2004 Acura MDX

Vinny,

I have that feature on my wife's new 2004 TL, and think it's great!  Try going to www.acuramdx.org and post your question in the audio and electronics forum. You'll find extrensive information and support there, for anything your need related to your MDX.

Ed Moss

2004 MDX Touring Aspen White Pearl.

Normally most automatics have a neutral safety wire. This wire usually shows a ground when the car is in park OR neutral. You could use that as your trigger. (ie: when the ground goes away, do this..) Technically it wouldn't be locking when the car is put in drive, but when the car is taken out of park. One issue with this hookup is that to get to drive you have to go from park to reverse to neutral to drive normally. Since that wire sees a ground in both park and neutral it would lock the doors when taken out of park, then relock the doors when it sees neutral, then lock again when in drive. Of course how fast you go through the gears it may not go through all of this sequence and you might be ok.. Another option you could try is the brake pedal. Just before you shift out of gears what do you do? Well if you don't hit the brake you can't shift out of gear. Now the issue here obviously is that you don't want the car relocking everytime you hit the brake while driving. You could use this in conjunction with the neutral safety wire to fire a relay like so: Pin 85: To brake wire Pin 86: To neutral safety wire Pin 30: To ignition wire Pin 87: To + lock wire in car What's that do? The brake wire will see 12volts when you step on the brake. The neutral safety wire will see a ground when in park or neutral. If the car is in park or neutral and you step on the brake, the relay activates and sends 12volts to the lock wire, ONLY if the car is running because it's getting power from the ignition wire. Once in drive the ground on the neutral safety is gone and you can hit the brake all you need to and it won't try to lock again since the relay won't have that ground on the other side of the coil, so it will be dead. It WILL try to relock of course when you come to a stop and put the car back in park. Still not exactly lock when you put it in drive, but close.. Not to mention you don't need any additional modules just a single relay.. If the lock wires in the car are negative you will need an additional relay to convert the ignition pulse, or just connect pin 30 to ground instead of ignition and no additional relay is needed. The downfall here of course is that the car will lock if you hit the brake and the car isn't even running.. Anyway just throwing some options (and their flaws..) out there something to keep you busy I guess. Please note I've never tried any of the previous options just some things I've thought of off the top of my head that should work in theory. Try at your own risk! Ignition controlled are by far the easiest way to do this. Good luck, Mike

The 2004 TL has this feature available by default, and it can be programmed in a number of ways. Most basic is the ability to lock the doors when the car is moved out of park.  It can also unlock when moved back into park...