As some of you may know I recently purchased a Pearl White 05 RL.(3/16/16). Within a week the Car threw the AFS light, so I took it to my local Acura dealer for a Oil Change. So I can keep my own record of intervals. Acura did the Oil change, and the courtesy 20 or 30 point inspection. Car came back clean no known issues 95% Brake life and Tires, the advisor even complimented me on my purchase.

Took the car home from Acura inside the house for 10 minutes, come back out to the car try to start nothing.. DEAD... I immediately pop the hood and notice the negative cable is loose.. Push it back on the battery car starts. I got to my buddy mechanic to tighten the terminal cable. He tells me the copper terminal connecter is broken and can not be tighten any more.

Fast forward I drive a whole week , every time I turn off the car. I have to pop the hood and push down on the negative terminal to start the car, let's just say I know the Navi and Radio codes by heart now.

I decided to take the car to the dealership to have them fix the terminal since it has only been 3 weeks. I live in North Jersey dealership is in WhitePlains NY.

Driving was fine the first 30 minutes of my journey. Now mind you every bump in the road would make the negative terminal pop up from the Battery. I'm 4 miles from the dealership. For those of you familiar with the Tappen zee Bridge, it is a constant 1 mile and 1/2 of nothing but bumps.

5 minutes into the drive the car jerks and all the dash lights come on! I'm like " Shit! Please let me make it over this bridge". There are no emergency lanes so I coast all the way over to far right lane. The car starts back up and I'm thanking my lucky stars.

2 mins later the car jerks dash board like a Christmas tree, I put the hazards on and just drift going slower and slower. I knew the cable had completely came off the battery, gradually the car becomes to a complete stop. Now the Hazards have blanked out and there is no emergency lane. But alas! It gets better, fine I'll just get out the car and put the cable back on.

I try the door handle nothing! I try the Windows nothing ! Auto locks nothing!.. F Me! Now I can't even get out the car. I start panicking and try the back doors. They are unlocked I climb out back doors. Put back on the cable and was on my way.. I'm sure I cause a few people to be late to work this morning.. I hope this Experience is not a shape of things to come.

 

Yikes

Being in that bridge a lot I am glad no one rear ended you

 

Why didn't you just manually unlock the door?


Great 30 point inspection too

 

Next time, shove a screw between the terminal and cable closest to the nut and then tighten down.

 

Easy fix, grab a pair of pliers and squeeze the terminal to make it smaller then put back on to the battery. Most likely battery was changed and the terminal has been expanded from the old one

 

All your issues are being caused by the bad battery connection. Luckily it's an easy and cheap fix. Install new battery terminals. I have to do that to my Jeep next week and currently I have a screw to increase the connection, like Spy's advice. I'm glad nothing happened when you broke down on the (TappanZee?) bridge.

 

Next time, don't do this:

 

 

I would have just wrapped some copper wire around the terminal and tightened it back down.

 

Yup - or a slice of copper water pipe with a slot cut into it.

Sorry, but that's really one for the Darwin Awards...

 

After about 6 weeks of driving rental Jeep Cherokee I could not wait to get my 06 RL back.
Dealer called, within hour I went to pick her up... Apparently my battery died while sitting on the dealer's lot, so they installed the new battery, free of charge - great service.

About 5-6 days after I picked up my car from the dealer, this after-noon while driving on the highway, my Audio started to randomly turn-off (display was still on, but it was like speakers wiring was loosing connection / wire shortening, etc... mostly it happened if I accelerated a bit, then radio would cut-out, then my CD... aaaand it happened: my car for the first time ever since I own it lost power completely, and power returned after 3-4 seconds. Navigation was asking for a code... Also, there was steering wheel with exclamation mark light on my dashboard, but car was driving normally. I have been driving it for full 4 years now, and NEVER had any issues until today...
I continued to drive, got home and all was good. Called the dealer who worked on the car and without any issues scheduled an appointment for tomorrow at 1130am.

Tonight, we were en route to a dinner, and while driving on bit larger road (2 lanes each direction) same thing happened: while Audio was OFF car was running just fine. As soon as I turned on Audio, it started randomly to cut-out as it was loosing speaker connection because all screens were working just fine ... I grabbed the phone and my wife started recording ... 3-4 minutes into it, car lost all the power, no lights, nothing... slowed down to a stop and almost ended up hitting the curb because steering wheel locked up...

Tried to get out of the car, could not... no emergency safety flashing lights were working, absolutely nothing... at this point we were sitting at the only right lane at about 20ft away from the intersection. Called 911 to come out and block us up, so someone does not kill us on the road, got towing truck to take it away, and will have to call the dealer in the morning.

I got the car 4 years ago with 67k miles; currently have 133000+ on it, and so far there was not a single issue with it.
I am suspecting when they replaced the battery that battery terminals were either not tight enough or not cleaned correctly, because nothing comes to my mind of what could cause this stalling that it could be related to the airbag recall... I still think the culprit was the battery related something something... will post video later...

Anyone experienced similar issue like this with their RL? If so, please share if you were able to correct the problem... Not quite sure I can trust the car now with the such huge issue like this; though it was very loyal for the past 4 years...

 

 

Open your hood and look at the terminals


I had a similar situation a few months ago and it turned out the positive terminal had corroded and broke.

 

My 2001 Camry would did this with the radio almost four years ago while on a trip, I kept on holding the power button and the cd started playing again... It ultimately had a bad cell in the battery, and it always killed it's batteries fast...

