Really?
Acura: "Sorry, something must have hit it. Please file an insurance claim"
You" "But nothing hit it."
Acura: "Sorry, we won't cover it"

What are you going to do? Do you think that somebody is going to ride in on a white stallion and fight for you, telling Acura that they must "prove" that it was a road hazard?

Like with any other denied claim, you have several choices:

Suck it up and pay

Sue them in small claims court

If you sue them, then you either pay for the repair first and then sue, or let the car sit with a busted moonroof for a few months while you sue them.

 

Acura and the dealerships can do whatever the hell they want and decline coverage at their whim. If you think it's not legal, then it's still up to you to take them to court on that. Often times, the cost of doing so is more than just biting the bullet and covering the cost yourself, as I discovered when they wouldn't honor their battery warranty or replace a broken key.

 

suing them is the last resort. I would escalate it as high as possible, starting with service manager and then corporate. I dont think its in their best to piss people off especially its not a first report of glass breaking in sunroof.

what happens if car insurance looks at it and says: “nope, its not accident/hazard, its a mechanical defect, we wont cover”

 

suing them is expensive. Not cost effective.
If they not going to cover, why not ask them for explanation of what they observed that points to damage vs mechanical failure? They need to have a reason why its not covered by warranty.
I would start nice with them before escalating this.

 

Then they take Honda/Acura to court. One of the reasons to have insurance,

 

I heard back from the dealer after Acura requested a bunch of pictures from the dealer. I guess acura saw something because they are covering it under warranty. I'm actually shocked. Probably a case by case. Fyi, I was hearing the popping noise when the car was at an angle. Not sure if that has anything to do with what happened.

 

My faith in humanity is momentarily restored.

 

glad it worked out for you. It probably happened enough times for them to realize that people are not trying to get accidents covered through them.
can you find out if its defective glass or incorrect installation?

 

I really wish there were some close up pictures of what failed

 

Honestly, that latest picture does look like there was impact almost dead center in that crack. I could be wrong, as I'm not an expert. Glad to hear that Acura is starting to entertain covering these under warranty. Perhaps they're slowly realizing there may be a design flaw with these god forsaken panoramic moonroofs? Hopefully this pushes them to simply make these damn things optional rather than standard.

 

Honda has never been one to offer options. They have trim levels and at a trim level everything is standard (99.9% of the time, there may be some exceptions like manual transmission). So if they made it optional one would have to get a lower trim level to get a car without the moonroof. I actually like that simplicity. Tesla has taken that one step further.

(For those who say we somehow find a way to talk about Tesla in every thread, please note my valuable contribution here!)

 

It was probably an Acura claim bot that screwed up its programming and approved a repair.

He don’t know it, but that bot is going back to the re-education camp.

 

yea really, The Acura dealers like to just tell everyone it’s normal or that the other RDXs on the lot do the same thing. Oh the other cars have squeeking suspension, it’s normal, the other Cars have creeky sunroofs, that’s normal, oh the brakes squeak on the other ones, that’s normal. Oh we can’t reproduce the limp mode, no codes, we arnt gonna say your lying but we arnt gonna believe you. Oh your sunroof broke, that’s not a warranty issue, gets pretty old, doesn’t make a lot of people want to keep buying Honda/Acura

 

Not only Acura, but virtually every other automaker as well.

 

Fixed it for you....

 

It’s a good outcome since they are covering it under warranty. Maybe they are finally realizing they need to get their shit together and take responsibility for the quality.

 

Maybe he had the radio turned up too loud.

 

Sorry sir it won’t be covered, you opened the sun roof which isn’t covered by warranty, it is only made to look at

 

Truth is stranger than fiction. There are competitions for loudest car audio systems. And yeah, a panoramic sunroof might not be a good thing.

Guess I'd better keep the shade closed when I crank up the classic rock!

 

If Acura doesn't cover these defects under the warranty coverage then this will be a disaster for them. Such a shame to see what is happening with Acura reliability overall!

 

looks like their CEO is admitting that there are problems, they need to keep their customer base happy before things get even worse, denying warranty coverage would be a disaster.

 

where did you see that?

 

this is old info everyone saw:

https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1YD2DP

 

Ya.... some of us have been saying this about Acura. when few of us here reported quality issues on 2019 model, we were met with skepticism and chalked as one off. When CS report on reliability came out, bunch of knights and defenders of the faith came out blasting CSR’s methodology and relevance.

Honda/Acura is not what it used to be on reliability. Granted, they might still be better than others but there are better brands out there now if that’s your primary goal when car shopping

 

Y'all got quit using Memorex cassette tapes.

 

Still like my RDX, and would buy it again. Agreed that Honda needs to step up quality.

 

ditto

 

Some automakers choose to use stronger and safer laminated glass in their sunroofs and Pano roofs because they realize the issues of tempered glass. Of course Acura choose to save money and blame the owner as per their usual pattern lately.

