Cal 5???
 

Wife drives a 2011 Accord EX (bought new, so we've had it for almost 7 years). For the first time EVER, this morning, after she started the car, the on the info screen next to the temp. setting, the word "CAL 5" appeared and it was blinking. After leaving the car running for about 5 minutes, the blinking stopped and "CAL" disappeared, leaving only an unblinking "5". We have NEVER seen anything like this before. I could find nothing in the user manual about "CAL 5". We called the dealer's service dept. and they weren't sure what it meant, either -- suggested it may mean something needed to be "calibrated". Doesn't make sense.

Does anyone know what this means?

fascinating. I've never heard of that before. you may need to get the dealer to make a request to Honda engineering.

Never mind. . .
 

Shortly after posting this thread, I spent some time leafing through the owner's manual. I noticed in a couple of pictures showing that the location of the "CAL 5" we had seen was where the pix showed the compass display (just to the right of the temp setting). So I went to the compass section and discovered that the compass occasionally has to re-calibrate. When doing so, it displays "CAL" and what it thinks the direction is. When in the garage, our cars face due south. . . and it hit me then that what we saw was not "CAL 5", but "CAL S". Digital readouts often don't distinguish between '5' and 'S', and that's the case with the Honda screen. As I said in the post, my wife had left the car running and when she went back to it, the "CAL" had disappeared and only the "S" remained. . . as it should have. The compass had calibrated and was indicating correctly that the car was facing South.

The most surprising (and disappointing) aspect of this was that the dealer's service organization, which has serviced Hondas for at least 30 years, didn't know what the "CAL" was -- even though I had described where it was on the readout -- and suggested we bring the car in for them to look at it. After discovering what it was myself, I called them back and "educated" them .

Fascinating. I hadn't thought about thinking of the 5 as an S. nice find, well done. Thank you for sharing the result, your work will help others!