holtjam

We recently had an interesting experience. We parked our MDX in a commuter parking lot and returned to find that the alarm had gone off in our absence and had run the battery down. After getting a jump start the alarm continued to sound. I had to pull the horn relay to silence it although the headlights were still flashing. Things seemd to reset when I started driving. Has anybody else had similar problems? Naturally I am not too eager to leave the car alone for any length of time after this.

Update: The dealer tried really hard to find anything broken but was unable to.

romer10

Hi there,

We just had a similar incident where our MDX was dead this morning. We have some un-related electrical problem where the battery ran down.

When we opened the door, the car was making a strange repeating sound. I found out it was the alarm trying to sound on a very low battery.

Once we connected the jumper cables, the alarm started to sound loudly. After the MDX was started, the alarm continued on and we couldn't turn it off.

I checked with our dealer and I found out that the alarm needs to be turned off when there is sufficient battery power. This normally happens when you open the car door with the key or remote (when battery is OK). Since the battery was too low, it doesn't reset the alarm.

The solution is to reset the alarm when you connect the jumper cables. Once you connect the jumper cables and the alarm is going off, take your key and lock and unlock the car door. This will reset the alarm and then you can jump your car in peace! I tried it and it worked.

By the way, we had our jumper cables in the back storage bin and couldn't get in the back hatch when the battery was dead. We now store the jumper cables under the back seat behind the drivers side.

Hope this info helps!
romer10

vikasny30

Hi Romer10,

Thank you so much for posting the information. It helped me a lot. Last week my MDX's battery died. I tried to jump start but the alarm went off as soon as I connected the terminals.

I thought there is something wrong with the battery so I took the battery to Sears Auto (Die Hard battery). They detected a fault in the battery and gave me a free replacement immediately. however when I put the new battery in the car, alarm again went off.

I looked at all manuals and forums but didn't get the right information. Finally l came across this forum and saw your post and from that learning, I :

1. Connected the batter again, alarm agian went off,
2. Manually did lock/unlock on the driver side door.
3. Alarm stopped !!!!

Again thanks so much for posting this valuable tip. Help me a lot and saved me some $$ on towing and fixing it !!

Regards
Vikas

mkp

Well, I must say that even though I haven’t had such issues myself, I could say that the exact same thing has happened to my friend one night when he was coming back after finishing the job. He did exactly what you have done and I must say that there is not nothing much we can do other than that. However, he did get to the cars people the next day itself and got it fixed!

epa

i had the same issue with my car and did:
1. Connected the batter again, alarm agian went off,
2. Manually did lock/unlock on the driver side door.
3. Alarm stopped !!!!

thanks,
EPA

reach

Yes, the above method worked for me as well.
1. Connect the battery, with the alarm on.
2. lock & unlock driver side door.
3. The alarm stopped and I finished installing the new battery.
It happened to my daughter's car(06' TL) when I was visiting her during Thanksgiving.
Good thing I was there to help her resolve the problem by looking on line.
Thank you!!!