small portion of people expirenced. However, we do not know if all or some cars are impacted. It could be all cars impacted, but only some experience it due to very specific and rare circumstances (heavy rain and sudden acceleration).
recall? I think it will happen

 

Happened to me yesterday. 60 in the rain trying to pass at 70 mph or so (in a 70) in VA east of Richmond, VA. Lost all power. Knew of the possibility of this issue so I immediately got over to the shoulder, but could’ve been very dangerous. Long trip— 5.5 hour drive to OBX in the pouring rain. 65 degrees? Went away after restart.

Scary stuff. I also swear my car’s acceleration is “off” now. Somethings slightly amiss now.

 

This is a scary situation for sure. It needs to be addressed.......

 

did you take your car to dealer? Also, please file NHTSA complaint online

 

yes to #2, will take to dealer in a few days. Happened on my way to OBX, so I’m over an hour from a dealership now. Definitely taking it in though. I’ll just be easy on the throttle till then.

I’ll echo some previous comments and say that this really does rattle one’s confidence.

 

likely dealer will find nothing. You can call corporate and open a case to have it on record.

 

Its funny, I was driving in a rain today on highway, and this was in the back of my mind, try to take it easy without any sudden accelerations.

 

2019 RDX A-Spec. Happened to me ONCE as well. Heavy rain and hard acceleration. Codes went away after restart and car was like it never happened.

 

Adding my wife's 2019 RDX ASpec to the Limp mode event list
Rainy wet long highway driving and it died when she tried to enter a passing lane, limp mode and we managed to get out of the lane safely and avoid other traffic. Luckily
So I thank you guys for posting as we were in the middle of nowhere B.C and thankfully I had cell service. I googled 'RDX limp mode' and found this thread and learned to just let it sit 5 min and restart.
The car did the same thing to me driving back home a couple days later, but I knew exactly what to do. I restated it after only a minute and it was fine from there on even on a snowy ski hill road that night.
She is at the dealer right now dropping it off and I am fully expecting them to find no codes and do nothing. Not sure she wants to keep this car that she otherwise loves as she has lost some faith in it.
They had replaced the fuel pump on a warranty recall issue the week before we left on the trip, so Acura knows something is up with these cars
Thanks again to all that posted their experience as you made my emergency event much easier to deal with

 

So I’ve researched my butt off on this topic over the last week or so. I see the common themes, have a rough idea of who’s impacted (apparently not everybody), know it’s Accords/RDX. Order of causes seems to be acceleration, rain/damp, and a long trip, but I’m honestly convinced this MIGHT be able to happen on short trips with little/no moisture. All anecdotal.

So I’m back from traveling (babied the car the rest of the trip— no further issues). Wasn’t going to ruin my trip dealing with a dealership 2 hours from where I stayed - it was my first true vacation in a decade and the car drove fine after the issue. I know from reading other posts that some my give me flak for this - fine. I do now have an appointment with my local/home dealership, though the first one I talked to had “never heard of that problem before”. In the meantime I was able to get a case # from Acura customer service and had as frank a conversation as you can have with someone who probably has to hold to a script for certain responses. They are 100% aware of this issue, there is no doubt there. “Our engineers are working on it” was said. That said, what’s a reasonable amount of time to wait? They have no timeline. I LOVE this car other than this major flaw/defect. Easily the best vehicle I’ve owned (RX8 gets honorable mention, but rotaries don’t last).

I’m also grappling with a rough breakdown on statistics. Overall, I’d say there are at least 50 unique accounts online of this issue on the 2.0T between Accord/RDX (anecdotally), and that’s just those who are willing to go online and share. I don’t know all the sales figures, but let’s say 100,000 vehicles (work with me here). Let’s say 0.5% affected. That’s 500 vehicles, and that kind jives with a 10% “willing to share my experience on forums” rate (made up statistic, but seems reasonable). Let’s go on and say 50% of those that can have the issue, do. In no way do I see 250 instances of this happening where all 250 people make it over to the shoulder safely, especially since this seems to happen in wet/rainy conditions, possibly on long trips (driver fatigue). Anyways, thinking out loud.

I fully expect dealer not to find anything, but that’s my next step and also the next box to check with customer service.

