I recently took my TSX up to the Blue Ridge Mountains and had several problems occur. The week prior to this trip, I took my car in for an oil change (3k miles) and to have the phantom passenger door noise investigated. Of course the dealer did not find anything out of the ordinary with the door and I set off on my trip. Within 100 miles, my driver's door started whistling. My guess is that it needs a new door seal. The problem gets worse...I started hearing a pronounced road noise from the rear axle. When I checked the tire pressure, it was 40psi on every tire (I imagine the dealer does this to all TSX's. I immediately deflated to 32 psi front and 30 psi rear). When I returned to Birmingham, I took it to King Acura and was told after the 1st day in the shop that it was my front right wheel bearing. After replacing they still had the noise and decided to make me wait another day for a rear wheel bearing. It is now the weekend and they are waiting on my 3rd wheel bearing and haven't even looked at the door panels. Someone PLEASE help me understand how a wheel bearning can go out after 4k miles. If the bearings fail, couldn't it cause a problem slingging metal around and hurting the axle spindle? Bearings are not a high tech item and what is the problem with 3 failing??? Should they not also replace the half axle? Something is wrong in Denmark!

 

I dont know....thats kind of crazy... I would ask the service manager what the deal was. I assume you bought from King (Where I bought Mine) so I would be rasing some kain. As far as the door rattles go....king doesnt have a clue. I took mine there for the rattles and they didnt do a damn thing to fix them.

 

This is how a Honda service manager explained it to me... The cars are anchored down on the ship during the ocean crossing. The little 'back and forth' vibrations create a flat spot on the bearings, breaking them down into accelerated failure. It doesn't happen on all cars, but it does get a few.

This happened to our brand new CRV after only 1,700 miles. Front right wheel bearing had to be replaced. Don't sweat it, if they replaced it with a factory new one it's fine. We've got 23,000 miles on the CRV now and it's been perfect since.

 

I went to King Acura today and got some answrs about the bearings. The started replacing them at the point of the sound origin but since the "C" pillar is hollow, the noise had traveled front the left rear forward. The left rear was the last bearing they replaced. Go figure. I inquired how such a "low tech" item as a bearing could fail but got the Gomer Pyle shrug. I like the flat spot in the bearing after oversea shipment explaination.
They had not conquered the door issue yet and also had placed a nice scrape on my left rear fender which will take them 3 days to repair. I showed the service manager the post on the Japanese recalling door seals on Accords and have also lodged my concerns on tire pressure/bearings/door panels/wind noise with the Acura customer service line. I hope it does some good but I'm not overly optimistic.
Thanks for your posts/information