This is a good read on the subject.... Note that Honda uses laminated glass on the Pilot. The discontinued ZDX had several incidents of the rear window exploding that I'm sure someone can find on Acurazine somewhere. There is another thread on the popping noise that some RDX owners experience as they back out of their driveways and the car body flexes. I'm sure this body flexing must put a load on the tempered glass.

About 2 years ago I had the floor to ceiling glass surround in our bathroom replaced. As the guys were removing the old glass it exploded. It was pretty catastrophic. Glass went everywhere even into two adjacent rooms. Two of the guys had some decent cuts on their arms. This was thicker glass than the pano roofs and of course they were putting force on the glass removing it, but it didn't take much as they were trying to be very careful. It is prestressed to shatter rather than leaving large shards of glass that can seriously injury someone in a crash. I have laminated glass in a full size glass storm door. While I haven't tried t break it, it feels like I could hit that thing with a baseball bat and it would just bounce off. Car manufacturers know this, they are just cutting costs. They might claim if is a safety thing, but windshields are required to be laminated, why not sun roof? Especially these large roofs that take loads through body flexing.

https://www.consumerreports.org/car-...ding-sunroofs/

 

That's interesting about the Pilot, because I have had sunroof failures on Pilots because of impacts, but the glass held together as laminated glass would. I still put an entire roll of duct tape on it because we were far from home on family road trips.

But IIRC the glass broke into many tiny pieces as tempered glass would, they just mostly stayed together.

I didn't think about it much at the time because I figured all sunroof glass was like that. Are we sure the front sunroof glass on RDX isn't laminated?

[edit] What is CR talking about? Pilot doesn't have a panoramic sunroof. I had examples of both 2nd-gen and current 3rd-gen and they only had a standard moonroof in front.

 

Oh, it looks like Honda added panoramic sunroof to the top-line Elite trim of 3rd-gen Pilot. Not sure if that happened at MMC. I had pre-MMC Touring.

Keeping up with the Joneses.

 

Based on CR's article, I gather that only the panoramic sunroof used in the Pilot Elite and Black Edition uses laminated safety glass while the regular sunroof in the other trims is tempered.

"Honda: The company says its only vehicle currently for sale with a panoramic sunroof, the Pilot SUV, uses laminated glass."

The article is dated August 13, 2018. The 3G RDX went on sale June 1, 2018. Depending on when CR obtained the information from Honda, the RDX may or may not have been on sale at that time.

 

But I'm puzzled because when I had sunroof failures in Pilots, the pieces mostly held together. The statement doesn't specifically address the "regular" sunroof.

Not sure if Honda would include Acura models. Red headed stepchild.

 

Could those Pilots have had tinted or clear aftermarket window film applied to the sunroofs?

 

No film applied, but judging from this image in another CR article, maybe that's just how the cookie crumbles sometimes.

https://www.consumerreports.org/car-...nger-overhead/

 

When the tempered, non-laminated rear window in my 2007 Ridgeline spontaneously exploded, hundreds of tiny pieces of glass shot into both the bed and the cabin, but a large section of the tempered glass was still in place.

 

Here's another image from CR, and another article.

Have I mentioned how much I "like" huge sunroofs, and how I wish they would put them in every vehicle? Maybe it's because many years ago, I once watched the windshield of an SUV start to look kinda funny as the vehicle was rolling over the roof in a snowy ditch. I try to keep the rubber side down these days, but stuff happens. And as I learned all those years ago, black ice happens.

BTW, I have verified from the glass labels that both panes of sunroof glass in my 2019 RDX are tempered, as is the sunroof glass in my "beater" 2005 MDX.

https://www.consumerreports.org/car-...head-to-court/

 

I think what causes these tempered glass roofs to bow up is that the glass already has a bowed shape to begin with. When the tempered glass shatters, there are tiny gaps that open up between all those pieces and that makes the glass sort of expand, and since it is already going in that direction, it keeps going up. But those pieces are just wedged together, it doesn't have any structure by design. You could take it apart with your hands.

I don't see how Acura can argue that a rock might have done this while driving down the road. Afterall, how many times do you touch up rock chips on the roof of your car? But rocks hit your laminated windshield often, it takes a pretty decent hit to crack a windshield. Like most things that go wrong with modern Acuras, they just don't want to take ownership of it.

 

Did Acura fix this for you? The exact same thing happened to me yesterday - 9-13-2020 in a 2019 RDX. They're trying to tell me I have to go through insurance.

 

every instance of this I have seen they have said to go through insurance sadly, and depending on who you go through it won’t be covered under glass coverage, at least with progressive. They state that sun roof glass isn’t covered under glass coverage but under comprehensive, they consider it the roof and not glass which is super dumb, hopefully your deduct is pretty low

 

I read about people discussing "glass coverage" as being different than "comprehensive". That must be limited to certain states. Here in Texas, all glass is covered under comprehensive through every insurance company.