I'd look at the altinator, but the dealer would have likely checked that, also, if they put a battery in it, they would have likely cleaned the terminals too...

This doesn't sound like a major electrical problem, just some very simole causing big side effects...

Either the new battery has a bad cell too, or there's a loose connection somewhere...

I'm no expert though, but similar, but less dramatic things have happened to me before...

Speaking from what I know, it should be an easy fix, if you can find it...

I hate electric problems...

Also, isn't it scary to see the life just sucked out of the RL like that...

 

Wow, it coasted for quite a distance...

I forgot, my old Camry also had a terminal corrode up so bad, the layers of metal separated and it went dead in a parking lot...

This is creepy...

 

I've been having similar symptoms - no dying in the middle of the road but audio cut outs / odd behavior of the system. Turned out my negative terminal was loose....

 

Check your terminals

 

Terminals on the battery.

 

Thanks everyone; after visiting service that towed the car away, they recommended replacing the negative terminal. They did it for $35 and car is running again fine (noob scare, I admit) ... I guess seeing my RL suffer and as someone mentioned above getting the life sucked out of it, really scared me... especially that audio would start to cut out randomly, and then car dies...
One thing that could have happened is when the dealer installed the new battery they should have noticed terminals in bad shape, but I understand they may have been super busy working on all airbag recalls lately...

Overall, dealer has asked me to stop by anytime when convenient so they can re+check everything and ensure there are no other issues related to the culprit identified.

Huh... scared the heck out of me... and just paid the car off too lol

 

They def should have noticed a bad terminal

 

What you described is the staged shut down of systems when power supply is compromised. Audio, seat heaters and some accessories are high power draw components. They shut down first to keep other more vital systems operating (i.e. engine control CPU). And if the power supply does not recover it will cascade further until the car itself, engine control and the works shuts down.

With the bad negative cable / connection the battery was not being recharged and / or the negative ground contact was lost.

Most power deficiency symptoms of the RL are warning lights triggered, telescoping wheel not operating fully, memory settings not working. But a more serious power deficiency or ground will begin shutting down systems to protect the most vital.

I had experienced a similar sequence of system shut down when I drained my battery using the 12v port for a portable air compressor without the engine on and stereo playing. My exception was the car was already off and did not experience the total loss of power while driving. Once the power was restored (jump started and driven to recharge battery) all was well again.

 

Glad you figured it out! I immediately thought loose/bad battery cables. Had a similar issue happen and my cables were loose. Seems like 99% of electrical issues, with our cars, are battery related.

 

rl015 a except from my thread in March:


I decided to take the car to the dealership to have them fix the terminal since it has only been 3 weeks. I live in North Jersey dealership is in WhitePlains NY.

Driving was fine the first 30 minutes of my journey. Now mind you every bump in the road would make the negative terminal pop up from the Battery. I'm 4 miles from the dealership. For those of you familiar with the Tappen zee Bridge, it is a constant 1 mile and 1/2 of nothing but bumps.

5 minutes into the drive the car jerks and all the dash lights come on! I'm like " Shit! Please let me make it over this bridge". There are no emergency lanes so I coast all the way over to far right lane. The car starts back up and I'm thanking my lucky stars.

2 mins later the car jerks dash board like a Christmas tree, I put the hazards on and just drift going slower and slower. I knew the cable had completely came off the battery, gradually the car becomes to a complete stop. Now the Hazards have blanked out and there is no emergency lane. But alas! It gets better, fine I'll just get out the car and put the cable back on.

I try the door handle nothing! I try the Windows nothing ! Auto locks nothing!.. F Me! Now I can't even get out the car. I start panicking and try the back doors. They are unlocked I climb out back doors. Put back on the cable and was on my way.. I'm sure I cause a few people to be late to work this morning.. I hope this Experience is not a shape of things to come.


Scary thing is doesn't the RL have some sort of relay that at least the hazards can be turned on?

 

If you're battery isn't connected how is a relay going to make hazard lights turn on?...

 

The hazard button is a mechanical relay. He said his hazards functioned up to the point he lost all power.


Jazzy, thanks for reminding me. I knew we had seen an identical scenario very recently. Threads merged. I'll probably change the title to something more helpful to people looking for this info.

 

Wow, so I'll be taking a close look at the terminals more often now. I'm surprised there's no charging system warning message that showed up in the video above. I'm even more surprised the brakes completely stopped working??

 

If the engine loses power, you won't get any assistance braking or steering. It's still functional, but it becomes much harder.

 

oh, thought so ...mistakenly got that vibe from the dialogue in the video and massive coasting distance.

 

Gas mileage improved as well

Just wanted to let everyone know of something interesting: before this issue with the negative terminal on my RL, I was getting avg mixed mileage per gallon of 19.5ish... I do not terorize the gas pedal, rather I consider myself as retiree how I drive hahaha ... anyhow, over the time I did not really pay much attention to it and figured summer blend of the gasoline is happening so what the heck, 19.5mpg it is... UNTIL...

After replacing negative terminal I have noticed quite a jump in my mpg... Last night I filled it up, went to work (all hwy, 19 miles one way) and after driving total of 40+ miles I am now getting about 25mpg... crazy I know
City I do get 20ish mpg...

So check your terminals: if replaced you may see this mpg gain depending on how bad it may be...