I bought a 2018 Honda CR-V used from a Honda dealership in December 2024 with 74k miles. I did a PPI with a mechanic I trust prior to buying and felt confident in its condition.
When I drove the car off the lot all of the car’s warning lights turned on at start but my salesman assured me it was due to them installing a brand new battery and the car just needed to be driven and the codes would clear. They did. All was well.
I bought the car with a “we owe you” repair for a dent in the tailgate. Around Christmas I sent my car in for this repair and the dealership provided a rental. The repair took much longer than expected and I didn’t get the car back until the end of January. When I picked up the car the same thing happened about ~5 mins into my drive home. All the warning lights turned on at the same time. Most notable was the “Stop Driving When Safe. AWD temp is too hot.” It would keep dinging every 30 seconds or so. When I parked the car it made me press the ignition button twice as a precautionary measure in order to turn off the car. (It doesn’t do this every time). My thought was it was the battery issue again due to the repair and the codes would clear. They did by the next day but have since repeatedly shown up without rhyme or reason. Some days they turn on at start of the car. Others, they turn on after driving for about 5-10 minutes. Almost always the codes clear by the next start and I might have a few rides with no codes at all but they always come back. Sometimes the codes are centered on my break system and the red BREAK light will blink through out my drive which always makes me nervous, although I know it can’t be my breaks because they’re new!
I got in contact with my salesman about the issue and all he suggested was having his service dept look at it, which wasn’t surprising, but I wanted to avoid a wild goose chase so I took it to my regular mechanic that I have a rapport with and trust. He did some diagnostics but thought the car was in good working condition. He said that Hondas will trigger all warning lights for a small issue and he could go exploring to see what it is but suggested that I wait until the lights stay on for a longer period of time and bring it back so he’d have a better chance of diagnosing the issue. That was about 1.5 months ago and the issue hasn’t gotten worse, and is exactly the same.
The light problem persists but it always turns off! There’s no pattern to when the lights turn on. I’ve tried keeping track but they turn on when I’m in park, when I reach 30 mph, 55mph, sometimes when I’m just idling. The lights sometimes will go on, then off in a single drive. Sometimes stay on, then turn off after driving for a little bit. There’s nothing the car does before they turn on to make me think something is wrong. It still drives great and I notice no differences from lights being on vs. being off. I can’t use cruise control and the constant dinging and randomness of it has started to drive me crazy. I’ve done so much research on the problem and have found other similar issues but none of the suggested fixes have helped me.
I don’t know if this issue is connected to the tailgate repair because this wasn’t happening in the month prior to it. I’m leery of the dealership because I’ve had negative experiences in the past. I’ve attached pictures of the lights that turn on. Any suggestions/thoughts/ideas on how to get this fixed would be much appreciated. Thank you!!
Well either they messed something up when they did the tailgate or there was a hidden problem existing in the car from before you bought it. Such as if a car is in a flood, it will randomly trip codes and turn lights on all the time because it's a failure inside the computer itself. Those can be stinkers to figure out so I would for the time being. Agree with the second mechanic and wait and see what happens. But they might have just sold you on lemon that had been flooded or something and they're just not going to tell you any of that
