Hi,

I recently purchased a used 03 TL. It has 84k miles on it (a bit high for the year) but the car is in excellent mechanic condition.

I have recently noticed that the odometer reading is off. I'm not talking about the 4% that was in the class action suit. It seems closer to 50% the mileage I drive.

I filled up my tank yesterday and reset the odometer reading to 0. Since then, I have only driven it to and from work. The thing with that is, I only live 4 miles away from work (according to google maps). The distance takes into consideration the route I take to get to work. It is exactly 4.0 miles. Now there's over 17 miles on the odometer since I filled up my gas tank. It seems really really odd. I have a 07 lexus and I don't have this issue (driving the same route to work).

Any ideas on what this problem can be? I'm wondering if the previous owner realized this problem (she didn't seem to know a lot about cars). Could the 84k mileage on it actually be lower? Is this issue covered by Acura?



I also have a few other questions. The previous owner lost the owner's manual. Is there one available online?

If not, can someone tell me what the light on the steering wheel mean? It is constantly on. The previous owner said it was the car alarm (which seems kinda weird since it's ALWAYS on... whether the car is moving or parked).

Thanks in advance for those that help.

 

"Now there's over 17 miles on the odometer since I filled up my gas tank."

Sorry, read it over and seems I need to clarify this.

I have only driven to work, back home yesterday. Today, I drove it back again to work. 4 miles each way... so the odometer should only read 12 miles. There is 17.6 miles on the car now. That to me is WAY OFF! It also means I am actually getting lower mpg on my tank. I got 250 miles on my last fill (mostly city with some freeway miles) for about 15 gallons (which seems a bit low to me) Now it seems like it's even lower than that (with the faulty odometer reading). According to the math... I would have actually traveled 170 miles instead of 250 miles! BIG DIFFERENCE!!! That's putting me at 11 mpg city!

 

How about the size of the tires that are on your car ... that's the only thing I can imagine that can really mess up your car's odometer. They should be 215/50/17 (if you have a Type-S) or 205/60/16 (if you have the non-Type-S model). That should only be a very minor adjustment if the tires are remotely close to OEM spec ... you are getting somewhere like 5/12 ~ 40% over!

If you want, bring it to the Acura dealer and speak to the service manager about this. I'm not sure what kind of diagnostic they can run to assess how 'off' your odometer is.

 

The car is non type S. Everything is stock including the tires.

 

So for each trip to work, you're car was going 5.9 miles rather than the 4 it should been..or so the calculations by the odometer.

That means you're about 1.5% faster... get it fully checked then if it's not tires.

Of course if the girl had a brother/boyfriend or something that liked to tune it, it could be that they put new rims on, fixed the odometer thing and then forgot to change it back....

 

I think you mean 50% faster (1 and 1/2 times faster).. not 1.5% faster. I wont mind if it's only 1.5% faster.

Don't know what wheels they would be putting on that would be giving it that much difference but I will check it with Acura this weekend.

BTW, since I am the 2nd owner, does it affect what I am covered? (I don't have the warranty info).

 

Welcome to the forums.

You can click here for the Owners Manual. It's not as easy to read as a hard copy but it's free.

 

Thanks for the link. I tried the 2003 Acura TL link but it only shows the table of contents. Is anyone else having the same problem or am I just doing something wrong?

 

Click on the hyperlinks that are on the page.

On the odometer question, I'd repeat the test or drive on another "known distance" route before worrying about it. And confirm the Google maps distance with, say, Mapquest.com.

 

Do let your car run when your not driving it? Live up North and remote start it and let it run for 10-15 minutes before driving off?

I'd be shitting myself if I was getting 250 miles out of a tank of gas. My 03 CL type S gets over 300 before the gas light comes on and I've got another 40-60 miles from there before I feel like I need to fill up. For all intents and purposes it should get roughly the same mileage as a TL type S and that should be worse than your car.

None of that would explain the odometer issue. I'd grab a friend and their car and make the same trip to what their odometer says. If their odometer agrees with yours, then the mapping websites suck.

 

The hyperlinks on the page do not work. It says something like "the specified file TLXXXXXXXXX.pdf does not exist."

EDIT: Sorry... figured it out. My Firefox was downloading the pdf file. Apparently you need to view this online for it to work.

I will try another known distance but just from looking at it... it does seem like the meter is jumping rather quickly.



I only let my car warm up a little bit but it's nowhere close to 10-15 min. It's about 1 min at most. Keep in mind I currently drive it mostly in the city... so I'll get lower miles from the tank. But even still the MPG does seem rather low.... and with this faulty odometer reading.. it's even lower.

I own another car (07 Lexus) that I was driving to work before this car. It does it in about 4 miles. Somehow the Acura takes almost 6.

BTW, there's that tray (I think it's a cd holder tray) that's stuck. I can't open it completely and sometimes it doesn't shut correctly. The spring on the left side is loose and sometimes gets in the way when I try to close it. Anyone know how to remove the tray? I want to see if there's anything stuck or getting caught inside. I searched but the closest thing I saw was to use a coat hanger to unlatch it??

 

If you suspect that its that far off you should bring it in and get it calibrated.

 

Is it possible that the VSS is malfunctioning ? Perhaps, it may be trying to read kilometers vs miles ???? Just a passing brain fart !