jibi

Recently I started having an issue with my radio display acting rather strange. This isn't 100% of the time, but it's darn near close to it. Now I'm at the point where I would either want to have it sent to Honda to be fixed or purchase an aftermarket unit (or quite possibly an entirely new car, although I enjoy having no payments at this point).

- When I press a button on the head unit, the CD player starts the loading process (red light flashes, loader accepts a new CD). This is ANY button that is related to audio, whether I'm pressing the DISP button to see what is playing on XM or the TUNE button or any preset. The dual-climate A/C buttons work fine, as does the steering wheel mounted stereo controls.

- When controlling the stereo using my steering wheel controls or starting the car or simply completely randomly, the display will go completely off or freeze on the current display (I've seen this last upwards of 20 minutes, whether I turn the unit off or change the channels or adjust the A/C temperatures) or display random characters (resembling Chinese as best as I can describe).

About 3 years ago, I had to have my radio display replaced due to the dimming issue that seems to plague the majority of Accord owners of my model year.

I have attached pictures of what I'm seeing. Any advice or help would be very much appreciated. The Honda dealership I took this to said they'd never seen it and it would cost me $250 just to send the unit to Honda (even without any work being done).

bryse68

new audio unit.....take it to dealer

GoLowDrew

This is happened to my non-Honda car. The display went bad. Everything else is fine. It's a on-off kind of thing so in my case, it's hard to proof.

IMO, the dealer is just trying to discourage you, don't want to bother with this and send you on your way.

Honda will not never investigate this. They will junk it. It's electronic. Not worth fixing or spending engineering or tech hours on.

My dealer replaced the entire HU. Done.

My recommendation is to replace the radio with aftermarket, or look for an used OEM radio and swap, so all your other controls like on your steering wheel will still work.



I assume your car is not under warranty.

jibi

Correct, not under warranty (about 2.5 years and 50K miles out of warranty). I think I may look at the used/OEM route if I can find something.

YeuEmMaiMai

the display controller went **** up. gotta replace the whole unit

jibi

Do you think this could have been related to the display being replaced by a Honda dealership to fix the dimming issue that seems common to this particular production run (TSB #04027 and TSB #01012004)?

RMD2003

if you are under 100,00 miles Honda will replace
it is a manufacturer issue. there was a recall 2003-2005 radios /hooked into the ac system motherboard goes crazy

jibi

This turned out to be a dealer issue. My Honda dealer told me they diagnosed the issue and said it would be $500 to repair it (by sending it to Honda for repair). After I took a look at it myself, I figured out that it was originally caused when they fixed the backlight issue. I found that the dealer did not put all the screws back into the radio mount/chassis (they only put a screw in the bottom right side). I added a new screw into the left side and haven't had the issue since. I assume the loose nature of the mount caused the radio display shake loose at times.

P.S. - My dealer never looked at it, even though they told me they did. I found out that their default response to any issues related to the head unit or display is to send it back to Honda. Since the major issue at the time was related to my timing chain and coupled with the fact that this dealer was attempting to charge 250% more than Majestic for parts, I decided to take my business to another dealer.