We had our 2005 RL for service the other day where one of the issues was the cabin temperature – or in other words the lack of control of it. We have had issues similar to others reported on this forum that during winter days the cabin would get very hot necessitating decreasing the temperature. For example, we would have the initial temperature set at 70° and after about an hour it would be necessary to turn the temperature down to 63°.

The service department dutifully checked the operation of the Hvac and reported that they could not find any problems. They also checked with the Acura technical service group to determine if there was any issues they were not aware of and that answer was none. I indicated that there have been many complaints about this on the Acura forum and the service representative said it usually takes Accra 6-8 months to identify and rectify problems reported by customers. Hopefully this is true and that Accra will take some responsibility for fixing this issue.

 

My '05 RL has this problem as well but it's kind of intermittent so I understand that it'll be difficult to track down. I hope they do though.

 

There have been long threads on this and basically it boils down to the temp control system sucking. Mine does the same thing as do many other owners on here. It gets better/worse depending on how different the temperature outside is from what you want it to be inside from my experience.

 

I agree - this is one darn quirky automobile.

 

I've had my RL for a year now and the temp control (or lack there of) is very annoying and seems to get worse. I had a 1 hour drive to work this morning. Temp outside = 43F. Temp setting at 73F when I started car (this is the setting I had when driving home night before). Car heated up quickly (the good news), but blasted hot air so I had to change setting down to 69F (this is very typical - I usually have to have setting at 69 for trip in morning and 73 for trip home at night).

However, this morning system continued to heat at 69, I changed to 68 no change, 67 no change, 66 no change, 65 no change, finally 64 started to cool down. Note that I gave each setting several minutes to "kick-in". Then at 64, started blasting cold air and after a while I had to adjust up to 68/69. This is where it got bad. At 68, it blew cold air and at 69 it blew hot air. Neither setting would hold temp at a comfortable level.

Very frustrating!

 

This, along with everything else you mentioned, is exactly the way mine operates as well. Seriously pisses me off. I'd rather not have "automatic climate control" at this point since the only thing that seems to be automatic is me getting pissed off at it all the time.

 

Has anyone verified the outside temp. shown on the MID with a thermometer? You can offset the car's outside temperature reading by 5 degrees in the MID to adjust for the difference. There was a TSB on the temperature calibration but I don't have the details on it, just the summary.

I usually have mine set to 73. When it warms up I can set it to 72 or 71 and it immediately starts cooling. I never have to go into the sixties before it starts to cool down. The examples in this thread are 5-7 degrees off from what is expected. It might be worth it to verify what the MID is displaying using another thermometer.

 

stinger - I'm nearby in Belmont. Maybe its just our CA weather that's the problem!

 

I had a 2004 TL with the same problem. The TL and RL systems work the same way according to Acura. Acura could not identify my problem as well. Being the indusrious soul I am I spent a while researching how the system worked and discovered the problem.
There is a small grill at the bottom of the dash(approx above your right knee). This grill is attached to a hose the pulls in the cabin air and runs the air across a tempature sensor that tell the system what the cabin air temp is so it can cool, heat, etc.
My tube was disconnected, so the sensor was not detecting cabin air, but was detecting the air "stuck" behind the dash!
The way I detected this was by tearing a small piece of single weight tissue paper, a bit larger then the grill and holding it next to the grill to see if it pull it towards the grill. It did not.
The dealer agree, pulled the dash apart to discover the hose was disconnected at the sensor. Once they put everything back together the temp system worked fine, and the tissue paper was drawn in to the grill.
Perhaps that is your problem.
Hope this helps....

 

I've actually thought that since it does vary so much.

 

Peter - thanks, but I think you posted this before and I checked then. I was hoping that was my problem, but air is being pulled in through the grill in my dash. Seems like the system takes into account the outside temp as well as the internal sensor temp, but puts more "weight" on the outside temp.