pianoman41

So I go to start the car this morning. It's the coldest day so far since I've owned my TL-S, about 25 F out. I start the car to go to work and the navi won't turn on. I'm like WTF?!? Whole thing is dead for my drive to work (about 10 minutes). When I get there, I shut the car off, then restart it. Navi comes up fine. So I'm wondering if there are temperature extremes where the navi won't work. I know my OEM headunit CD player in my Maxima has a high-temp extreme (won't work if the interior is too hot). Anyone else have this problem (either extreme heat or cold)? I don't consider 25F to be extreme either--we'll get to below zero here before the winter is over.

I'm hoping it was just a fluke. I've had no other problems with the navi since I got the car.

thephantom

Yesterday, I noticed my NAV's brightness was very dim. I went into setup and it was set to auto and my headlights were off, which means it should be on the brightest setting. Well, 10 minutes later, I noticed the brightness has returned to the usual level. This morning I did not pay attention to the NAV but I will tomorrow.

pianoman41

I noticed this as well. On the two coldest days we've had so far the display was noticeably dimmer. I had to bump it up a notch in the setup. Once the cockpit was up to normal temperature it was fine. Must be a property of those types of displays.

thejavagod

About 6 mos ago I was in Lancaster (desert), the outside temp was 116 and my navi was going haywire - blinking on and off and the resolution becoming very high and the pic shrinking...very absurd! It has never happened again though.

edgalang

25F?! That's frekin cold! I've only experienced 40F maybe once here in Cali. Unless you count skiing...but thats up in the mountains where my TLS wont even see the light of day.

pianoman41

Don't let our Canadian brethen hear you say 25F is freakin' cold. They'll tell you about cold. Of course, I can't ask them about navi in the cold because they can't get it.

daverman

OK, there are two problems here: one is the display malfunctioning (too dim, etc.) and the other is the control unit malfunctioning.

The display is a fluorescent-tube backlit TFT LCD screen. These LCD screens are notoriously temperature sensitive. In the cold they become washed out and sluggish, and in extreme heat they become dark and almost unreadable. The fluorescent tube backlight too performs very poorly in the cold. (Cold = near 0 deg. C, Hot = near 40 deg. C)

However, since the display unit is mounted in the cabin, its temperature will eventually settle to the human-livable range, and the problems should disappear.

The control unit in the trunk is in a much worse off situation. Its environment is not temperature controlled. Most consumer electronics use commercial range parts (-20 deg. C to 70 deg. C), although some use industrial range (-40 deg. C to 105 deg. C) for robustness.

So in theory the control unit should work to between -20 deg C (-4 deg. F) to 70 deg. C (158 deg. F) with no problems. The display unit will start to become unreadable near freezing (32 deg. F) and 40 deg. C (104 deg. F).

seqiro

I used to have a Clarion color LCD headunit in my car before I got the TLS, and I can tell you that on sub-freezing days the LCD display was somewhat washed out and slower to react to changes on the screen. After the car heated up for awhile, everything would return to normal. In fact, the instruction manual for the player indicated that this behavior would occur.

As for not turning on at ALL, I would be skeptical about that being "normal", and if it happened again I would take it to the dealer just to have it looked at.

Let us know how it goes!
Paul

Las Vegas TLS

I have not had any problems with the heat. Sometimes the news stations give "inside the car temperatures". It is usually around 140-150 all summer long. This past summer the screen has not been affected to the point I noticed it.

FTM-1

I have not had this problem with mine in the almost 2yrs of ownership of the car. I park outside 100% of the time the car sits in direct hot sunlight when parked in my yard in summer. We have had temps down to 0 & as high as 102 in the past 2yrs. I have not had any problems. I also have the Nav screen on 100% of the time.

pianoman41

Well so far it was a one-time thing. Of course, it warmed up here a little since then and it'll be 70F on Friday. I'll keep an eye on it and if it goes completely dead again I'll give the dealer a call. Thanks for all your help/info/opinions.