Customer Spent $4000...and it STILL Doesn't Start! (Acura MDX)

everyone welcome back to pine hollow out of diagnostics we're about three hours from state college one hour from ithaca southern tier of new york state near binghamton looking at a 2010 acura mdx it's got 120 000 miles on it and the owner has a table of parts he he pleaded and pleaded for me to come i finally made it a month later so raheem yes tell me tell me what's on the table here okay here i got every used part in the book i got mobilizer ignition switch i have two ecu's what's the customer complaint what what's the problem with the car flash no stars crank flash no star month and a half has been the green key right green green flash flashes uh-huh and how much have you spent on this problem so far with different shops i see close to all together with parts and everything close to close to almost five a little over four thousand holy cow over four thousand dollars this is the last resort so the pressure's on uh right now the car has all original parts except for one part that was a used oem ignition switch right so just this part that piggy piggy backs off the yes the whole lock yes so this is a you know this is the mobilizer unit right here with the little ring around the key so these are all ebay ebay parts okay yes and then what are these things here um they came with this as a set okay i'm not too certain so ebay ebay ebay uh and these were tried and then the original was installed because it didn't fix the problem right exactly okay great i like original parts so we're starting from scratch uh first thing we need to recreate the problem so let's go to the cars go to the scanner see if there's anything stored in the codes menu so first i scan the whole car for codes there is nothing of interest there's like two tpms codes so and the car is starting perfectly fine so let's go to immobilizer and in here if we go to oem data the sun glare is going to be ridiculous today but immobilizer system troubleshooting immobilizer indicator blinks so it tells you to go to immobilizer mobilizer setup and then check do a system check and status log so once we get into the immobilizer mobilizer info and status log turn the ignition switch off okay turn the ignition switch on okay [Music] so we have status log a1 a2 a3 these are kind of like trouble codes in the immobilizer and this is the number of times that the fault occurred so we have zero zero zero zero zero d2 20 times right there that's a huge clue to our problems we need to look up d2 in this status log or um you know troubleshooting tree so right here in the status log we'll go to a1 a2a3 that's not us b1 b2 d1 and d3 there's no d2 like why is there no d2 code when it's stored 20 times in the scanner now if we do system check initially i already started the diagnosis initially it was fine normal you know no problems so when you turn the ignition key to here you see it just briefly blinks and the car starts now system check and one normal okay i went online and searched for d2 you know 2010 acura mdx code d2 in the immobilizer found something interesting on diag.net mobilizer issue and repair steps so i basically just googled remote immobilizer status log d2 and this seemed to be pretty uh pretty interesting so 15 d2 events and one d3 event communication losses on s net circuit to micu d2 and pcm is d3 that right there is a key piece of information hit time to starting providing both keys 50 attempts by moving the steering column controls up and down to duplicate and we're concerned issue occurred once and went away instantly okay so this steering column goes up and down in and out and i asked the owner please put the steering wheel in your favorite position because that's when the problem is occurring if there are any wires that you know flex or bend i want them to be in this position when the problem is usually occurring he did that and then the green key started flashing and i'll show you what came up on the scanner when i did the system check [Music] try to block the sun here it says mobilizer system is not normal system check code d2 no communication between imo es unit and immobilizer unit possible failure blown fuse harness open [Music] communication is not good battery voltage low so out of all these if it's a very intermittent problem it's not going to be a blown fuse it's probably not an immobilizer unit failure [Music] and the steering wheel position is key so i think this harness open is going to be our problem let's try it again so we can move the steering column a little bit it happened once for me so [Music] we need to pull up a wiring diagram and investigate what causes d2 loss of communication this car is such a long history the first time it was down for about a month and the first or second guy whoever looked at it took apart the steering column fiddled with some stuff and it actually started up so that's a key that the problem is going to be somewhere in the steering column and it's going to be a very intermittent problem so we have to be careful not to move too much you know the harness and see what what's going on all right got the steering column off or the the plastic stuff here's our immobilizer unit right here so there's two plugs i believe this one is the mobilizer we can check with the wiring collar so oem diagram pin one is a white wire that's a power hot at all times pin two is a brown that goes to our fuse 19 hot and on or start that's the ignition power so is that right pin one it's white pin two is brown pin three and four are i guess light green and yes they're both light green so there's a b can that's wire number pin number four and this s net number three that also connects to the pcm and the micu this is the mobilizer you know whatever smart fuse box unit so two communication lines and then ignition key switch light key