A long long time ago … well, okay, Sunday. On Sunday, Nate was coming back from Providence and wisely decided to pull off and close his eyes for a bit. Not-so-wisely, he accidentally left the headlights on and awoke to a dead battery. He got it jumped, got ready to continue on his own, and was confronted with the dreaded “CODE” display on the radio. He called me, hoping for a quick resolution. Since I had solved this problem for someone else once before, I knew what to do. I took the serial number from him and called Honda. Well, due to the decline in customer service these days, Honda’s CS hotline is not open on Sundays. Blast.
Monday came and I got in touch with Honda. In no time I had given the CSR the serial number and VIN and gotten my code. Later that day, I gave it to Nate to try. He tried, it didn’t accept it, and then it locked him out of trying again, having reached its maximum number of attempts.
For one reason or another (one being that our hood release latch snapped off …), we found ourselves unable to attempt to reset the radio to try the code again until tonight. I scoured the internet, found what needed to be done, and we headed out with our pliers and flashlights. We attempted to remove the proper fuse, almost got it … then flung it off into the darkness, never to be found again. SUPER.
We hop in the car and head out in search of an automotive shop. Just in the nick of time, we run into Sears Automotive, locate the correct fuse pack, pay, and eagerly run back to the parking lot. Right there, in the daylit glow of Sears, we jerryrigged our hood open with the pliers once again and slipped the fuse in. I turned the car on, turned the radio on, put the code in and … NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! KHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!
Ahem.
The display read “Err1″ meaning “Uh-uh, not that one!” And do, this comedy of errors begins anew at 9am eastern time.
IN THE MEANTIME. Honda. Something’s got to give. I drive a 1999 Civic with a factory radio. Nobody but NOBODY wants it. There’s got to be a way to disable that thing!
To add insult to injury, Nate’s iPod has up and died, too. There were no slots open at the Genius Bar for tonight so we’ll try THAT again tomorrow.