Hi All-

My stock radio (H/K, Non-Nav) always defaults back to Aux after turning the car off which is really frustrating. I can find nothing in the manuals to address this. After searching NAM and Google all I can find is a recommendation to disconnect the battery for 30 minutes and hope that resets the computer. Can anyone here offer advice on what else I can try (haven't done the battery disconnect yet).

Another issue I have is that every time I change FM radio stations there is an echo for about 5 seconds. I put the OEM stubby antenna on when I bought the car so I'm not sure if that could be contributing to the echo or not. I guess I could always put the standard stock antenna back on to see if that eliminates the issue. Thoughts?

Thanks in advance for any feedback. Happy Friday!

 

Are you still under warranty?

 

My factory warranty has expired. I did purchase an extended warranty with the car that covers electrical issues if I can't figure out the problem myself (with the help from the NAM community of course!)

 

Bump

 

No idea about the other issue, but the FM echo is due to the switchover from analog FM to "HD Radio" (digital) FM once the availability of the digital signal has been discovered and locked onto. It's very slightly delayed from the analog signal, hence the echo.

It shouldn't last for 5 seconds, but I suppose if the station you're tuned to is weak, it might be having issues locking onto it. Pure conjecture on my part, but anyway.

In my experience, it usually starts a couple of seconds after tuning the station and lasts for 1/2 a second—if that. Noticeable, but barely so.

Wes

 

Thanks Wes. After reading your post I listened closer this morning and the echo is for a very short duration, less than 5 seconds, so I'm sure that is what is happening. I appreciate the insight!

 

Either your head unit needs to be replaced or your battery is failing in your car.

If you have always had this problem in defaulting to AUX (it should stay on whatever input you left it at; and it is FOB dependent, it remembers which input was set for a particular FOB) then it is probably a bad head unit (BOOST RAD2 module).

However, if this is a new problem or your car battery is original, you should try replacing the battery first.

 

Thanks for the great information StrobeyProbey. I have only had the car for a couple months and the radio has consistently defaulted to Aux. After reading your post I realized I have always used only one of the fobs I received with the car so I just tried the other one. With the second fob the head unit defaults to FM radio every time. So now I'm thinking the previous owner had the car programmed with one fob to default to Aux for an Ipod or something similar. So again, thank you for the information. It feels great every time I get one of the quirks of this car figured out.

 

That is very interesting your other FOB defaults to FM. That still doesn't seem normal. There is no programming possible to default the radio to a specific input upon power up.

So if you start seeing your clock loosing time or other oddities, replace the vehicle battery.

 

For the benefit of anyone else with the same issue reading this in the future I have this update. Utilizing the second fob lastnight several times resulted in the head unit defaulting to FM radio. This morning when I started the car with fob 2 the head unit defaulted to Aux, the same as fob 1. So I will try replacing the car battery, which is now 4 1/2 years old, and see if that resolves this issue. Thanks again for your continued information with this issue Strobeyprobey.

 

I just realized I never added a follow-up post indicating that the issue was resolved for future readers with a similar issue.

I replaced the battery with a Napa Legend Premium 84 month (that has 650 cca at 0 degrees and 810 cca at 32 degrees) and all of the head unit/electrical issues are now resolved.

I can't figure out why the dealers charge so much to install batteries since the process was pretty easy except for getting the cowl piece to line up exactly right when putting it back on, which still only took a couple minutes to line up just right.

Thanks again to Strobeyprobey for responding to this question and ultimately assisting with resolving the issue, and to Pretje for answering the radio "lag" question which would still be driving me crazy if I didn't know it was normal!

 

Thanks for updating. Too many of these kind of threads just end with no resolution - it drives me nuts when I'm trying to search for a solution to a problem. Your post will help someone else in the future.


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1. dealerships always charge more for the parts
2. dealerships always charge more for labor

and biggest of all

3.There is a Battery Replacement Procedure that the dealers perform on the computer system in the car. It updates the cars computer with data about the battery. The procedure takes about an hour to complete.

Now is the procedure necessary. I dont really know i have replaced the battery in my car with out running the procedure and not had a single problem. Many others have replaced batteries without running the procedure and not had a problem.

So there you have it the reasons why the dealer charges so much.