[SlyCoopers]

So its been a year with my cx3 and just when I think things are going pretty well it starts to go slightly downhill.
Aside from hearing every single creak and noise from the dash passenger area I have started to notice my infotainment screen will struggle to stay running during cold start temps 35F and below. Until the car fully heats up the interior, the screen will reboot over and over maybe running for like 4 seconds between boot loops. Strange enough if it was last set on the radio playing, the radio will continue playing through the boot loops and bluetooth ofcourse disconnects and has to reconnect.

So far Ive noticed that this is only happening on really cold starts like early in the morning where I leave my car to warm up for around 15minutes as I get ready for work and the screen will still be still restarting. Even 8 hours after work during the afternoon, it might happen again depending on the temperature so its not just an overnight thing. During the day if the ambient temp is around 40+ it will not have any effect on the screen at least but it still puts me in a strange situation. Dealer didnt believe my dilemma since it cant be reproduced unless they leave the car sitting for hours in the cold so I had to show them a video to prove it. When they finally attempted to fix it, they claimed an update will fix all and sent me on my way when this is clearly more of a hardware issue in my case. I am going back there again friday but this is making me think whether a replacement unit will do anything or not.

I am curious as to who else is having this sort of problem, maybe someone with electrical experience can chime in with some insight to the situation. Could anything be related to the battery or electrical current going to the unit? Is thermal change going to kill all of these within a couple of years or so?

 

[SlyCoopers]

Figured I would post an update on the repair process just incase it helps anyone else who might be experiencing a similar thing.

Dec 30: CMU was replaced for the infotainment system, technician notes as stated

---
Unable to duplicate customers concern. Vehicle was already warm inside.
Checked infotainment system version.
Scanned system for codes.
Received code U156:0-8-lost communication with information system center-previously detected- not present at the time.
Checked for related bulletins-none found.
Called techline HCN6357066 was advised to replace the cmu unit.
Replaced the cmu and verified latest version of software installed.
---

Jan 3: The next cold day around below 40F I was able to see if it was truly fixed and unfortunatly the system proceeded to reboot until it was warmed up yet again. During this start up I made sure nothing else was on that could be messing with the current to the unit ie. headlights, fan, defog, heated seats, usb ports, etc.

Jan 4: Knowing it was going to happen again I decided to see if I could increase the frequency of the reboots to see if it was a voltage related issue by blasting heat, defog, seats and headlights on and no difference in boot loop consistency.

Although it is a frustrating situation the dealership service department here was rather helpful and equally stumped and agreed to take the car for a few days to recreate the conditions overnight since last time they just replaced the cmu based off of knowledge of the situation.

 

[jtonline]

Temperature can have an affect on individual electronic component performance within a circuit. Then there's the possibility of contraction & expansion on solder joints and plug/socket connections and the impact of condensation.

The infotainment screen displays a warning message when it gets too hot, but there's nothing about too cold.

It was -4°C earlier this week and my infotainment screen worked OK. Hopefully your dealer will be able to swap out a few other bits and pieces and fix the problem. Have you got anything plugged into either of the USB ports?

(A good few years ago I had a car with an aftermarket engine immobiliser under the dashboard; it allowed x seconds to insert an electronic key after turning on the ignition. On cold winter mornings, the time allowed noticeably decreased which was a real nuisance).

 

[SlyCoopers]

I am not in an area with extreme temp ranges for hot or cold so I am surprised that this issue is happening on these components so fast. I could see aftermarket components having issues like that occasionally as my past experience with hot/cold temps on dash cams completely destroys the internal battery so it corrupts finalizing the data saving/shutdown process once power from the car cuts off.

I made sure nothing was connected or turned on besides the motor itself that could influence the reboot, as well as turning everything on the next day to see if it has an effect on it in the first place and its a negligible difference. I am curious as to where it will go from here since the main unit and module was replaced already. Considering this is a almost $2000+ job here to repair outside of warranty, I want to try and figure out exactly whats going wrong to hopefully mitigate it in the future.

