Getting On

I am not a car guy.  OK, when I graduated from college, I bought a brand new Alfa Romeo, which was pretty cool (but, it being Italian) it was a mechanical nightmare.  I moved on to a Volvo when I got married and had a brief rebound affair with a Fiat, which taught me the meaning of Fix It Again Tony.  Since then it’s been Toyotas, Hondas and Chevies.  See?  Not a car guy.  But few years ago when business was good, I bought an Acura TL which is the best car I’ve ever owned.   Quite simply, I love it.  It is, however, Getting On, in years and in miles.  It runs great and is as fast as ever but several of the luxury accessories I love are, shall we say, misbehaving.  For one, the outdoor temperature sensor has failed, so where I used to see 72°, I now see —.  Unless, of course, it rains or I take it to the car wash.  Then, until the sensor dries, I see -22° as the outside temperature.  Big deal, you say.  You live in Southern California. … it’s never cold.  Except that the Acura climate control uses the outside temperature to determine whether air conditioning is required, so it can be 105° outside … the air conditioning won’t come on until the sensor dries out.  I can live with that.

But today, the Handsfree Link (which allows me to talk on the phone via Bluetooth) stopped working.  The sultry voice that usually asks, What name or number would you like to call was nowhere to be found and the readout on the dash said, Handsfree BOOTING UP.   Two hour later … still booting up.  Shit.  I went online and searched the Acura websites for a solution.  I found; Turn off the car for a day;  Disconnect the battery for ten minutes;  Remove fuses 6 and 7 for ten minutes; and remove the HFL module for ten minutes.  All had mixed results and often led to (1) put in a new module for $400 or (2) live without HFL.  But the most intriguing … and successful … solution was this: Remove the HFL module from the light panel above the windshield, bake it in the oven at 350° for nine minutes and let it cool for 25 minutes before reinstalling.   Most people who tried it said it worked.  Really.  Here is a picture of one being baked from this website.

So, here’s my question.  What is the correct oven temperature and baking time for an HFL module and an outside temperature sensor?

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Tags: cars, curmudgeonly rants, feeling older, humor

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