Honda CR-V Instrument Panel

davexxxx

Started the car one morning and the check engine, air bag and traction control lights were on along with the D indicator for when you are in drive flashing on and off.

Car drove fine. After stopping the car and restarting again later, the same indicators were on and the tach and speedometer needles were going up and down.

Took it into the dealership. They were asking if I spilled something, had some collision damage or had an animal get in the engine. As far as spilling or collision I can say definitely not. They decided I needed a new instrument panel (total cost ~$750). It would take a week for the part to come in.

Car sat a couple days cause my wife was worried about driving it. When I came back to drive it the battery was completely dead. Took the battery to Autozone to see if it was just dead or if it went bad. They had to recharge it to test it but it tested out ok.

Put the battery back in the car. Started it and the instrument panel was now ok. No more lights or indicators going crazy. I have no idea how the battery got drained. I checked the headlight switch, made sure no doors had been left open, etc. My assumption now was that the instrument panel or something else electrical somehow drained the battery but was told there was no correlation between the two by the dealership. They said just to drive it normally and see what happens.

It has only been a couple days since I put the battery back in but it has been fine since.

Any thoughts on what is going on? Not much confidence in Honda service at this point. They charged me to diagnose it and apparently don't really know for sure what's going on. Heck they couldn't even tell me that I would find my radio code on a white sticker in the glove box to reactivate the radio. I had to find that online on my own.

isellhondas

It's hard to say what happened here and hopefully it'll stay fixed.

I will say that Honda does NOT put a sticker on your glove box with your radio code. Some dealer may do this just like some will stick it on the inside cover of the fuse box.

Don't blame the dealer for this.

stever

Honda is good about radio codes though. Those cards and stickers can get lost - Honda lets you get the codes online and has a dedicated page for them. They're the only ones that do that, afaik.

davexxxx

Fair enough isellhondas....although it was the dealer that I bought the car from!!! stever....you do need the serial number to do this along with the vin, The method they were telling me to use to get the serial number (hold 1 and 6 presets while turning the radio on) did not work, So thankfully I found the sticker which had both the serial number (I'm guessing) and the radio code.

isellhondas

That makes sense. Your DEALER sticks the stickers inside the glove box!

I used to rell my customers to write it on a piece of paper hidden under the trunk mat or something like that.

I always thought radio codes were a PITA and unnecessary. On cars built before 2001 you had to pull the radio out to get the serial number off the back.

stever

Getting the serial number of the radio from the radio display is new to me. Good tip.

And I'm in Isell's camp - rather not have a code period.

Most shops know enough these days to stick a memory saver in your power port before disconnecting your battery. Most of us consumers don't have one of those though, even though they aren't expensive. So then we get stuck paying more for the code after we've just tried to save a few bucks by replacing an old battery ourselves. That's why I give Honda props for at least letting you get your codes online instead of visiting the dealer.

Mr_Shiftright

If your battery voltage drops low enough, all the modules and computers in your car go crazy. Question is, what killed your battery in the first place and is this gremlin still alive in there.

Testing for a parasitic drain is easy enough with a multimeter. Anything over 50 milliamps is probably too much drain.