engine noise in the cabin, but this is not the case with mine.

It is coming from the Turbo unit,(they think) and no one is sure what the noise is or what is causing it.

They contacted Acura Tech Line and are awaiting some direction from someone there.

I bought an Acura to AVOID this kind of crap....and now it's happening with 150 kms on the odometer.....AAAARGH.

If they are tearing the motor down, then I'm fighting for a new RDX.

Not impressed.

 

Sorry to hear of the problems. Hang in there. Hopefully they'll get it all fixed and you can enjoy the vehicle. If not by then, contact the Acura arbitrator & see what they can do for you. Good luck.

 

So, I got the car back after 1 day.

Here was the diagnosis. Acura Tech and some platform engineer were in on this as well.

Appearently, during building, a large firewall grommet for some electronics harness was not installed in the passenger footwell area, near the turbo unit. The noise that was heard was the wastegate fluttering......that's it.

A new grommet was installed and resealed, and the car is sigificantly quieter. Luckily it had never been driven....especially in the rain.

Appearently their quality control in the US/CDN is not the same as JDM built Acura's.

Acura Customer Service was awesome....top shelf.

 

See! It all worked out! Now you can enjoy the RDX!