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I?m still in the gee-whiz discovery stage of getting to know my new Acura. I?ve been making adjustments to all the settings: seat memory, radio presets, setting up the navigation system, and most important, setting the map orientation to ?Heading Up*?.
The next step is to break out the owner?s manual. It?s become part of my new car ritual. Over the course of a few weeks I?ve fallen into a groove with the vehicle. I know what works for me and what I?m using. After a while in a new car you wish things maybe worked a little differently. I?ve identified a few of these things and consulted the TLX bible to see if the Acura engineers anticipated my wants.
The Problem: The doors do not automatically lock when I walk away with the key fob. I?ve been training myself to keep the key in my pocket rather than pull it out every time I want to open the car. The first part is easy. If you have the key with you, the doors will unlock automatically when you try to open them. But what?s the point if I can?t lock the car without digging the key out? OK. I started with an easy one. Embarrassingly easy. A quick consultation of the manual tells me that if the car is turned off and the key fob is outside the vehicle, I can press a small button on the door handle that locks the car. Honestly, I had no idea. Talk about hiding in plain sight. Somewhere a car engineer who spent their life perfecting this technology is smiling.
The Problem: The driver-side door mirror points down when in reverse. I get it. It?s meant to help me park within the lines and get close to the curb. But I mostly park on the street, and I?d much rather see the traffic behind me in that mirror than some worthless pavement ? besides, I have a backup camera for the lines. The solution is doubly satisfying. Turns out I can designate which door mirror points down when I put the car in reverse. It?s as easy as using the door mirror selector switch, the same switch that toggles between the driver and passenger door mirrors to adjust them. Wherever the slider is, the corresponding mirror will point downward in reverse. So when I?m parking, I can switch it to the passenger mirror, allowing me to see the relevant curb and the oncoming traffic.
The Problem: The dreaded automatic rain-sensing windshield wiper activation. Dreaded? Yes, because if I don?t make sure to deactivate it before I head into the car wash, the wipers go haywire and I nearly have a heart attack trying to turn them off before they get damaged. Moving the wiper lever to the OFF rather than AUTO position takes care of car wash drama. Remembering to do this after it rains is on me, but I?m not a big fan of the automatic wipers anyway. I can tell if it?s raining ? mostly.
The Problem: The entertainment center is speaking. I really want it to shut up. The only time I want the system talking to me is when the navigation system is giving directions. Not when I change a radio station or select another audio track. It gets annoying very quickly. To be fair I probably activated this by accident, but I couldn?t figure out how to make it stop without the manual. Well, this bit of over-engineering is called Interface Dial Feedback, and when I realized I could turn it off in the system settings, I did it as quick as I could. I?m embarrassed to say how long I let this go before I looked it up. The lesson here is RTFM. More than likely it holds the knowledge you seek. *A note to the haters about choosing ?Heading Up? rather than ?North Up? for map orientation. Who are you, Sacagawea? Generally I?m not consulting the sun to get around. ?Heading Up? makes it so much easier to read the map and navigate (a right turn is a right turn). ?North Up? is for show-offs.
Text Source: Motor Trend