interlock solenoid okay that's pin six and that's a pink wire yep it's pink pin six pin five is the orange k line that matches up and finally pin seven is a brown that goes to the pcm i guess another communication line probably lg three not sure what that is let's put a scope on pins three and four and then move the steering column around and see when the signal occurs and if it's interrupted when the steering column is moved now i see one potentially suspicious spot here see that bolt and the harness when the steering column moves in and out the harness is kind of riding right on on that bolt and it looks like it's chafing and rubbing through [Music] so this automated stuff every time you get out the steering column goes you know up and down over 120 000 miles or 10 years i bet that the problem is going to be close to here it looks very suspicious some of the insulation is starting to kind of get damaged there but i want to get a scope on both those wires and see if it's indeed pulled to ground intermittently when we move the column or or what's going on all right so here's the two channels channel one is on the s net channel two's on that b can i turn the key on okay we get some kind of activity the green light is not flashing oh the green key is flashing okay oh man that's super cool so if we do system check it's gonna say there he goes d2 exactly the same code harness open from mmpcs to the micu so this is our waveform right now let's go back to the crank it actually looks like a decent waveform so maybe it's not shorting to ground it's definitely not talking let me save this waveform and we'll do some more checks okay so now the blue line the s-net is at five volts before it was zero to 12. let me cycle the key so the key is still blinking so i'm going to turn the key off nothing happened green key stays blinking this thing's at five volts [Music] and now we're [Music] zero to five let's do another system check and one system normal how about that that blows my mind let's uh save this one as well save all your data that's absolutely key for especially for intermittent problems that are acting really weird all right so now we're still at the s net is at 5 volts which was not the case before before 0 to 12. let's see what happens and pass the test car starts normally no problems and it keeps talking on the s net key off key on key off key on i was gonna leave the key on for a while this is crazy that this switched voltages i've never seen anything like that okay so when the car did not start we had this crap zero to 11 volts i don't think that is correct and it wasn't even was it zero i don't think it was even zero 1.3 to 10.9 okay right now we're going from zero to five which is reasonable you think that's a good communication signal so whenever we see this thing go from one to twelve that's going to be that's going to be the problem so is it going to be a module problem that the transceiver no longer goes from zero to 12 it goes from like one to or zero to five it goes from one to whatever eleven that is completely insane and so right now everything's good we're gonna have to wait for this thing to fail again i'll i'll run it for a little while very interesting by the way note in the status log each time this problem happens this d2 counts up so that's indeed our problem and the scope showed that whenever the waveform was 1 to 12 or 1 to 11 volts there was still a waveform but the computer you know the mobilizer was basically like i don't know what's going on so who's responsible basically when that happens what i want to do is pull i just unplug it from the immobilizer if it drops to zero to five then the fault's in the mobilizer if it stays elevated from 1 to 2 11 then we're going towards either the pcm or the smart fuse box pretty insane well now of course when i want it to act up it's refusing to act up i'm just curious what will happen if i pull this uh connector out so it stays at five volts very interesting and do we set i'm pretty sure it'll be a no-com is there a green key flashing no there it's flashing okay yep no calm plug it in zero to five volts still flashing let's uh let's do a status log turn the ignition switch off okay turn the ignition switch on it worked fine let's see if it's set in error log four there we go status log b1 is set oh i guess i erased the memory when i unplugged it interesting so i guess we know that the power stays there i wonder what b1 means so this signal is it coming from the immobilizer turn the key off it's at five volts and if i unplug it so 5 volts i turn the key on [Music] so the mobilizer is pulling down that signal if it if it gets elevated it's still pulling down the signal i basically i want it to act up pull the connector if it drops to five and stays there we're calling this mobilizer unit if something else happens then it could be the pcm or the you know the smart fuse box micu i need i need this thing to act up one more time so we can do that experiment or we can just put on a new immobilizer make sure it works program it with the think tool pros let the customer drive it if it fixes it then great but this is a module problem it's not a wiring problem because if there's two wires shorted it would either pull the whole line down to ground constantly or pull it all the way up to battery voltage this is something weird it's just the bias voltages get strange and the whole thing goes nuts he still talks on the other line it's just this s okay so i plugged it in that's good again [Music] it's gonna be fine so i'm gonna maybe leave the key on let it talk and then just hopefully it acts up so i call up the guru the legend keith defazio my keith got this car very intermittent problem gave him the symptoms the code and the elevated signal the elevated s-can whatever immobilizer to micu signal so there are still pulses when the