 

[mainemanx]

Outside temperature in Southern Maine this morning, 15º F on the dash display ... everything seemed to work normally.

 

[bjn]

We have been down to -14 ° Celsius last night (about 6.8 ° F), with no problems with the screen or the infotainment system...

 

[SlyCoopers]

Considering the car went a year in the winter weather fine, I would not be surprised if this is an uncommon if not rare event. The dealership called and stated they were going to replace the screen this time and see if that solves the issue. It could just be that I ended up with a lower quality part that managed to survive last winter and didnt show its issue until now. Although I purchased the car Dec 2015 I do only have about 5500miles on it since I took a train on my commute and had a saturn sky car to accumulate the warm season miles.

 

[Shark]

Hey there, you're not the only one with this problem. Happens to me all the time. Was going to talk to dealer the next time I went in. I noticed the cutoff for me was -5 Celcius. Good idea on the video, will do that cause I know when it's an intermittent problem the dealer never seems to find the problem. I've had electrical problems since I've had this car. Will video my lighting problems aswell. Not very promising. Let me know how it goes with the unit swap.

Thanks Roberto

 

[SlyCoopers]

Picked it up today and as far as I can tell everything seems fine but I will know when a cold morning arrived (we had a record high warm day today for some reason ironically). The screen itself was replaced this time and as per the tech write up:

--
Cause: Internal failure HL1-427719790
T1117JRX Car communication system(center display)
--

According to the technician and service adviser, Mazda is "loosely hinting" that a possible batch of infotainment units for certain production dates may have had poor quality control. I am not sure how valid that claim may be but it would seem like a possible factor since I was not the only person there at that dealership with that issue and our build dates fell within a certain range. I should also mention that the cost for the swap would have been $2000+ without warranty so I think its safe to say that if you have any issue with the unit at all get it repaired asap lol. If things persist past this I will update further but hopefully thats a wrap for now.

 

[SlyCoopers]

Infotainment system still restarts in cold weather even with cmu and whole screen replaced.. Only clue I have left is that navigation is pretty much always on since I bought the car and when it is in its "cold" phase where the unit will restart after a certain time, navigation will always be loading and will not actually start until the car is finished with its boot loops. When the car is started in a "warmed up" state navigation will almost always load within a few seconds and start.

This leads me to believe there is an issue with the module for navigation and temperatures that somehow effects the function of the infotainment screen whether its bad programming or sensitive components. This would also explain why many people would not have this screen issue since not everyone has a model will navigation active. Dealer is checking this in with mazda and will take the car tomorrow to see where we go from there.

 

[Dean]

Infotainment system still restarts in cold weather even with cmu and whole screen replaced.. Only clue I have left is that navigation is pretty much always on since I bought the car and when it is in its "cold" phase where the unit will restart after a certain time, navigation will always be loading and will not actually start until the car is finished with its boot loops. When the car is started in a "warmed up" state navigation will almost always load within a few seconds and start.

This leads me to believe there is an issue with the module for navigation and temperatures that somehow effects the function of the infotainment screen whether its bad programming or sensitive components. This would also explain why many people would not have this screen issue since not everyone has a model will navigation active. Dealer is checking this in with mazda and will take the car tomorrow to see where we go from there.

I have navigation and have not experienced any issues. Have you tried with the SD card removed ?
last weekend parked for 40 plus hours with highest temp reaching -20C , all worked fine on start up.

As a cold weather dweller, I'm watching this closely.

 

[SlyCoopers]

So over the past week I conducted quite a few startup tests when the unit boots up and since the weather was not as cooperative so it took a little longer than anticipated but I can definitely conclude that the navigation is affecting the infotainment system on cold starts. Should the sd nav card be removed the unit will not reboot even in a more extreme temperature setting. Ofcourse then when the card is in during the cold starts and it tries to load the navigation in the background the system reboots when cold as previously described. This is a very weird phenomenon given that almost everything else was replaced and somehow the culprit now is navigation.

