I was wondering if anyone else has had this problem...

I have had the '07 Acura RL for almost three weeks. During that time, I have had to call (or use XM's website) to refresh my radio three times to get NavTraffic working again. It works for like a week and then stops working again.

Now, on Saturday, when I turned on my XM radio, I noticed that the channel was sitting on 001. I had not put it on that channel. I was thinking that something had been reset, and sure enough, my NavTraffic wasn't working again. A call to XM and the required 15-20 minute wait resolved the problem.

Has anyone else experienced this? If so, was the problem resolved? I had "heard" (by searching previous threads) that there was a firmware problem with the radios, but is that for the '07 model year?

Thanks for all of the help and advice. I love this forum!

 

I had an issue initially with my '05 RL, but haven't had any problem since. Even disconnecting my battery to install my CAI didn't cause any problems which I was 99.9% certain it would.

 

Have an 06, and never had any problems, except an occassional outage of the traffic system, with the closest accident 2400 miles away in California, very late at night in the Washington DC metro area.

 

Double check that you're always using the same key fob. Each key fob corresponds to complete settings for the car -- not just seat, mirror & steering wheel positions, but also radio stations and other settings. It is possible that you don't have traffic icons or XM presets turned on for one fob, but you do for the other. I run into this sometimes if my wife is riding with me and she has her key with her, and she touches the passenger door handle to unlock before I open the driver's door. All her settings will be chosen, and I have to press the "1" memory button to get back to mine.

Just a thought.

 

Thanks for the info!

I'm wondering if this could be the culprit... Please let me know what you think of this theory.

Since the car is new, I am trying out different things, like playing around with MP3 CDs and DVD-A discs and the like. I want to try something out, so I go into my garage, turn on the accessory, and do what I need to do. I may be mistaken, but I think the outages occur after doing something like that.

Is it possible that if the traffic system is powered up, can't find a signal, and then is immediately powered down, it needs to be reset?

I'm going to try and resist the urge to play with things in the garage from now on.

Thanks for all of your help and for reading this missive!

 

Good thought...just took a long weekend with the wife and can't tell you the number of times she got to the car first, and as I opened the door, the seat and steering wheel are in the middle of adjusting to her settings. For some reason, the passenger door was always the closest, so she would inevitably reach the car first. In some cases, as I got in, I found myself being crunched as the seat moves up close to the wheel and pedals to fit her, even though I was the driver..

My wife's solution. You just have to open the door for me every time, and it will recognize you first. Remember, you used to do that before we were married...

 

By the way Chas2, I'm in Northern Virginia as well. If you ever see a Lakeshore Silver Metallic RL with a Yakima roof rack, that's me

 

SteveMeister, I am just plain Jane NBP. I don't think there is any real way that you can tell I have ACC/CMBS or PAX package. I am told the front badges look different on the grill because of the ACC/CMBS radar, but I can't really tell any difference. And the PAX wheels look exactly the same as the stock wheels. It is really hard to tell that PAX are close to 18s.

 

I am (again) suffering same problem--NavTraffic just stopped working (last time they had to replace the whole unit). After half hour of hold music with XM, the customer service rep told me my subscription had been de-activated. I just bought the car in December, still have 8 months to go on the free subscription. When I explained the subscription should still be active, they apologized and reset it for another full year. We'll see tomorrow whether they actually fixed the problem. Frustrating indeed...

 

I keep having outages with my 2005 RL, including a radio that was "loading" and kept switching to channel 1 the other night.

The completely useless XM customer service reps couldn't even figure out how to answer the phone, much less help with my XM service.

It is infuriating.

 

My 06 RL didn't have navtraffic for 6 months. Finally a dealer mechanic figured it was a bad flash eeprom; he had to remove battery leads AND pull the battery back-up fuse to have the headunit reload the eeprom. Voila, navtraffic now works perfectly.

 

During my recent service appt., I explained that Navtraffic wasn't working properly and they discovered a problem with the Acuralink. They had to order a new one and I have it replaced on Monday. I don't know the exact problem, but I will find out and post.

