jimmriley

2004 acura TL manual with navigation. Battery was completely run down from sitting overnight with all lights etc off. Charged up battery and noticed a steady low "ticking noise" from center of dash right around center dash speaker with car off. Removed radio fuse and the steady ticking went away and battery holds charge. Without tearing apart the dash....any clues what the fix might be?

thoiboi

I'm going to throw out a wild guess and say it's the radio

jimmriley

Thanks. The noise is not coming from the radio but from center dash speaker area. The navigation and radio work with the radio fuse installed. I am wondering if the Hands Free Link unit is the problem?

thoiboi

The HFL is a known culprit but it isn't in the dash, it's in the overhead console where the map lights are. Try removing it and test to see if you have a parasitic draw still.

jimmriley

Thanks, worth a try. The ticking noise might be some signal from a failed component shooting a intermittent signal to the center speaker......which could be the radio or anything hooked up to the radio. Lots of people had problems with the HFL....

jimmriley

Had a parasitic drain of ~.6 amp with key out. Used ammeter to measure drain by connecting to disconnected negative battery terminal cable and negative battery post. From internet research.....should been no more than .050 amps max. Acura repair bulletin says drain should only be ~.2 amps for locked up HFL.

Disconnecting the wacky Bluetooth/HFL unit appears to have fixed the drain problem. Acura service bulletin (05-020) indicated that if the HFL unit was missing date or before 18 aug 2004...throw it out and put in new one. Apparently the messed up HFL unit was locked up and/or constantly resetting which apparently caused the clicking/ticking noise I was hearing from the center dash speaker.

Pulling the fuse for the radio apparently took the center speaker out of the circuit that allowed the HFL to cause the clicking noise in the center speaker/dash.

If Acura tells the dealer tech to throw out/replace an HFL unit made on or before 18 Aug 2004....seems like a clue