Trunk opens spontaneously / alarm sounds

hikercoast

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I am new to this forum, and cannot figure out how to post a new category: "Trunk Issue: trunk opened by itself"

Thus, I will post here.

I have a 2017 Honda Civic, and the trunk has been opening by itself, multiple times, although the alarm has not been going off. I took it to the dealer, who said it was my mistake. I watch the car and the key carefully, and do not make mistakes. My guess is this is a software glitch or similar problem on the part of Honda. To deny the problem, or blame it on the customer, will only result in legal action in the future. Honda should institute a recall, and fix the problem.

Not knowing that this forum existed, I posted the same comments at the Accord forum; and today, one of its members wrote back that I should change my key/fob. Hence, I am now using my spare key; and hopefully that solves the problem. Needless to say, I welcome any thoughts that you may have on the subject. Thanks so much.
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astrosteve

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I am new to this forum, and cannot figure out how to post a new category: "Trunk Issue: trunk opened by itself"
With my Civic, it was always the body control module, and I went thru several. It's happened twice with this latest BCM, but now happens so infrequently I'm not as worried about it. Actually, "happens" means other symptoms may happen. I have auto-lock on, and when I close my door, instead of one beep, followed by another when the door locks, I'll get several beeps - this means the door isn't going to lock. This and the trunk opening by themselves is the BCM and I consider both of these things to be the same issue. It starts with the multiple beeps usually, then gets worse and the trunk starts opening too, and the frequency increases. Usually the trunk opening happened when something else happened. I'd start the car, trunk would pop open. I'd touch the passenger side door handle, trunk would pop open. The problem would always get worse with time, except this latest BCM which never got worse, but still has had 2 events (in over a year of time). When they gave me a new BCM, it would always stop the problems, for about 6 months, then it would start up again.
 

mmreview

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My 2016 Civic EX-t trunk opens and the alarm sounds at a similar time of day, but it is extremely sporadic. I can go for weeks and it is OK, then it happens a couple of days in a row. It is not the fob, because if I open the trunk with the fob, the alarm does not sound. I reset vehicle settings regarding locking doors a couple of days ago and I have not had a problem since. If the problem keeps coming back after replacing the BCM, I am not confident that it actually "fixed" anything or if it was just the fact that the settings were freshly reset. I do not want to keep paying for BCM replacement if the problem will keep happening anyway. My dealer could not express with confidence anything that would actually fix this problem. What does Honda USA have to say?
 

KL717

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I am new to this forum, and cannot figure out how to post a new category: "Trunk Issue: trunk opened by itself"

Thus, I will post here.

I have a 2017 Honda Civic, and the trunk has been opening by itself, multiple times, although the alarm has not been going off. I took it to the dealer, who said it was my mistake. I watch the car and the key carefully, and do not make mistakes. My guess is this is a software glitch or similar problem on the part of Honda. To deny the problem, or blame it on the customer, will only result in legal action in the future. Honda should institute a recall, and fix the problem.

Not knowing that this forum existed, I posted the same comments at the Accord forum; and today, one of its members wrote back that I should change my key/fob. Hence, I am now using my spare key; and hopefully that solves the problem. Needless to say, I welcome any thoughts that you may have on the subject. Thanks so much.
It’s not you. It’s not the fob. It is a glitch from Honda. It just doesn’t seem to be able to be recreated or figured out. So the easiest most logical conclusions are being made by service staff. Which is understandable. I have given up trying to have it fixed. I think we should all be referring our dealerships to this thread. Maybe then they will acknowledge our credibility and not assume our error. Just my thoughts
 

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Not to confuse things... But there was a thread where the issue was the manual/emergency trunk release cable thingy. But I can't recall if the complaint was spontaneous trunk opening or that the car just would not lock. Regardless... I wish ya' luck getting it solved.
 


mmreview

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It’s not you. It’s not the fob. It is a glitch from Honda. It just doesn’t seem to be able to be recreated or figured out. So the easiest most logical conclusions are being made by service staff. Which is understandable. I have given up trying to have it fixed. I think we should all be referring our dealerships to this thread. Maybe then they will acknowledge our credibility and not assume our error. Just my thoughts
I was skeptical about the manual release solution and noted that the people who had the body control module replaced had the same problem again after a while. I recently made a guess that one of the things that happens when you replace the body control module is that they reset everything to factory default settings. So I factory reset all of the the settings related to locking the car and automatically opening doors. I went from having the doors open and having the alarm sound a few times a week before the reset, to a streak of 3 weeks and counting where the trunk stays shut. If you are having this problem, it is worth a try... and worth letting the rest of us know!
Update: Still good 4 months later!
 
