ThomWV

I posted two questions asking for more explanation than I could find about the failure of the Main Relay to see if that might be the problem with my son's 2001 CL Type S. All of the original indications pointed in that direction. It died on a hot day, restarted about a half hour later, died again at his house and then simply would not start. We listened for clicking relays under the dash, we listened for the sound of the fuel pump working and I spent a very good bit of time under the dash looking at the 10 different places various people (internet searches) had indicated the Relay might be located, with no success. We finally gave up and loaded the car up on my trailer and hauled it off to my mechanic.

My mechanic is named Darrell and he has worked on at least 100-times more tractors than he has Acuras. His code reader proved more or less worthless because it appears that Acura saw fit to use some number of proprietary codes that common readers will not reveal. None the less it, the reader, did indicate that a transmission relay is failing and that the up-stream oxygen sensor had failed as well. Both were replaced of course (my son and I took care of them) but that did nothing to get the car to start. Darrell started tracking things down Old-School-style and after about two hours found the problem. Once located it was an easy enough fix and not horribly expensive. Now the car is running just fine again. On the upside Darrell also noted that the car has a failing front wheel bearing that we (he) will be dealing with next week.

So I just wanted to thank those of you who replied to my other questions for your time and trouble. It was appreciated.

justnspace

iTrader: (1)

you never told us what the fix was?

what did Darrell fix?

aznboi2424

iTrader: (10)

You posted the problem in 2 different threads just to start another thread to say it was fixed and not tell us what he did?

Tosh

It was obviously still the 'main relay.'

Smashing good advanced trolling though! Very impressed!

justnspace

iTrader: (1)

ThomWV

It was the starter. More correctly it was the "bendix" unit. Although Darrell replaced it (which accounted for nearly all the expense) in fact when he showed me the old one I recognized the problem immediately. Interestingly enough it was a problem that I learned a fix for back when I was a kid, on Chevrolets, back in the 1960's. Seriously, they had the same design and the same problem, and the same fix.

Its probably best to first say that his car, once mine, has a bit over 262,000 miles on it. So it takes a while to wear one of these things out. OK. if you look at the bendix (starter solinoid as its sometimes called) you'll see that there is a large stud to which the Positive power cable is attached. There will also be a couple of other small wires attached to it but they aren't of concern at the moment. That large stud is often held in place by a somewhat thin nut that cinches against the body of the unit. Inside of the unit that stud acts as a contact through which the full power of the battery is applied and over time its tip, inside where you can't see it, begins to pit, burn, and errode. Sooner or later it simply fails to make good contact and when that happens the starter will not operate properly. That is what happened to my son's. Now the fix for it is really simple. All you do is hold the stud while you loosen the holding nut. Then rotate the stud 180 degrees and cinch the holding nut back down. Problem solved and you're good for another couple of hundred thousand miles.

Tosh

As we on troll patrull say in Sweden, you "trollade fram" ('conjured forth' in Anglophile) an explanation (although tl;dr). Well played, kind sir!

We Swedes also say "ingen trollsvans soppa ikväll."