wmkim

When I took it into the dealer, they said Acura was aware of the issue and they just replaced the front rotors under warranty for me. Since then, no issue with the brakes... although now I hear something clinking/rattling around the suspension by the driver's side when going various bumps.

lmath73

Had our 2019 RDX front brakes replaced in early December. Squeal returned the next week but turns out that it is the back brakes and a new update has come out to have those replaced. Having that done on Tuesday. Now if they could just get all the other MAJOR things repaired.

mku

I too have this issue only when the brakes are cold. Didn’t realize this was covered by warranty. Will have my dealer look at this at next oil change. Thanks for the info

russianDude

You mean there is a newer fix than the one they had 3 month ago?

Michael John K

Dealer told me still waiting on a formal response from Acura for this ridiculous brake noise. I echo the sentiments of everyone else - when dropping a good chunk of change on a luxury car (even if its not like buying some pretentious German import for thousands more), you would hope to not be the embarrassing squealer at the red light.

Slightly more pissed that mine is a 2020 and this issue has existed for over a year, yet Acura just keeps rolling these out to more consumers...

Even more pissed at myself, when I consider myself to be pretty vigilant at researching as a consumer, that I didn't uncover this issue. I would not have bought an RDX had a known about it. Whether Acura makes it right, and soon, will dictate whether I ever think about purchasing another one of their vehicles in the future.

russianDude

Just a point of reference, I had the same annoying squeal on my 2020 and was gonna take it to the dealer, but been putting it off when its convenient for me.... when I finally decided to take it in, I could no longer reproduce the sound. Did it go away after initial break in? I have no idea, but its quiet now. I am at 4300 miles.

rdxnguyen

That's what I'm afraid of. I have 1300 miles on my 2020 and it's squealing on cold/dry days. But after driving a little bit, it no longer squeals. I'm afraid by the time I take it to the dealer for service, it no longer produces the sound. It's about 15 miles to the dealership. Still waiting for TSB to come out for this on the 2020. Or when I take it in for first oil service, I'll mention it to them to have it fixed/replaced.

russianDude

Mine used to do it in colder days more, but now it just does not happen. If its completely gone, its not a bad thing, it could be initial layer that had to get broken in.

rfbarry19

I've had the pads and rotors replaced on my '19 Aspec twice. Once before the update (19-053) and once after. Unfortunately, the squealing returned a couple of weeks after each repair. In addition, I now have a whir or rubbing sound under moderate braking. So I took the vehicle back to the dealership on Friday to have the issue looked at again. They confirmed the squeal and whirring noises but stated that there were no other fixes available. They opened a ticket with the Acura Tech/Engineering team and said that Acura was aware of the continued noises after the last TSB update. I was told to check back in a few months....

At this point, I'm hoping that the noises go away when the weather warms up. Worst case scenario? I eventually have the brakes replaced with aftermarket performance parts.

Michael John K

Have had decent variance of temperature around here last few days. Did not notice it at all when temps were below 25 F. But once it hovers right around or above freezing is when it seems to be most prominent.

Tess Schneiderman

IT IS SO ANNOYING
I cant stand it, its more thann squeaking. It is so loud, doesnt stop, happens every time you drive the car!

hans471

When I first got my 2019 Advanced I would get this noise but only at certain temperatures, mostly cooler and wetness seemed to be related. Once I hit the brakes a couple of times and they warmed up the noise went away. It never quit completely. So, when the "Fix" came out my dealer replaced the front rotors. Noise has never returned. The thing that got my attention however was the "feel" of the brakes. They were much smoother with the new rotors. This makes me suspect the issue was something to do with the surface of the rotor not being compatible with the material in the brake pad.

I am hyper sensitive to the feel of a vehicle. I have driven thousands of cars as in my 40 year career in the industry one of my jobs was to train professionals how to diagnose and repair NVH. (Noise, vibration and harshness). My friends are often surprised how I can ride in or drive their car and pick up on so many things by sound or feel. Well, four decades and thousands of problems and you should learn something! Anyway, my brakes are now super smooth and quiet. The rotors they put on did the trick. Some have complained that the replacement rotors didn't cure the problem. Sometimes I wonder if the dealer got the proper updated rotors of if something else is wrong. The noise is caused by the pad vibrating when it touches the rotor. This is due to an incompatibility in the materials as they are not sliding against each other properly. The pad is skipping off the surface of the rotor and then back on at a high frequency making the sound you hear.

There are some things you can try that sometimes help and even fix such problems. Get yourself on a very empty road where there is 100% certainty that no one is behind you .Get up to speed, like 60 oir 70 and then brake HARD. As the car slows down a bit let off the brakes, speed back up and do it again. Repeat this three or four times. Don't try to lock up the wheels and don't go down to a complete stop, just slow down ten or twenty MPH and then speed back up. What this will do is clean off the surface of the pads and the rotor and let them "break in" against each other. While I can not promise it will fix your car it has solved many brake noise issues for many people over the years. Its worth a try. I know when mine would squeak with the old rotors I would "warm 'em up" like this a couple of times and the noise would go away.

