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Honda Pilot's Adaptive Cruise Control Problem Solved

Honda Pilot's Adaptive Cruise Control Problem Solved

When you buy a brand-new car, you want to believe it’s a pristine paragon of mechanical virtue, free from the world weariness common in a used car. Sometimes, though, a brand-new car has already experienced a mishap. That was the case with our new 2016 Honda Pilot, which developed a weird recurring problem with its adaptive cruise control system shortly after we took delivery.

It’s not all that unusual for one of the 70 or so new cars we buy every year to develop an early-onset malady, like a rattle, warped brake rotor, electrical problem, or check-engine light. The experience of getting those problems sorted out gives us more insight into the consumer experience than if we relied only on the specially groomed “press fleet” cars that automakers supply to most of the media. Normally, the dealer’s service department can diagnose and readily fix those issues.

However, a quick cure at the dealer wasn’t in the cards for our Pilot when its adaptive cruise control showed a penchant for misbehavior, and the ultimate explanation for its faultiness would have been worthy of an NPR Car Talk Puzzler.

Here’s the Background

The new Honda Pilot’s adaptive cruise control system uses a video camera and millimeter-wave radar to maintain its distance from the car ahead. In ours, the adaptive cruise would sometimes conk out after roughly eight miles of driving. Warning indicators would light up the gauge cluster, while the system defaulted to standard cruise-control mode.

Our first trip back to the dealer failed to solve the problem. The service department thought the issue was a misaligned or dirty radar unit and they tidied it up and adjusted it, assuming all was well. But that didn’t work. The malfunction recurred whenever we took our Pilot out on a trip.

Back to the dealership it went, and this time the service department enlisted help from higher up Honda’s service food chain. After some deep study, the service engineering team figured out that the radar problem was caused by the grille emblem!

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Specifically, our Pilot had the wrong plastic “H” in the middle of its grille. Turns out there are two emblems in inventory, one for Pilots, like ours, that have the fancy Honda Sensing radar system and another, very similar looking H, for Pilots without the Honda Sensing system. The standard emblem was interfering with the radar signal.

So why did we wind up with a duff emblem? Honda officials explained to us that apparently our car had met a mishap on the assembly line, necessitating the replacement of its front bumper and grille. Somehow, the wrong emblem cover was used for the repair.

It was a relief to hear that our car’s radar glitch was probably a one-off event. Certainly that’s the impression Honda officials left us with.

The lesson here is that whenever anything the least bit abnormal crops with a new car, return it to the dealership right away—especially while the the original warranty remains in force.



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