I was driving home from work yesterday and all of a sudden I smelled a strong electrical burning kind of smell. I was listening to my stereo and it kept on working. As a matter of fact everything kept working normally and I thought it might be an outside smell from a vehicle driving in front of me. I realized that wasn't the case when I turned into my neighborhood and the smell stayed. After parking the car in my driveway, I began investigating. I could smell it mostly from the cd player area. As a matter of fact, I ejected a CD and you could smell it strong on the CD. I popped the hood and could smell nothing in the engine bay. This morning when I drove in to work, I noticed the lights for the CD display, clock and climate control were dim. Like half lit. In the evening when I was driving home I realized that none of the buttons in the center console were lit with the exception of the emergency hazard triangle button. The stereo and climate control lights were still very dim. Everything seemed to be working though. I'm taking it to my dealer maybe tommorow, but more likely on Saturday morning. Has anyone else had a similar situation?

My car has about 18,000 on it and have had no issues except for some door rattling with the stereo when driving. Acura has replaced door panels, but haven't fixed it yet. I think I may need to get dynamat or something.

 

I just experienced the same thing today with my 2004 TSX on the way to work. I thought it was someone's clutch burning up outside, so I recirculated the air on my heater control to block out the air from outside but the smell grew more intense and my carpool buddy and I noticed a faint hint of smoke starting to build up in the cabin of the car. We couldn't really tell where the smoke was coming from, since it was around 6:10am and still dark in California, but it did slightly impare our vision.

To clear the smoke and the smell of burnt electronics, I blasted the fan and rolled the windows down, then looked down at the heater/AC control unit and noticed the illumination lights flicker on and off, then turned bright as if I turned the parking lights off, then went back to its normal illumination with the parking lights on without affecting the lights to the gauges (speedometer, tachometer, gas, etc.).

Further into our commute to work, the smell of smoke returned, so I pulled over to check the passenger seat because the illumination light for the passenger seat heater went out a couple of months back (another problem that I've learned to live with) and was afraid of any possible shorts on passenger seat. I unplugged two harnesses under the passenger seat, leaving the airback harness connected, and got back on the road. Two minutes into the drive the smell faintly returned and the illumination lights on the heater/AC control unit and the stereo flashed on and off then went dead.

Has anyone found a root cause to this problem??

 

Sorry to resurrect an old post. But I tend to search forums before re-posting the same issue.
The same exact thing happened to me yesterday in my 2004 non-navi TSX. The center console buttons do not light up any more. Strong electrical burning smell.

Does anyone know about this and how to fix?

I'm going to take the radio out and check the wiring, but if anyone had this issue before and could shed some light about what I need to look for... I would appreciate it.

Thanks.

 

No idea if the smoke is related to the PCB board TSB (search for existing thread - it's long), but you might want to check that out. I don't remember smelling smoke when mine went out, but it would be nice for you if the repair was covered under the extended warranty for this known-to-fail part.