Hello Acura Zine!

Long time lurker, first time poster... and! First time buyer. The Mrs. and myself cruised up to Canada and purchased a 2019 RDX Platinum Elite with 3,800 miles. With the proper homework we did a Personal Entry on the vehicle and am the proud new owners of a pre-loved Canadian Acura (here in the U.S.). Folding mirrors and all.

99% about this thing I love... except one item.

Hence the question: Is there something I am missing about swapping the climate control from Celsius to Fahrenheit? I notice the outside temp in the gauge cluster is in C too. Short of heading to the dealer and having them tap in to change it... is there anything I can do at home? It's not a deal breaker but if we own this thing for 10 years and adjustment to local standards would probably be helpful.

Any insight would be helpful.

Thanks in advance.

 

Under vehicle Settings on the home page, there's a submenu for Units. It should be there. Didn't to change it from km to miles when you drove back?

 

That menu has the option to toggle between MPH and KPH yes... which we swapped... but it doesn't cover or change the Climate Control or Outside Temp on the gauge cluster. So we have a car that reads in MPH with a Climate Control and Outdoor Temp in Celsius. (A little confusing at times)

Any other thoughts?

 

Tell the US Congress to pull their collective heads out of you-know-where and catch up to the rest of the world? ( Not holding my breath... )

Long shot, but try setting home location in the navigation system. Also check the language setting. Does your car say "eh"?

( BS aside, I seem to remember a thread where changing the language did something with units ).

 

I can give that shot... no problem. I have the Dealer working on it and was hoping there was a super smart tech running around there that might have an idea.

It seems like such an easy thing... I'm assuming they don't put special hardware in each car depending on where it is delivered. It would have to be a software issue somewhere wouldn't it?

I was hoping I might come across an Acura tech around here that might have done it before. In any case, I welcome any insight. Save me a trip to the the Stealership.

 

Simple conversion calculation:

double the centigrade, subtract 10%, add 32 if positive, subtract 32 if negative.

viz, 30 C. = 30*2 = 60, minus 10%, 60-6 = 54, 54+32 = 86.

 

...or double it an add 30.

It gets you close. Dealership is "working hard" to figure out the issue. (yea right) and I might be on my own here. Any other thoughts from the Peanut Gallery?

 

What about your speedometer gauge? Is it km on the primary outer display? That may not be changeable either. Canadian models have different hardware components (like your folding mirrors). The software is the same though. It runs a hardware detection routine and runs accordingly. You have a submenu in Settings to control the behavior of the mirrors the rest of us don't have but the software is there. The dash PID display and HVAC might be physically different hardware in the Canadian models.

 

So the Speed-O main is in KM and the inside small secondary is in MPH. The HUD swaps to MPH so we're all good there and no need to change it. See attachment.



Interesting about the physical hardware and the software they run inside of them... I'll give this a few more days and then I'll roll to the Stealer and get a quote to see if it's even possible. If it's a display for the Climate Control that's one thing. An entire gauge panel swap is probably out of the question as I'm assuming they'd ask for my first born child and a deposit to rip that thing apart.

If the rest of the world can figure out Celsius... I'm sure can.

Any techs or dealer nerds around that would be able to ask for me?

 

In the mid display (the one next to the speedometer), one of the display menu (as you scroll the wheel) has an option to switch to US Metrics, I assum you tried this already ?
I know that this switches the speed to mph (when you are setting cruise control, it displayed mph), did not notice if the setting switch the temperature unit.

 

Unfortunately yes. That swaps the HUD to MPH which is handy and great but the temp still stays in C. Which isn't the end of the world but annoying to say the least.

eBay has a US cluster for under $300 bucks, and if that rendered the problem I'd do it... but I'm getting kickback from a local Speedometer shop saying that most likely the cluster would have to be programed to the car which they don't have the ability to do... and there wouldn't be a guarantee that the ECU wouldn't still show Celsius anyway.

I'm not finding the answer I want but at least I'm exhausting options which is helpful for nothing else then clarity.