Work with your dealer. My dealer was very good about fixing this and took care of it as soon as the new style rotors were available. Another fix that has worked for some is to change to an aftermarket brake pad (brand name). The softer pads some use will be quiet but know that they do this by being "soft" which normally will give you more black brake dust on your rims and will wear out sooner. You don't have to put up with this noise! Let the dealer fix it.

russianDude

What I dont understand is why they can not figure out how to make pads and rotors that dont squeal. Common, this is like basic car stuff. Sure they made a mistake, but how difficult to come up with a new rotor and pads that dont make noises!?

hans471

Here is your daily dose of automotive reality: About half of the parts in the average car are made by "someone else". That is, the car maker designs the parts, tests them but the actual mass production of the finished design is done by someone else. For example: seats...Johnson Controls; batteries...Johnson Controls..HVAC systems, lighting....Stanley; brakes.....Bendix, starter and generators....Nippon Denso; engine bearings...TRW. These are just examples, not saying these companies are the ones that Acura/Honda uses. There are many main suppliers to the automotive industry. TRW, New Process Gear, Delphi, and so many more. These companies specialize in certain areas and can produce these parts at a lower unit cost than a given car maker can. The car maker specs the parts, the supplier builds then and delivers them to the plant.

My point is quite simple, while Honda (Acura) does the core design work they order the parts from an outside contractor, its how the world works for ALL car makers. Sometimes the car maker finalized the designs but the supplier then has a problem. Maybe the heat treating oven or the coating machine for the rotors gets a little out of adjustment one day. The parts are not quite to original specs. It happens. I can remember clear examples from specific cars where we had to track down the source of a problem. In one case we had a brake squeak on a certain key model. That car had been tested for a million miles and was fine. But, once in production, problems popped up with brake noise and it was finally tracked down to one engineer at the brake pad maker (Bendix in this case) who had decided at the last minute before main production started to leave out one small part of the brake compound mix to save a few pennies per unit. He didn't think it would matter and he would get a bonus for reducing costs. Sometimes the problem is purely accidental, as in a machine out of adjustment or a ingredient that you got a flawed batch of. Stuff happens.

Building a machine with over 5,000 parts that are made by a lot of different sourced parts is a complex problem. One little item can start a chain of events that causes an issue down the road. Sometimes its hard to track down the root cause as there are just thousands of individual pieces and production steps to test and you can blow millions of dollars if you just start throwing new parts at cars plus burn up customer satisfaction and confidence if you keep trying things that don't work 100%. Acura had this happen early on before they had resolved the production problem with the rotors. When they replaced rotors and still had the problem they knew that there was a deeper issue and it took time to resolve and put into production. Having spend my life in this industry I got a lot of headaches working with this sort of thing. I guess I am more willing to understand, especially since my new rotors have resolved the issue.

russianDude

Really? Squeaky brake rotors and pads is a hard engineering problem to solve? We are talking about commodity parts, not some engineering marvel. I can see something going wrong, everyone makes mistakes, but to have no replacement parts for so long is baffling

hans471

It appears you have a problem with fully grasping the whole concept of how things happen in a complex manufacturing environment when one has to work through resolving a random problem. I am sure in your own private world you may be perfect and fix every issue instantly even if the problem is cause by someone else far away.

I spent my life working in this industry dealing with such issues. Many people are involved, especially when you have to go back and track every person, process and machine in the fabrication of a part and how its finished. I would suggest you not start your own car company to produce automobiles as your life will become infinitely more complicated and frustrating as you have to face the realities of a complex world where others may not live up to your own level of personal perfection.

Have a nice day! :-)

russianDude

lets hope Acura is working really hard to fix a problem and not ignoring it

THAC0

Is there an active TSB covering this exact issue for 2020 models? From what I can find, TSB 19-053 was modified to include only 2019's but I can reproduce the same issue on my 2020 every cool morning.

Thanks!

DJA123

Here

THAC0

Thanks!

My VIN is outside the range covered (AWD ...LL000001 through ...LL004864) but I'll inquire at the dealer.

DJA123

The problem could be Honda only covering the work within the range. Hopefully the service manager will be willing to advocate for you, if needed. You might want to be prepared for hearing pushback: "It's normal, they all do it until warm", "It's the new special coating on the rotors, it's normal", "Honda won't pay for your car, so we can't do anything, besides, it's normal" That sort of thing. Good luck.

