What happened to my car?

[Lean L]

I was working and messing with my car today including messing around with the electronics.

I had to rip the center console out at a certain point so I put the car in neutral to clear the shift stick then out of habit took the keys out of the ignition somehow.

A few strange symptoms:
I can remove the keys when the car is in any gear
My radio will not turn on although it clearly has power since the lights are on and I ejected a CD
My infotainment screen will not turn on until the key position is in ON as opposed to ACC
My cig lighter circuit will not turn off when I remove the key.

I have it sitting with the battery disconnected right now to try to force a reset but this is some strange stuff. The car drives as it should.

Any thoughts? Next steps if it doesn't reset via battery disconnect?

 

[Bartman39]

Next best thing would be to let us know what car you have...?

 

[yottabit]

Maybe you blew a fuse? If you were messing around with wiring and didn't disconnect the battery it's very likely.

 

[Lean L]

It's a 2009 accord.

I think it may be a fuse. I have a fuse tap for a dashcam that I pulled and replaced. It may have tripped the main fuse? Is that a common thing?

It's interesting that this fuse is responsible for so many things including trapping the key in the ignition.

 

[Raizinman]

I was working and messing with my car today including messing around with the electronics.

I had to rip the center console out at a certain point so I put the car in neutral to clear the shift stick then out of habit took the keys out of the ignition somehow.

A few strange symptoms:
I can remove the keys when the car is in any gear
My radio will not turn on although it clearly has power since the lights are on and I ejected a CD
My infotainment screen will not turn on until the key position is in ON as opposed to ACC
My cig lighter circuit will not turn off when I remove the key.

I have it sitting with the battery disconnected right now to try to force a reset but this is some strange stuff. The car drives as it should.

Any thoughts? Next steps if it doesn't reset via battery disconnect?

The radio is coded and any battery power loss will require you to input the radio code. You will find your radio code tag in your owners manual or call the dealer. This is to prevent theft of radios.

Sounds like you bit off more than you can chew. Might consider taking the car to the dealer to fix your errors.

 

[Lean L]

Not related to the radio code. I've done the reset before and it will turn on and prompt for a code. Not this time.

I did find a popped fuse so I'll get it replaced and see where that gets me.

 

[Lean L]

Update:

I had a chance to finally mess around with it after work in the daylight. I pulled out ACC fuse that had a fuse tap in it, reset both fuses since both fuses were fine (my mistake there). Popped the fuse tap back in and everything is fine now.

Radio prompted for the radio code which I had on hand.

It's hard to imagine these symptoms combined together especially for a single fuse...

 

[yottabit]

It's hard to imagine these symptoms combined together especially for a single fuse...

I don't pretend to know the logic behind why those electrical circuits misbehave when something goes wrong. All I know is I had very similar experiences when I blew a fuse (believe it was ACC too) except add to your list power windows and locks behaving crazy and keyless entry not working.

So did it end up that there was no blown fuse after all, and you just reseated the fuse and it started working? It's a little unclear from your description. If so that's strange to me though. Maybe just your battery reset is what fixed it? Did you test the battery reset & pulling the fuse seperately?

Glad you could get it working again!

 

[Lean L]

Yes both fuses were fine.

If I had to guess, I misseated the fuse tap to the fusebox and only the positive end was making contact. The ACC circuit was broken in that case but it powered the dashcam fine since the dashcam had it's own ground path.

Reading up on fuse taps, there's actually two different ways to plug them in depending on what you want from it. Here's how the internals of the tap work.

http://www.toyota-4runner.org/attac...d1359766240-fuse-tap-help-please-ejevu5eq.jpg

In reality I have no clue what really happened. Just hope it doesn't repeat.