I picked this car over the top-end Mazda CX-5 turbo. For now I still like my decision. Can’t say enough good things about this car other than this HUGE problem. I’ll remain optimistic. Not going to shout “screw this, I’m trading in”, but what should be my time limit?

Lastly— I tested a 2021 A spec before selecting my 2020 A spec for
a lower price. Very curious to see if anyone with a 2021 has had this issue yet.

 

I think all cars are impacted but it takes unique conditions and circumstances to get to this mode.
perhaps big rain splash has to get into intake at the right moment of acceleration?

good chance 2021 has the same issue, unless Acura figured it out and started
silently fixing it for new models while still working on a remedy to older years.


I am pretty confident we will have some sort of recall, but it will take time.

 

if anyone of you's want to try an experiment, grab the first gen RDX plugs or the GTR's spark plugs. it has a tighter gap.

or one can close the gap on the factory spark plugs.

Boosted cars will need a smaller gap for the spark plugs.

 

I've done a 20+ mile commute in heavy rain and done heavy acceleration back when I first heard about this to try and replicate the issue. Opened up the airbox the next morning after it stopped raining and it was completely dry - from the intake snorkel, to the tubing to the air filter itself. None of the parts were even damp. I very highly doubt it's rain getting into the intake. Even if there was, it would have to be something substantial. A spraying/mist of water would vaporize and it'd be like free water injection for your engine, giving you lower IATs and better power ironically. Your air filter would have to be sopping wet for this to actually effect drivability. I drive the car spiritedly from time to time, having hit the speed limiter on plenty of occasions and never had the issue. Maybe it's just luck of the draw?

I know the feeling tho. I have the GTO that's a blast to drive making stupid amounts of power, but it recently started giving me random "Safety Mode" errors tied to something with the throttle input and going into limp mode, sometimes even stalling the car (ironic they call it safety mode but it could get you killed by getting rear ended by somebody). It's very anxiety inducing wondering if today it's going to work properly or not. Hopefully Acura comes out with a resolution soon.

 

One would think that Honda/Acura would have this figured out by now and have a fix.

 

My gut feeling these days is that the issue does not occur to people who drives more agressively. Maybe the engine runs hotter prevents the issue from occuring in the first place.

 

Eh, temps fall fairly quickly once you resume “normal” driving. Most of my driving is fairly tame. Honestly I think it’s more to do with an electrical gremlin. Fuel pump TSB would be another area I’d look at.

 

Finally able to take my car into the dealership today. No big updates— no codes, dealer could not duplicate, and they said they hooked something up to check for any anomalies during acceleration, shifting, etc., and didn’t find anything (they described it as an EKG for your car).

They offered to have someone take my car home and try to reproduce the issue on their commute to/from the dealer. I declined— didn’t seem like a good option on someone’s 20-ish minute commute, and the rep agreed (he just wanted to offer). I should note I did floor it a bit on my way to the dealer this morning (heavy mist with no traffic). Zero problems, not even a bit of hesitation. But also only a 20 minute drive.

Following up with Acura customer service and I guess I’ll wait until the next time this happens and hopefully have a code stored to have the dealer assess. I can’t simply punt on several thousand dollars of depreciation to give up and trade to something else. I’ll reiterate— besides having this problem constantly present in the back of my mind, I still really like this car.

A 2nd occurrence without diagnosis might change my mind, though. Sad to think of.

 

After I experienced this issue and was unable to fix it at the dealer, I contacted Acura with a request to buy back my vehicle. After a few weeks, they called to let me know my request was denied, but that they had a fix for the issue. They sent a technician from Acura to my dealer today and the fix was made. As you can see below, they replaced the intercooler and pipe assembly.

 

Thank you for sharing this. So I guess the jury will be out on whether this actually does rectify the issue, but great news nonetheless. Does not seem like a cheap repair if not under warranty. Also seems to me that this is more mechanical and less software related. What do I know, though?

If you wouldn’t mind, is there any way you could perhaps PM me your case # or anything that I can cite in my follow up with Acura customer service? I don’t know if that’s a reasonable ask or if you’d even care to share. Either way, I appreciate you sharing this info/picture. If not, I’ll just reference that photo of the parts and see if that works. I am following up with them Wednesday.

