phirenze

St louis --> Pittsburgh --> Philly --> DC --> Louisville --> Indy --> St. Louis

Zero car problems, drove beautifully.
Overall gas milage (including some city) = 30.9 mpg

I had LOTS of problems with the Navi, more info on this soon. If you are planning on taking an extended trip soon bring a map just in case.

larchmont

Interesting trip: ? blues, steel, cheese steak, blah blah blah, jazz, racing, blues ?

Great to hear the car was great. But, do let us hear more about the Nav thing.

donutchow

damn, that's impressive mileage! how fast were you going on the highway?

pansuria

Crap I just spent 2k on the nav myself and you're saying that we should still carry maps with us?? I guess Nav data/technology is still early, but that just sucks. Do let us know more about the details of when it failed you.

RogerPodacter

i went on a 1200 mile trip to NC and the navi was flawless. in fact, the navi has been flawless for me for 8000 mile now. and i use it A LOT. i guess its the area you live in...

miner

Did you go to the Brickyard 400 by chance?

RogerPodacter

No just went to OBX, rodanthe i think. What is Brickyard 400?

miner

The Nascar Winston Cup race at Indy. It was ran yesterday.

Speed Demon

Phirenze, please don't tell me that it failed you on your Pittsburgh leg of the trip!

larchmont

While we wait for phirenze -- a thought:

I wonder if it was raining/storming a lot? -- I know there's been a lot of horrible weather in that part of the country lately. I ask this because:

I don't think it's been mentioned on here yet, but.....I've noticed that sometimes in such conditions, it's like Nav has a nervous breakdown. (The exact same thing happened on the Nav in my TL-S.) You start seeing the dreaded "Recalculate" again and again even when you're doing fine, you get some ridiculous instructions, and in general the Nav seems to be disoriented for a while. I've assumed it has something to do with negative ions or shifting air pressure or water getting in there or I don't know what else.

Jason

Sorry dude but if the nav failed you, you have to go to the dealer b/c this system is unbeatable. Maybe your car is fuct up.

phirenze

ok guys sorry for the delay,

THe problem with the navi didn't seem to just be with the antenna reception but with the program itself. It would put me on a route which I would follow and then bam right at my most vulnerable point (like when I had no idea where the hell I was b/c it took me some crazy way) it would say taht I'm on an unverified road and wouldn't help me out at all. I thought I was completely fucked until I realized that I could just look at the map and navigate myself until it picked back up and took me where I needed to go.

^^ that was problem one on a road to bloomington IN

Problem #2, coming into a remote area outside of pittsburgh it had me get off the main raod and take these side streets for about 20 mi (cool b/c it was quicker). Now, to no fault of the navi, the road that I was travelling on happened to be closed and i had to take a detour. The navi wasn't willing to accept this and guide me along the detour route, it just kept telling me to turn around and take the road that was closed.

up till here there problems were in pretty remote areas so I wasn't freaking out.

Then, while driving from philly to atlantic city it had me exit the highway to take a different one (outside of philly) so I follow the directions for about 10 mintues until I realize that I've been driving in circles the whole time. At this point I had to turn off the navi and just buy a map.

Various other times while driving on main roads it would all of a sudden tell me that the road was unverified.

Still other times It would drive me in circles until I broke out and drove on the correct road.

Now I've had the car for about 2.5 months and haven;t had any problems until now (just drove on main highways and large cities). If you guys are going to drive on state or back roads PLEASE don't make my mistake of traveling without a backup plan. The navi is great 99% of the time but when it fails you I promise you will be freaking out (especially when its 2 am and you're in hickville indiana afraid of getting buttraped by some state trooper who wants to have a good time with a dirty jew who drives a $30k car). Your dependence on it grows really quickly. just go out, buy a rand mcnally road atlas for like $15 and toss it in the trunk just in case.

also, no I wasn't at nascar. phish concerts and living my dream of playing poker at the taj and getting comped at the noodle bar.

larchmont

About that one part: Were you doing the "Avoid Streets," and STILL it wouldn't accept it? If you did, it should have. (Sometimes, though, I know it's hard or impossible to get the "Avoid Streets" to be accepted. Sometimes I've had to go through it a few times over, to get a good alternate route. Often it'll just go back to the FIRST route, and you're back on the merry-go-round.)

Aside from that part, it seems like something is definitely wrong.

P.S. As per what I said in my prior post: I gather that bad weather WASN'T part of it?

Jason

Come on. You have to actually LOOK at the screen.

Do you have auto reroute set up? If not you should. It will change the route if you start in another direction.

I can't believe you admitted this. How can you drive in circles with a nav system in your car? Buy a map? Read your owners manual...

WHOA!!!! Dude. I assume you are Jewish (hopefully). I am Jewish too. I travel IN a lot and I'm in Bloomington quite often and you have it very wrong. If any town in IN is cool, it's Bloomington. I see some discrimination and ignorance every so often, but I am pleasantly surprised at how little I see in my travels across IL and IN.

phirenze

larch,
yeah sorry I forgot to mention that the weather was fine.

BUT.......
drumroll..............













I did have my windows tinted 2 weeks ago.

ySL

Hi Jason, I see that you owned your TSX for less than a week...so obviously your car is perfect! right now that is...

phirenze

Jason,
yeah i'm jewish, thats why the (semi) joke. And yeah bloomington is a great town, I couldn't feel more comfortable anywhere else. however, this didn't happen in bloomington-- it was about 35 miles out.

Guys just beleive me here. I'm not an idiot. I know how to drive and use the navi to its full potential (i.e. re-route). Just take my word when I say that the system is not perfect. I know nobody said it was I just want to be sure that nobody ever gets hurt or seriously screwed because the relied completely on the navi without having any sort of technical redundency (i.e. plan out your route before and carry a map).

edit: I don't mean plan out your route before going anywhere b/c that would defeat the purpose of the whole thing. I just meant that before taking a serious road trip or traveling into remote areas have some idea of the roads you need to take.

larchmont

BTW: Has anybody else seen Nav undergo "nervous breakdowns" in stormy weather?
(As I described before: the screen shows "Recalculate" again and again, even when you're doing fine; it gives you ridiculous directions; and in general it seems not to know which end is up. Not in every storm, not even usually; but sometimes.)

phirenze

"Nervous breakdown" - that exactly sums up what happened to me. but again, it wasn't storming.

Jason

I have logged over 82,000 miles in three years with Acura navigation systems, and that more than qualifies me to comment on the system. This system in the TSX is even better than the CL-S. So obviously I'm gonna like the TSX nav.

EDIT: In fact, I'm willing to bet I'm one of the most experienced Acura nav users in the U.S.