 

Like I said in the post above yours, I suspect most if not all bad head units that don't display traffic simply have a bad flash EEPROM. Instead of replacing the head unit as I've read people are doing, have your mechanic remove power and disable the battery backup (both must be done). The head unit will re-load the EEPROM and nav should work again!

 

Sadly, XM NavTraffic isn't worth much anyway. Nor is the XM traffic station for a given metro area, for that matter.

The problem continues to be that the reports aren't timely. It takes them a long time in many cases to get the accident reported and logged, and then they seem to be reluctant to ever clear it once it's on there.

We just went yesterday to my brother's in East Texas (100 miles away) to do some work. When we left in the morning it showed a bad accident on one of the major freeways in town. We stayed all day, and when we returned late that afternoon the accident still showed. Needless to say it had cleared and there were only skid marks to show it ever happened. It could have cleared hours earlier for all we know.

Trouble is, you never know whether to trust it or not. Is it an old report? Should you take another route? Who knows.

If they're listening , I'd like to suggest XM show the time of the accident in the little popup info box. That way, people could at least judge for themselves the odds the accident is cleared.

I have NO plans to renew my NavTraffic when my year is up.

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XM Traffic has been very reliable and very useful to me here in Tampa Bay.

When I pull out of my office parking garage each afternoon, it updates in a few seconds to a minute. I literally choose my home route each day based on the traffic carnage in Tampa.

I find the updates are fairly current. My best observations was witnessing a wreck which popped up on the NavTraffic in 4 minutes. It has notified me when the bay bridges or causeways were shut due to the NASCAR wannabes.

I think the 'real time' is not the communication between XM and our RLs. The 'real time' depends on your metro area's traffic communication system. Traffic flow signals, traffic cams, dispatcher reports etc all must report into XM before it can be communicated to your vehicle. I expect some metro areas are better at this than others. NavTraffic is only as good as the information it is fed.

I find it a very valuable feature, I admittingly, would not have selected oherwise. I cannot speak to other metro areas, however, as my RL has yet to escape the Tampa metro area.

 

When it says "There is no traffic information within 30 miles", does that mean the XM is out, or is it because it is a quiet albeit windy, Sunday afternoon?

 

It means:

1) XM is not receiving info from your Metro Traffic System
2) XM is not transmitting properly
3) Your RL receiver is on the fritz
4) Something is sucking with or without a cross breeze
5) Something is vibrating with or without a cross breeze
6) There are no traffic incidents to report (an there really is an Easter Bunny)

pick one.

 

My XM Traffic worked for the first time yesterday while in Indianapolis. However, it was reporting accidents 5,888 miles away on the extreme end. I called XM and was told my subscription started on 9 January 2007 the day I e-mailed Customer Service complaining. I told the CSR I leased my RL on 8 June 2006. The CSR in her best Indian dialect English told me my subscription would be good until January 2008 and then went into a pitch for adding another XM radio to my account. I could get a Roady for only $5. I told her I only need 2 XM subs. She told me I could give the radio to a friend or relative. I told her several times thanks, but no thanks. Going to e-mail XM today to see if I can't get free Traffic until next June. Doesn't cost anything to try.

 

Super thanks for this post - it has been months since I've been able to use my NavTraffic (ever since I had to jump start the car) until I read this post. I must have called XM a half-dozen times asking for a signal reset and de-activation/re-activation and nothing worked. Per this insightful post, I pulled the battery leads (positive first, then neg), pulled the 10Amp "backup" fuse, waited 10 seconds, re-inserted the fuse, re-connected the leads (neg first, then pos) and voila! NavTraffic works great - you saved me loads of time, pain, and $$ from taking it to the dealer! Thanks again!

 

I find the NAV traffic to be nearly useless. In Ma, the coverage is small and not updated quickly. I'd rather use my Google map on my smartphone because it's more accurate, better coverage, and free.