EE4Life

TSB 19-053 - Front and/or Rear Brakes Squeal When Applied at Low Speeds was revised. See the 2019 and 2020 TSB threads for details.

subin

The squeak is back after the TSB service done a couple of months ago!
It was around 73 degree sunny day, after driven for two hours (around 75 miles), and parked in the garage for about two hours.

russianDude

Is it the latest TSB? Call your dealer to find out, they only released latest TSB 1 month ago.
you can probably find invoice and look at part numbers, make sure they are from the latest TSB

DJA123

Apologies if I've missed this, but do we know if the parts used in the TSB are actually different parts? Or, is Acura just replacing with identical parts under the assumption/knowledge that the factory parts were, in some way, defective?

russianDude

They did revise parts (new pads and rotors number), its possible there were multiple revisions, TSB had many revisions too. The best is to find invoice from dealer when they replaced brake parts and see if they match latest TSB parts. If already on latest part, than yeah, you are screwed

coykiam

I had the same issue..I had mine done about 1,000 miles ago and they replaced the rotors and pads per TSB. Was told no guarantees since they are waiting for Acura for a permanent fix sometime later this year. Now the issue just came back.
Anyone with the latest info know if they already have the fix?

subin

Mine is coming from the rear. TSB was done on May 8, 2020, and the pads are 43022-TJB-A02, which match the one listed on 6/19/2020 TSB.

Even that the squeak came back, I would say that it happens much less frequent, probably once every week or two that I hear it.

DJA123

On very rare occasions, I get a slight squeal when backing out of the garage. I think there was one time also at the end of my driveway, but never above walking speeds. Is this happening in local driving: red-lights, stop signs, slowing for turns, etc.?

subin

Only happens when I first pull the car out of the garage at slow speed and brake gently. It is gone after braking a few more times, so I am going to accept it like this.

russianDude

Some small break squeaking is normal for any car when car was sitting over night, but it should go away after stopping once or twice.

Acure4RDX

Also, some times if the pads get wet (from rainy weather).
Also doesn't backing up automatically "adjust' the brake pads? Maybe it was just true with drum brakes (back in the day).

Ender519

Be aware the TSB for 2020 RDX will probably not work. I took my car in to the local dealer to have brakes services per the TSB, which for my VIN meant just brake pads and resurfacing rotors. The squeal was back within days on a cooler morning. I spoke to the dealership and they fully copped to the fact that the TSB is not working and Acura has no fix for this, and no ETA. I found this a bit strange so I called two other Acura dealers, the other local one on the other side of town, and one that is a state away. Both dealers also admitted the same, they were not seeing the TSB fix the problem and they had no solution.

So, the point to anyone reading this is that it may not be worth it to have TSB performed right now as it does not appear to be effective.

russianDude

I got latest break TSB few month back, been pretty quiet. Seems like a its a hit or miss.

supafamous

Piling on here - had the TSB applied to my 2019 A-Spec in March and the squeal is back. It's not as bad as before - sounds like the front is resolved but the rears still squeal. I'm hearing impaired so I can't hear it myself but my wife brings it up with me regularly - if we were driving more right now I'd take in again. For now, I'll just wait till my next service.

RobHTech

Our 2017 Acura RDX needed new front pads and rotors after about 4,000 miles. They were vibrating and the pads were slivers thick. They sucked. The squealed from bran new. Acura said, "This is normal." What? Normal? I could see if it were a school bus or something, but a $41,000 "Luxury" car has normally squealing brakes ... like hello.
--So I told them to take the TSB and shove it. I replaced the pads and rotors all the way around. Centric discs and EBC yellow stuff pads. No problems now, and it stops much faster than the OEM Okebono "Ceramic" pads. Ceramic pads were never designed for performance and/or heavy duty (F150 for example). There is not any ceramic pad that I am aware of that will actually last long enough under performance to be worth the money. Sure, less dust, but who cares? I'd rather stop faster, reliably and have dust than come squealing to a stop and almost crashing. If money is tight, get Centric rotors or StopTech rotors (same company) and some good semi metallic pads. Only thing is that they will be noisier and you likely will have to replace your rotors every pad job. But good Centric blanks are cheap, but there are different grades. Blanks work better, if not just as well as slotted. Don't use drilled--they will crack.

EE4Life

TSB 19-053 - Front and/or Rear Brakes Squeal When Applied at Low Speeds was revised. See the 2019 and 2020 TSB threads for details.

jayb082

Thanks! I was just at the dealer for my suspension noises which are now in the mediation stage (last repair attempt underway) and I mentioned the brakes and the field engineer mentioned a new TSB for brakes - good to see it and I hope it really fixes it this time!!

russianDude

they got Acura engineers at your dealership? Wow

jayb082

Yea when you get to mediation, that's the next step to have one of their engineers come out and see the issue as they want to fix considering it's their last chance to do so. We'll see what happens...