[RKDinOKC]

Instead of stacking wood spent the day yesterday helping brother fix his Honda Odyssey the went dead. No lights or nuthin and he just kept trying to start it and cuss. Thankfully he drove back to Tulsa today! Yippee I can return to sanity.

It was very weird. Initially the battery showed dead with my meter. Put my charger on it and the battery showed charged but still nuthin worked. Disconnect the charger and it would go back to dead on the meter. Disconnected the battery and battery itself showed good and fully charged with both my meter and the charger. Cleaned the posts and hooked it up and went back to looking dead. Even when I put my meter directly on the posts.

Checked fuses and all good.

Looked on-line and found it was a symptom of a bad immobilizer ground and the fix was to slam the doors and hood a few times. Did that then when I hooked the charger to the battery leads the alarm went off and the battery came alive even when disconnecting the charger. Turned off the alarm with the keyfob and the battery went back to reading dead like you flipped a switch.

I would reconnect the charger and Bob would immediately hit the button on his keyfob putting it right back to dead mode. Finally took his keys away from him. Hooked up the charger and attempted to put the key in and start the car with the alarm going off, the alarm quit and the battery stayed up after disconnecting the charger. It all acted normal after that. Took a while to discover the undocumented sequence.

Must be some feature of the immobilizer. AND the combination of slamming the doors and attempting to start the car while the alarm was going off reset it. But don't understand how it made the battery look dead? Especially when the immobilizer is only supposed to turn off the fuel pump.

Really weird the next door neighbor had a visiting family member from Vegas that their non Honda SUV was doing the same thing. Then it just started working again. Maybe something to do with the freezing and wet weather?