As a response to my earlier posting about this, gldman wrote the following:

"This happened to me. I Left the car on a vacation for a week and the battery drained. When I had the car jump-started the temp came back. When I went on subsequent vacations the battery did not drain. Note, I believe that your battery will drain if you do not start your car at least every other day until the temp problem is fixed."


He is correct!! I have not driven the car since last Sunday, nor started it since last Monday because I did a real good wash and wax job in preparation for my vacation trip this Sunday. Tonight (Friday) I got into it and noticed the overhead lights did not come on and neither did the instruments. So I opened the hood and saw no green light coming from the battery.

I have an automatic charger with a trickle charge (2 amp), a normal charge (12 amp), and a fast/start charge (75 amp). So on went the charger with the 75 amp setting and a few minutes later I started the engine. I had to set the codes for the NAV and the radio, but all of my presents were still in memory. Then the wife and I took a 15 minute ride and I noticed the outside temperature display was working! So now I know what to do if this happens again until I can get it in to be fixed.

Another member, kosh2258, responded with this:

"I've had it happen 3 times so far. The first time it cleared itself by shutting off and restarting the car.

The 2nd and 3rd times it stuck like that for two days and required removing the battery ground cable to reset it. I also understand that removing fuses 7 and 21 from the fuse block might work too.

I found that if you disconnect the ground cable for a count of 5 and reconnect it, you can avoid having to rekey the radio and NAVI (if you have it) security codes as well as resetting your XM presets.

It hasn't happened again for about 2 months now."


Seems like I now have at least a plan. While I'm hesitant to leave my charger on all night, even at 12 amps, without being watched, I suppose I will.

 

That's odd - why did the battery drain only after 1 week?

 

My temp flatlined the other day while driving, it came back after a few miles driving. Yah, it was weird. With regards to the battery, I went on a 2 week vacation, the car wasn't started at all and I did not have any problems when I return.

 

I didn't expect this at all.. thought it was odd that gldman had experienced this problem. Incidently, it was only five days of no driving since on Monday, all I did was move the car from the garage to the driveway and back to finish waxing it.

During the week, I would open the door a few times to make sure the interior lights came on. I guess what I should really have done is used a battery tester to check the state of the battery. Anyway, last night around 10:00, I went out to just sit in it (withdraw symptons). That's when I saw that the thing was dead as a door nail. I removed the charger a little after midnight since I don't like the idea of having it charge in the gargage with no one to monitor it. This morning, I'll take it out for a 30 mile drive to see how much that brings it back up. Now I worry about the battery's ability to hold a charge.. and we're leaving early tomorrow morning. I put the jumper cables in the car just in case. Man, I do not like this.

This means that the two most reliable cars I've ever owned remain... two Fords. My 1988 Mustang LX 302 CID and my current 2001 Ford Ranger pickup. Neither vehicle ever saw, or has ever seen, the dealer for a problem. Rock solid and totally reliable.

 

It has happened to me twice - both times after filling up with gas which I attributed to a hot pavement. After a few minutes of driving it came back on reading 115 degrees and slowly dropped down to a more accurate temp. Has anyone's ever read above this? Perhaps it is factory preset to blank out above it. PS - I know it gets hot in Central FL where I live but not THAT hot!

 

I would be concerned about the battery being drained after only week of not driving the car. It should take much longer than that. On my CL-S, I went 7 weeks without starting my car and the battery never died. If your battery is draining after a week, there must be a draw that needs to be addressed.

I am not planning on my driving the TL for at least 10 days now. Might as well put the miles on my mom's 98' RL, whenever I can. I guess I'll find out if I have a similar issue.


Gatorfan

 

SouthernBoy,

Very interesting information coming out here. The whole scenario sounds just like the battery life issues with a laptop computer. If the processor is active doing something the battery drains faster than if the laptop is idling or in standby.

This would lend credence that there is some software bug related to the OAT display that is causing a processor in the vehicle to work hard and drain down the battery. A routine caught in an infinite loop will cause just such a high processor activity situation.
It lends circumstantial evidence to my theory that the temperature calibration routine (shows --- when calibrating) is getting stuck in an infinite loop when a certain outside temperature is reached or exceeded.

By removing power to the vehicle the effect is to shut down the computer, clear the memory, and cause a reload of the program thus clearing the looping condition.

If this is the case, it's a pretty straight forward problem and it shouldn't take too long for Honda's software wizards to come up with a fix for it.

It will be interesting to see if the battery drain disappears with the OAT now working properly.

 

To Gatorfan;

I agree completely. It is not normal for a battery to drain in five days unless there is something causing the drain. I've seen batterys sit in cars for week after week and still fire the engine up.


To kosh2258;

I thought of this, too. An infinite loop, serious memory leaks, who knows. One thing I noticed today. When I start the engine after it has been sitting for a while, like overnight (last night for example), the temperature reads flatline for a couple of seconds, then displays the outside temperature. This could be due to the CPU loading the software. Where if it has only been a short time since having been run, the display comes up right away which could be due to the CPU hold some of the OS in cache (general purpose computers do this as rouitine).

I remember when this first occurred. I was at a light on a 4-lane road where the road turned into a 2-lane road after crossing through the light. A car pulled up next to me and it was obvious he was of a mind to beat me through the light and take my lane. I was messing with the sound system and the light turned quickly. I stalled the engine, then started it up immediately and took off. It was right after that that I noticed the flatline readout. Perhaps I spiked the system.