Thanks again for sharing!

 

Sure! If it is helpful to anyone here, my case number with Acura was 11543175. Hope everyone is able to have this issue repaired (and the repair solves the problem).

 

19710-6S8-A01 is not listed on oemacuraparts.com. It comes up for 2.0T accord.
For RDX 2019 it should 19710-6B2-A01

Are they trying Honda Accord parts now? I think they are using this guy as an experiment

Maybe these parts are still experimental, they are probably getting closer to the fix and only do it for couple people to see if it works?

 

I dunno! I’m not familiar with the parts. Just trying to be helpful. For what it’s worth, they initially were of the opinion that the problem was due to the intercooler so it makes sense to me that a replacement intercooler would fix the issue. If the OEM intercooler was problematic, maybe using a different Honda part is a legitimate fix. Interested to hear what the more savvy folks think.

 

Well guinea pig, go out and test drive.

Arent the Accords having this same exact issue?
I havent seen a fix for them.

 

Jeez, was just trying to pass on some useful information and help others who have had the same problem. I regret participating in this forum and won’t be posting further updates.

 

common, we are kidding. Thanks for sharing this update.

 

https://www.autonews.com/china/honda...-engine-glitch

intercooler recall in China. Coincidence they swapped his intercooler ??

 

That Accord (and recall) have the 1.5 L Turbo engine, apparently same as is used in the current 5th Gen CR-V. I have not read one incident of the limp mode on these engines in the CR-V. I dunno if they use the same intercooler.

 

Very interested in hearing more about the intercooler part changes, and seeing if that fixes the issues even if it is experimental, hopefully that makes it up the chain at Acura. I am a little confused though about why the intercooler would play a role in the problem, where the people reporting replication of the shut down for those reporting the issues to be specifically happening under damp, wet scenarios, usually long drives on rainy days? Still, it is a shred of hope into a long term solution if it turns out to be true

 

Seems like they are getting closer to the fix... will be interesting to see if it will be a recall, or just TSB for those that complain

 

So it happened again and I bailed. Traded it in, took a huge loss, moving on. I cannot jeopardize safety while I wait for Acura to come up with a fix.

 

Sorry you had a bad experience, but sometimes it's better to move on and try your luck with something else.

 

Good call, I would do the same if this happens twice on me. Driving a car you have little confidence with is a torture.

 

Good luck....this is one of the reasons that I took the RDX off of my short list. It is 2 1/2 years later and still no fix.

 

To those who are experiencing this situation-
rather than risk your safety please just install the Nissan GT-R spark plugs and gap them at 028
its not worth your life waiting for Acura’s solution

 

See TSB 20-053 - MIL is Flashing with Loss of Power in the 2019, 2020, and 2021 TSB threads.

 

Interesting. If this is indeed a fix for limp mode, why its not a recall? I've never experienced, but does not mean I do not have it. Do I need to find out on highway during rain with a large truck behind?!

 

Were you able to see the details? I'd like to know what is being done.

I have never experienced this either, but would certainly want to have them fix whatever so as to avoid it.

 

The TSB is visible now.

WOW! "Possible" cause is humid air may condense in the intake tract and accumulate moisture during steady driving.. . Fix: Replace Intercooler, and update PGM FI software.

I have not experienced this issue, but it does say all VINs so I guess we all get to have it done.

 

So it turns out everyone here who hypothesized that it was due to condensation in the intake tract was correct all along, or at least, Acura came to the same conclusion. Took them long enough...

I wonder if there's a TSB for the 2.0T Accords as well, seeing as how Accord drivers have been having issues with this too.

Edit: Oh hey I did not realize zroger is a mod over there: https://www.driveaccord.net/threads/check-engine-light-cel-in-the-rain-went-into-limp-mode.502130/page-11#post-6809562

 

Right! It became obvious when even casually analyzing the conditions that existed when those who reported this Limp Mode experience, that moisture played a part. (That was a very badly worded sentence!) I am somewhat surprised that it took Acura so long to figure it out and develop a fix, but on the other hand, we don't know the difference in the new intercooler. It had be be designed, and rigorously tested.