Hey everyone!
I've got a situation with my radio and its not accepting the code behavior and it probably has been discussed here before but after searching on the web and other forums I couldn't find anything feasible. Here's what happened. I've gotten a new battery from the dealer and had it installed by myself. That, of course, put my stock radio into the "CODE" mode, for which I thought I was 100% prepared as my dealer did verify the code against the radio's serial number and I also called the Acura's 800 number where they had me go through the "U" and the "L" number readouts directly from the radio display itself... To my dismay, after being done with the battery replacement, the radio wouldn't take the code, period, constantly displaying "Err#" after each try and then finally locking up with the "ErrE" message on the display, after which I'd have to leave it for one hour for it to reset and then the story repeats itself... Now, seeing this, I quickly called the dealer to tell him about it and he without a second thought immediately stated that it's a known problem with the stock radios on the 02 and 03 models and said that the only way to make the radio accept the code would be for me to remove the radio, unplug the antenna jack and the ground it for a few seconds so that it lets go of the static charge that's causing the radio to lock up in the "security" mode. Obviously not wanting to go through the console removal procedure and hoping there's another way to do this I called the 800 number for Acura again and told them the whole story. They claimed that the dealer would probably know best in these types of situations but also suggested that maybe disconnecting both battery terminals from the car and then touching the 2 cable clips together for a few seconds may do the same trick... That sounded like an easy way out for me but alas, it didn't help. Today, I also thought of another way which is grounding that antenna plug but not where it connects to the radio, but at the point where it jacks into the rear view window, where it's easily accessible without me having have to disassemble anything at all. Unfortunately that didn't help me either. I'm really desperate at this moment as I can't drive without my stereo anymore :) and am ready to go with my last (dealer suggested) resort, which is taking the radio out but now the problem is that I can't find a good DIY anywhere on how to do it on this generation's TL. The couple of references that I found on some forums point to URLs that are no longer up.
So if anyone had (or heard of) a similar situation and were able to find a solution, or if anyone has any suggestions I'd greatly appreciate it!
Thanks a lot in advance!
Dimitri