I can hold down the three top buttons to get to the dealer "behind the scene" menu on the track pad but that doesn't help either.

I'll keep trying. Hopefully someone here has an idea.

 

On our last couple of trips to Europe there was always at least one dumb American who asked the tour guide to give those measurements (temp, weight, distance) in English, meaning American. He was not happy about all that metric shit. Sigh. I ended up translating for him while most of the rest of the tour group rolled their eyes. (We moved from Toronto to Texas right after their metric conversion so I was “bilingual”. This thread is interesting because we’ll be converting our car to metric when we cross over into Canada this summer on vacation.)

 

Before you buy, you should confirm that replacing the cluster will help. It is possible, that the cluster is a dumb display and the temperature info is coming from some ECU or the head unit.

 

The display is LCD, so the fields aren't fixed or dedicated. It can display whatever it's programmed to just like your phone or computer screen. But it could have firmware that needs to be flashed. Notice that even the speedo and tach gauges are blank when you start the car and tne needles do that cool sweep full scale. But just because the display is software driven doesn't mean the fields are selectable.

I have no idea but my guess is that it can be changed without swapping the unit but not by your dealer. I had my infotainment head unit replaced by an Acura field tech who had to reload or at least verify all the firmware based units in the car like it was factory new. All while preserving the historical data like odometer mileage, logs, error codes,etc. It took hours.

If that needs to be done, I doubt it would be free under warranty. They flew the guy out from CA to NY to do it.

 

Did you solve your issue? Is it possible from settings to change the temperature units?

 

Was a dealership able to fix this?

 

Out of curiosity, was this done to get the folding mirrors? Or was it financially advantageous? Or both?

I know that a decade ago, Canadians were car shopping south of the border, but that stopped making sense long ago. I'm just wondering if the pendulum has suddenly swung the other way.

 

I had forgotten all about this post... After two dealers and a few phone calls with Acura of North America the only solution was is a cluster swap and a climate control display swap. (which isn't free) and they said would void the warranty if a third party did it. I didn't buy that but that is what I was told.

It seems silly that part of the car can be converted in the settings yet another cannot.

So we live with it.

Teaching the kids what the rest of the world uses to check the temp has been a fun one. 20c is 70 kids! Live with it.

Also, FWIW... We had a pretty intense dash rattle. They ripped it apart under warranty, threw some foam in there and cured that issue. Brakes were noisy... They swapped out pads and rotors... that was under warranty as well. We have 24,000 Miles on it (bought it with 4,000) and it's been a great kid hauler and over all rig. The warranty expires in October and we are not eligible for an extended warranty through Acura because we imported it.

I'll check the warranty section here to see if I can get anything else looked at and fixed for free in the meantime.

The 2019 was a dice roll with it being a first model year but we couldn't beat the price dragging it over the border.

(sorry it took so long to reply!)

 

We just did it because we saved $14,000 on a dealer demo after the currency conversion and paying tax on a lower sales amount. $14,000 really was the reason. I had no idea about the folding mirrors, headlight washers, super large washer fluid reservoir, or the factory block heater with plug in the grill.

Also, being honest, it was a great adventure. It took a while, needed to get creative, and we drove it home from Edmonton 18 hours in one clip. The border was a rodeo but they were awesome. Westside Acura were ballers... totally worked with us on price and kept the car on the lot for 6 weeks while Acura of North America dragged their feet getting the proper paperwork figured it out.

I could do it a second time in my sleep but the first was a serious learning experience. We hadn't even seen the car in person. Wired them the cash... showed up with our carryons, wheeled them in, sat down, signed a few things, and drove off. The manager looked at us like we invented fire. The total time took about 45 minutes to take delivery and start out journey home. Snapped a cheesy photo in front of our "new" car and bounced.

Great feeling.

The fellas all take a look when I bring it in... my wife rolls her eyes, but I eat it up. Something fun to talk about when you bring it in for a service.

Highly recommend the process and happy to walk anyone through it. Keep an eye on that exchange rate. We were about .70 to the dollar when we converted and wired the money.