pianoman41

I'm finally getting around to putting a Clifford alarm/remote starter into my TL-S. During the surgery they are probably going to have to disconnect the battery for an extended period of time. I've got the radio and navi anti-theft codes so that won't be a problem but I'm concerned about the navi's setup. With the battery disconnected for more than an hour, does anyone know if the navi will retain its current settings? By settings, I mean the config in the hidden set-up menu. Stuff like compensating for the gyros' sensitivity, wheel size, etc. Or is this stuff going to go to a factory default and I'm going to have to try and recalibrate this mother by myself?

Anything else get reset (besides the ECU) with a battery disconnect?

gohawks63

How do you get to the setup menu?

I'm betting it will go back to factory defaults. If it could maintain a trickle of power to maintain those settings, you think the radio presets would be retained.

pianoman41

On the main menu (after pressing OK on the disclaimer screen), you can hold down the MENU, MAP/GUIDE and CANCEL keys down (press them in that order) to bring up a diagnostic screen. You must do this first thing after pressing the OK and you need to hold them down together for a few seconds.

gohawks63

Thanks!

EricL

You should put any destinations that you want to keep in your personal settings -- Acura care told me that these will stay put.

Any position corrections you put in (you SHOULD NOT USE THIS FEATURE) will be cleared out.

You have the pin #s from the cars -- so just save your radio station settings, and move any important NAVI destinations into your PERSONAL area (from the PREVIOUS Destination. list).


If the battery is off for more that 1/2 hour to 1 hour, you should get a power reset of the NAVI (the radio resets much quicker).

The NAVI will need to be reinitialized.

Start up the car on a road where you can go straight for 1 mile without turning. (Don't move yet ...)

You will get a screen that will ask you for the PIN # -- enter it.

Then let the NAVI unit do its thing -- it will give you the legal mumbo jumbo. Now push OK when you are on the street with the car by the side of the long straight road I mentioned. Once you finish with the OK -- and get the NAVI going, pull out and drive for 1 mile (without turning). Then make a 90-degree turn -- you will want to go a few blocks. Now start mixing up the driving. More and more streets will fill-in.

Most dealers just leave the car sitting in the lot for the "reset"/initialization procedure – they just leave the car sitting in one position for 20 minutes (so I was told by my dealer).

THIS information is from Acura Care via Alpine (I went to level 3 to get this info). I wanted to clear some position correction info I placed trying to correct a position error at an intersection in my area -- boy do I regret that.

Good luck...

pianoman41

Thanks for all the info. I read the procedure in the Helms manual for initializing the navi and was just hoping I won't have to go through it. Don't know where I can find a road that has at least one mile of uninterrupted straightness. A freeway will do, sure, but then that 90 degree turn gets real interesting...

Hopefully, the install guy will only disconnect the battery for the necessary amount of time, and not just disconnect it at the beginning and reconnect it at the end (some 8 hours later).

As for your problem with the position error, I too made a manual correction and have seen no adverse effects as a result. I was concerned that if I made the wrong correction it would always be wrong. But the system seemed to auto-correct itself. Example: I live on the fringe of the fully-mapped/basic route map area. So daily I travel on the "non-digitized road." In another thread, I mentioned a problem with acquiring the satellites in a timely fashion and it was determined that due to my extremely short daily commute, I was not always updating the journal for the navi to know where to look for the satellites. Driving on the non-digitized roads without satellite guidance can confuse the system sooner than normal. I went to a parking lot at my town hall (on the fully-mapped area) but because I had been out of satellite contact for a while and off digitized roads, as I sat in the lot, my position was off by approx 1/2 mile. Once the satellite bars came on yellow, then went green, the position "jumped" to the correct one and all was well again.

My one-time use of the manual correction didn't seem to have any adverse effects.

EricL

In my case I was just being a "weenie" and wanted the position to be just right at an intersection around the block. This must have been a "map" error, because the other streets and intersections in the area seemed to be OK.

So, I follow the Helms instructions, and adjust the position of the car a tad forward. So, now the intersection has the correct position for me, but all of the local intersections that used to be correct are now off -- What the $#?#!!!?

So, I try to go back to the intersection I corrected and reposition the car BACK to where is was before. The only bummer is there is enough "play" in the joystick that it is really hard to get it dead on. So, I spend about 5-minutes getting the car back to the original position.

I try driving around again, and now I have all kinds of strange offsets in the area that change depending on my positions south, east, north, and/or west!!!

After that I just went -- this is messed-up and called Acura Care -- they told me about 3 different reset trials until they called the Alpine engineers.

So, I am finally back to normal -- and at least on my CLS, I will be keeping my hands off the position correction!!!

lonny

It is so cheap and easy to do - why doesn't Acura tie the radio presets and NAV into a system with a small battery (like computers have, so that when you turn them off, all the system settings are retained) so that it won't matter if your battery is disconnected - the NAV and radio will retain their settings. Perhaps they already have this - I don't know. Makes sense to me.