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user1

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I’m adding a thread just to document my experience for those still having trouble with Honda—I found them so fraudulent the only way to deal with them was to take them to small claims court.

The trunk on my 2016 Civic was also opening repeatedly and randomly, and I got the same runaround (they couldn’t diagnose it if it didn’t happen in front of them etc.—this was clearly a stalling technique, as every Honda person at every level I dealt with claimed they never heard of the issue when it’s obviously widespread. Maybe some people have issues with their FOBs, but mine certainly had nothing to do with it and most people’s don’t seem to—the trunk is often defective, and opens on its own not because of the FOB, or a signal but an internal flaw. Only after I threatened legal action, the first dealer claimed they replaced a mechanical latch, which did absolutely nothing to fix the problem (and in retrospect I doubt they even did).

The problem persisted another year, and Honda lied incessantly, stating at the company level they couldn’t authorize a repair unless the dealer validated the needs first, and then the dealer lying to my face and stating they couldn’t authorize it unless the company did. (The dealership was either beyond incompetent or fraudulent—they too claimed they had never heard of the issue, and when I showed them a half dozen online sites describing the complaint and how to fix the issue, said they would get back to me, and of course never did. Honda wasted as much time as it could, stalling, lying to my face, contradicting what they had just said—it was all beyond belief. I took them to small claims court and won around $550, the amount it would cost to do the actual repair of the body control module and what I asked for. Honda lied through its teeth in court too, even claiming the car wasn’t under warranty when I brought it in for repair (they will stoop to anything); after the judge looked at them to indicate “you must be kidding, this is in black and white that it was under warranty,” Honda then said, “oh but we’d still fix it now if he brings it in.” If you have the same issue with Honda, keep all your receipts; document all the times it happens and your attempts to fix the problem; get statements from other people who witness the problem; document any damage caused by the problem, etc. and if Honda refuses to fix it, my sense is it’s a waste of time dealing with them further—I would take them to court, and I found that was the only way to deal with this unbelievably irresponsible and unreliable company. I will certainly never buy a car from them again or go to one of their dealers for anything.
 

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I know it's been some time since this thread has been used, but I too have been having issues with my trunk opening on it's own.

With it, the windows will also intermittently go down overnight. The car has been into the dealership MANY times but just like everyone else is saying, they can't duplicate the issue so it's written off as being a key fob error.
 

Claude

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I had that problem too (trunk opening randomly; I posted in Oct 2016 about it) but it hasn't happened since I started putting the FOB inside a hard box (like an empty Altoid metal box) so the buttons can't get pressed.
 

Frank21

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Hello,

The trunk on my 2016 Civic EX started opening randomly when I was away approx 4 months ago. I would return to the car to find the trunk open regularly.

I very much suspected that the button on the keys was getting pressed after reading the posts on this forum.

After weeks of being very careful with the keys and trying to carry another set of keys I became skeptical of this being the problem.

At one point as I was sitting in the car with the key upright on the dash the trunk just popped open.

I ultimately disconnected the manual trunk open switch. The wires had some rust on them and the switch itself was very sensitive simply shaking it opened the trunk.

3 Months later the trunk has not opened once randomly.

Just thought I would share my experience.

Frank
 


mmreview

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Hello,

The trunk on my 2016 Civic EX started opening randomly when I was away approx 4 months ago. I would return to the car to find the trunk open regularly.

I very much suspected that the button on the keys was getting pressed after reading the posts on this forum.

After weeks of being very careful with the keys and trying to carry another set of keys I became skeptical of this being the problem.

At one point as I was sitting in the car with the key upright on the dash the trunk just popped open.

I ultimately disconnected the manual trunk open switch. The wires had some rust on them and the switch itself was very sensitive simply shaking it opened the trunk.

3 Months later the trunk has not opened once randomly.

Just thought I would share my experience.

Frank

My problem was solved when I realized that the trunk release button in the door is actually supposed to move freely up and down. Mine was stuck almost all of the way down because of a small amount of sand in it. I cleaned out the sand, the button popped up and all has been well ever since.
 

Ropen

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Hello,
We had a similar issue with our 17 civic touring. The trunk would open intermittently! It would happen while driving and sitting in the driveway at all hours of the day. The kicker for us was that the car alarm would also go off when parked.
Long story short, the cause was the wiring harness at the trunk release on driver side door. The conductors going into the harness had corroded a bit and the un-insulated part of the wires were touching through vibrations. I isolated the wires from each other and put an anti-oxidative paste on them. It's been good since!
A quick check for this issue would be to tap or bump the driver door panel and listen for the trunk release.
Good luck! Hope this helps someone out there!
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