Rear Tail Light - Misalignment
 

After purchasing my 2019 Acura RDX I quickly noticed that the left rear tail light does not align between the trunk and the body of the car despite alignment on the right side of car. I have now serviced the car twice at dealerships other than where I purchased the vehicle. In both cases, the managers acknowledged that it was not aligned, but took no responsibility for fixing it. One even went as far as to recommend taking it to a third party body shop as "our mechanics do not do this kind of stuff."

I am now planning to take the car back to the place of purchase, but I was hoping to get some feedback on best approaches as this seems unacceptable for a $40K+ vehicle.


https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/acurazi...29e72216ed.png

I'm pretty sure it is a minor adjustment. Any Acura dealer should be able to handle this for you, even if they need to send it out to a body shop. It should be handled under warranty. Just be sure to tell them that you expect it to be taken care of.

It is not only the lights, but the whole hatch is slightly misaligned - note how the hatch meets the bumper.

I suspect it is an easy alignment. If it is a body shop job, then the dealer should take it there.

Good eye CEB! the gap in the hatch closing is larger on the left hand side than the right

My Advance was the same way. The dealer, after a couple months of back and forth, with the district manager too, finally adjusted the latch catch/hook. Now it is much more in line, not perfect, but MUCH better. The shop just needs to unscrew the latch hook and straighten it out. Mine had a visible, misligned, angle to it. Must have been a rush build job at the factory.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/acurazi...54739a2fa9.jpg

Photo of latch catch just in case my poor technical jargon was confusing.

Mine is like that also, Sept 2018 build, the gap is about 3/16" and if I push the bottom left side corner of the hatch (when in closed position), it would align correctly.

What's up with the roof?? Looks like a photoshop.

Thank you all for the replies. It sounds as though I am not alone with this issue. I may attempt to adjust it myself before wasting the dealers and my time!

I think what your eyes are seeing is the reflection of the brick off of the sunroof glass

More like it looks like the roof/top of hatch slopes one way, but the bottom of the hatch is sloping the other way. So weird.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/acurazi...982ba8eb26.png

I have a similar issue. The body shop was able to close the gap some, but it’s still about a 1/4 inch off on the left side of the hatch. I went to the dealer’s lot to see if this was a isolated incident. While mines seems to be an outlier almost all the vehicles I viewed weren’t quite aligned perfectly. My suspicion is that it’s a problem with the hatch manufacture. The door I believe is some sort of plastic and it appears that the mold is not producing a perfectly aligned product.

I bet this is just a case of the camera lens distorting the image.

Looks like a rollover to me 😂

Lol, hope not.

:rolleyes:

Just came back from the dealer for A1 service and I had a chance to talk to the Technician about all my issues along with the Service Adviser. For this misalignment, he checked all the bumpers first and then said that he will try to adjust the "tailgate striker" (latch catch).
The result is that the gap is down from 3/16" to about 1/16" and I am fine with that.