signal is elevated he's like oh man i remember this honda that had the exact same symptoms and i like kicked the left kick panel and the the signal did the same thing i'm like you gotta be kidding me so if you look at the diagram right it's ridiculous the only intermediate connector here between the mobilizer and micu is this 601 pin 16 photo 66. honda's really good about photos c60120 white connector right here behind the left kick panel here it is there's the connector so if we look at the pin outs 601 pin 16 is going to be on the left side it is a light green wire so you can't quite it's gonna be on the left row here one two three fourth wire down okay now you can kind of see a little maybe a little green crusties there maybe some things but we can't touch anything until we look at our scope so i'm just gonna tap that connector while looking at the scope what no way that's the fault i bet the car [Music] the green key will splash right now [Music] that is exactly what's going on if we tap it again i mean it won't start guaranteed right if we go to our system check there it is the d2 okay key off see that elevated voltage it's not quite battery voltage [Music] if i tap it again there it is okay so we gotta cycle a key cyclic key it'll stiff fire right up again can we reproduce it no no i might have fixed it might have tapped a little too hard but the problem is right there keith i owe you one man that was freaking phenomenal would we have gotten there on our own eventually maybe if it acted up and i unplugged the mobilizer and the voltage stayed elevated then we're like we need to go towards the micu but that's insane so a little voltage is bleeding from one of these pins to pin 16 let's see so pin 16 is our mobilizer system communication line what's what's around there maybe pin six orange gauges and indicators pin 15 or 17 backup lights dpms probably not five or seven navigation fuse 12 okay seven green power door locks keyless entry security system so perhaps five to sixteen [Music] that's it this is the proof so i'll save these captures right here so this is when i tapped it so 27 28 29 and 30. those are the money shots unbelievable no parts required we're gonna take that connector apart clean it out this will be guaranteed fixed absolutely no parts required thank you all right so the owner is very excited about about the uh the news here there's gonna be no parts required and i'm i asked him did you have you ever noticed any water any dampness in this area he said yes sometimes he notices a little drip coming from from that corner of the windshield right raheem so i don't think it's a sunroof drain but let's let's just unplug this connector see what it looks like because we're never going to recreate this problem again once we unplug it oh yeah there it is there's the green and the crusty boom so pin 16 would be right there one two three four down one two three so oh man the corrosion almost reached it i mean it did let's see one two three yep number four so you can see that the positive pin the constant hot is where the corrosion originates and it just starts going through all the pins insane deoxytime we're gonna scrub that out clean this up and make sure that the signal is good all right here we go with the cleaning so first deoxit on both then i have these uh contact cleaner kind of like files so i want to maybe even detach this connector from from the car get in there with you know a little brush without disturbing the pins too much and just get all the green out from in between the pins it does work pretty well we'll get this all cleaned up put it back together and this car will be good for a while so there is one problem with this connector the pin that was where the corrosion is originating hot at all times so the second one in the upper row it's extremely it's basically going to break off and you can see how easily easy it is to bend now which pin is that that pin is six zero one pin nine and that is fuse two under dash says brown what is fuse two under dash if we look at fuses fuse two is power lumbar 10 amp number two so if you look at the seat diagram there it is fuse two power lumbar support drivers lumbar switch so this is not a key function so i'm thinking just removing fuse 10 for now or fuse two down here and so this will never happen again and that pin is broken anyway so i guess he might have to lose his lumbar support unless you want to cut the wire you know rewire it separately and but i just want to eliminate that from this connector to uh have a reliable starting car i think starting is much more important than lumbar support all right so the owner approved my suggestion of just pulling the lumbar support fuse so this pin nine is now not hot anymore and it won't build the green crusties through this whole connector even if it gets a little wet but he is going to fix the sunroof whatever uh windshield leak and that's it so next shot i'll have everything put together we'll have the scope rolling and we'll see the nice good waveforms okay connector is plugged in so the owner has three keys they all should work yep beautiful no green flashing key fires right up tap that connector all day long [Applause] nothing should happen it's all clean and nice and it doesn't have that constant power to build the future green crusties anymore so i think we'll wrap it up thanks a lot for watching check out the waveforms uh and the link in the description below i always try to post the picoscope waveform so you guys can follow along and that's it see you guys next time bye

Channel: Pine Hollow Auto Diagnostics

Views: 171,909

Keywords: Acura, Honda, Immobilizer, Green Key, no start, crank, theft, security, ignition, fuse, box, connector, corrosion, oscilloscope

Id: hATg4Uf86eA

Length: 30min 47sec (1847 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 25 2022