Anyway, it's up to full charge now, but the battery state light on the top of the battery doesn't glow green as before.. it's at insufficient charge (dark). Oops, I take that back. I just went out to check it (I'm trickle charging it now at 2 amps), and it's not quite up to full charge.

Thanks to all of you for your comments and suggestions. Were it not for having received some info on this site, I would really be troubled before going off on vacation.

 

Mine is the same way. According to the service manual and owners manual that's normal behavior. It runs the calibration routine on start-up which is why I think it's getting stuck in a loop during calibration under certain conditions. Your thought about a processor getting mad because of a spike resulting from a quick restart is interesting - that certainly could be causing a lockup condition.

Too bad there isn't some way to monitor the various processors activity levels through the Navi display via a diagnostic mode. It might be pretty revealing.

 

To kosh2288;

Yeah, we need a debugger like gdb or DDD. When I left work yesterday, I had just turned up some buggy code (C and C++) my boss wrote in a library of API functions and methods that was causing segmentation faults in my application. I didn't have the time to fix them because of my vacation. Now I have to "debug" my car???

If non-graceful exits weren't considered in the code or memory is not being freed after mallocs and callocs, you could have some problems. For example if the kernel expects periodic messages from the sensor software but that has died or faulted in some way, it's possible the message handler could get into a loop. Who knows. Depends upon how the software was built.

 

I did not even know there was a battery status light on top of our batteries. I'm assuming we have to remove the cover to see the light?

 

Nope, just look at the top and you'll see it. I wouldn't have realized it was their either, but my salesman spent an hour showing me the in's and out's of the car and that's one of the things he pointed out.

 

I hope this all comes out to the good because this has been one hell of a year/season/month/week/day(yesterday). We have more work where I work than we can handle and the pressure has been a cooker for the entire year. Plus yesterday, my wife had to put the dog she "inherited" when her dad died almost 3 years ago, to sleep. If ago killer her because she really loved that dog. Then the battery turns up dead 30 hours before we are to hit the road in my new car? And there's a cat-5 hurricane churning in the gulf , threatening the Southeast?? Man, I (WE) don't need this.

Oh well, South Carolina here we come. I and my wife and children, parents, grandparents, etc. are native Virginians. But I must say, the wife and I love South Carolina. Great state, great people, great weather, great food, great Southern traditions.. what's not to like?

 

Had a similar problem a few weeks ago and had to have the TL towed in - it had only sat for two days and the batt was drained. Also noticed before it happened that Temp displayed --- , the hands free link detected the phone but the phone icon wasn't displayed in the control panel over the Nav screen and the bluetooth would lock up and when you made a call the audio was really scratchy. Dealer tested and contacted Acura in Calif who authorized replacement of HFL control module and Display Control Module - they also replaced Navigation screen. So far all is good.
Rick

 

I would be very cautious using that 75-amp setting attached to a battery!

 

To Road Rage;

Yep.. I only used it to fire up the engine last night. Then I drove the car around for 15 minutes and put it back on the charger at 12 amps for maybe 1 1/2 hours. Today, I drove it for about 30 miles then to the charger again, this time at 2 amps for around 4 hours.

A constant hit of 75 amps can really shorten battery life and in extreme cases, can cause the battery to explode.

 

I went on a 5 day vacation three weeks after getting my TL. It was parked in a covered garage, facing an interior wall. When I came back the battery was drained. I took it to Cush Acura in San Diego, and after testing they replaced the battery - said it apparently had a bad cell. Seemed a little strange after three weeks, but since they replaced it I was happy. Haven't had any problem since. I didn't notice any problem with outside temp or navi before I parked it, and assumed at first that vibrations from planes overhead had set off the alarm and drained the battery. Looks like the problem may be systemic! BTW - after 2 months I developed an annoying rattle by right rear passenger's seat, which turned out to be from a bad strut that had to be replaced. Haven't seen other messages of problems with struts, so that one may have been more unique to my car. I still love my TL, and appreciate the excellent service I'm getting, but I wasn't planning to get to know my service rep so well quite so quickly!

 

Well it worked fine on the trip.. the outside temperture display and the battery. But the display is high about maybe 4 degrees so I am going to have to calibrate it.

Mileage was fine, cabin was nice and cool when need be. This car tracks and steers wonderfully for a front driver. Very nice indeed. And what a road car!! This and my 2000 SVT Contour are the best road cars I've ever owned with the edge going to the TL because of it's greater power and the Nav system and some other items of finery and such.

Yes, very nice indeed.

 

This might help when calibrating http://www.acura-tl.com/forums/showthread.php?t=67481

 

Just picked up my 05 TL-6MT Navi on Friday. I started flatlining the temp indicator intermittently. I also lose my radio presets on occasion, even though it always says "driver 1 detected" when I use my remote. Went to the dealer saturday and they ran some tests, apparently they pulled 15 communication failure codes from the diagnostics. I was told that Acura has requested that an engineer fly out to look at it before they clear the codes. Apparently this problem was fixed in 04, so they told me they wanted to give me a loaner. No f'ing way, I only had it for a day.. I got rid of my 02 tls because it lived at the dealer getting trannies put in (5 to date!!!)

 

Wait, a loaner or a replacement? Why wouldn't you take a loaner so they can work on your car? It will only expedite the process. Some dealers here won't even give loaners so willingly, so I always take one with a smile =)