Sometime next week I will take the car in for more attempts to fix this and will report if anything changes/is done.

It is a really weird thing to point out but if anyone else is experiencing reboots on cold start try it without the navigation card installed on a cold morning and see if something similar is the case for those instances.

 

[SlyCoopers]

Just wanted to finalize an update for future readers/people with this problem. It finally took a while to come to this point but over the weekend I had the sd card reader (and SD card even though it was irrelevant since its just a license key) replaced. Unfortunately now the warm weather decided to come right at the tail end of the repairs so hopefully this will be the end of it but we wont really know until next season. Considering everything else that was replaced (and scratched ), I am hoping this concludes the issue and fortunately around here its gotten to a point where the dealer had multiple cars after me with the same issue and they ended up just replacing the sd card reader also avoiding the whole center console transplant so some good is coming out of it.

 

[jaycal]

This exact issue has been happening to my 2016 Mazda 3 since I bought it. I'm in MA, and the infotainment system reboots basically every time the temp is around 35-40F or lower. It happens until the car warms up. Really annoying, and I've been meaning to mention it to the dealer. It's good to know that it seems to have been narrowed down to the SD card.

Any updates? Still working ok?

 

[Vipre77]

I had a lot of reboot issues on my 2016 Touring. It eventually got bad enough that the whole system eventually crashed and didn't work at all. No navigation installed on this car. They replaced the CMU on mine and that seems to have fixed it. Still occasionally get reboots if connected through USB and using podcast app on my phone. I don't recall any issues when using bluetooth other than some instances where the bluetooth fails to connect for whatever reason, but I think that's some sort of handshake issue due to phone software updates and the fact that often use a bluetooth headset at work right before I get in my car and the phone is still trying to stay connected to the headset which screws up the connection to the car sometimes.

 

[SlyCoopers]

This exact issue has been happening to my 2016 Mazda 3 since I bought it. I'm in MA, and the infotainment system reboots basically every time the temp is around 35-40F or lower. It happens until the car warms up. Really annoying, and I've been meaning to mention it to the dealer. It's good to know that it seems to have been narrowed down to the SD card.

Any updates? Still working ok?

Because I live on the coastline of CT unfortunatly the temperatures havent gone that low yet for us here to see if the issue was fixed or not. After the sd card reader was replaced spring came around on so I havent had the ideal testing environment. Hopefully it is done with since there was a cold ish day after the repair and it didnt restart but that could just be speculation. According to the dealers back then other people who had this problem were remedied by the sd card reader replacement and it made sense since one identifying feature we had was that if you took the sd card out, then the navigation would not have the loading process running on the cold temp startup therefore not restarting itself. If it still restarts with the card taken out, then there is something else causing the symptoms.

 

[smendales]

I have the same issue with my Grand Touring vehicle... Repeatedly reboots when the weather drops...

 

[SlyCoopers]

I have the same issue with my Grand Touring vehicle... Repeatedly reboots when the weather drops...

Sorry to hear that. Is it the same circumstances as mine, ie only reboots on cold starts and navigation was a contributing cause to it? If it works without the nav sd card in then you might very well have the same issue I did. On the bright side I can confirm that replacing the sd card reader (amongst other things lol) did remedy my issue with it. I purposely started it multiple times throughout the week during freezing temperatures at night and morning to see if I could trigger a reboot with everything on and thankfully nothing has happened.

Regardless I would recommend getting it checked out under dealer warranty as soon as possible since the total cost of all my replacement parts that were also not the cause wouldve been very unpleasant if it was out of pocket.

 

[Brigitte]

After reading this thread in the fall, I made a mental note to pay attention on colder days, which we did get last week (-12C/10F in the mornings). I don't have NAV, and as it turns out, did not experience any issues.

 

[jaycal]

Removing the SD card 100% solved the issue for me. I never use the nav, so I could just leave it out and be done with it, but it’s still under warranty so I may see if the dealer will replace the card reader.