popping /cracking has anything worked

earth steward said:

i have had my 2019 pilot touring for 11 months. i stumbled upon the forum last night as i am looking for answers to this terrible problem. I have experienced all of the same that i have been reading about. The car is officially in the shop again today. I have my videos and the related links to this forums that my wife dropped off this am. The million dollar question has anything worked for anyone? I can not deal with this situation as it it like a spike in my brain while i am driving let alone the safety implications for my family. Finally i also came across a law firm that has established a class action law suites i considering joining. I will gratefully appreciate any thoughts and hopefully a fix!!!

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Hi, I had the cracking/popping noise issue all of a sudden at around 1K miles on my 2019 Touring. It was a repetitive pattern of three cracking noises from the left, center and right speakers. I took it to the dealer, they had the car for 3 days. They had to contact Honda engineering to resolve the problem. They ended up rerouting some wires and changed MOST bus connectors. The fix appeared to work for a few months until I took the car back to the dealer for a recall repair. This time they had to pull the head unit out for some reason. Since then I had started hearing random crackling noise. Sometimes it would happen at highway speed, sometimes when I shift from P to R/D or vice versa, sometimes when I changed something on the main display unit. I took the car back to the dealer again today. They reproduced the issue and replaced a bunch of MOST connectors and changed some straight connectors with 90 degree type. We shall see how this round of repair holds up over time. It seems to be a known issue that Honda must be aware of by now. I think the root cause is the type of connectors they use. Sometimes there is excessive bend on these connectors and as such the connections are not secure. So, they can pick up noise from other parts of the vehicle system. Sometimes these connectors may get damaged when the multimedia units are removed for other reasons such as firmware updates etc. If the latest fixes don't work, then they will have to change the entire harness. I think Pilot is an overall good car. It seems they may have cut corners on some of these connectors and harnesses. A lot of data is traveling on the MOST bus wires (optical cable) in a pretty tight space. So, interference is bound to happen. My suggestion is to be patient and work with your dealer to resolve this. It may take some time but there is a solution to this per tech bulletin from Honda. They may just implement it in steps. Don't lose hope.

I have a 2019 EX-L Pilot and had the same issue with the cracking/ popping through the speakers. I think I fixed it. Attached is a pdf document I created to show step by step how to access the amplifier and reroute the wires coming out of the red and green connectors. This worked for me but I am still skeptical as to how a couple of bends in the wires causes these horrible sounds, but I will try to post back in a few weeks to let everyone know if the cracking/ popping is gone for good or if it comes back. I just performed this process yesterday and after a short test drive, the issue seems to have gone away. I think the amplifier location may vary on different trim levels, but mine is the EX-L. Dealers cannot do anything unless a code pops up is what I am being told. There is a YouTube video showing the re-routing of the wires as well, but it is not clear how to access the amplifier in that video. Here is the link for the YouTube video: