Commenting was recently closed on an old article I did: Honda protects me from stealing my own CD player. I have received several emails and private messages concerning the article and am now starting this thread to to continue the discussion.

Please feel free to ask questions, give advice, or post any stories relating to trying to unlock a Honda radio.

I have a 1997 Honda Odyssey, I wanted to update to a cd player, and my neighbor who is Honda mechanic ( not employed by Honda though, he owns a Honda only repair service ) gave me a factory Acura Bose CD player. He had the code for it and I ask him if he wanted $75 to at least cover his cost of getting the code for it. He told me he gets them free. He told me Honda gives the codes FREE to salvage yards, car dealer lots, repair and service centers, and so on. Basically, Honda only sticks it to the consumer when they need the code. Which I do not think is fair, especially considering the repair centers that deal with Honda’s will charge their customers as if they too had to pay for the code number when they need to reset the radios.

If Honda charged everyone, then ok, I dont like it but its fair. But when they wont charge basically everything from the local chop shop to authorized dealers, but every single consumer, that is not only unfair, but I think unjust.

I followed the advice on here and got my radio to work! I have a 2001 Honda Accord LX V6. I looked in my glove box and the code was there on the inside top. I had to reset my radio by pulling the fuse. Then I entered my code, 66426 into the rado and in worked. No extra buttons. No I will just have to reset all my stations.

Many companies do this,
My fathers Audi was in philadelphia and someone tried to steal it. The computer shut everything down rendering the car useless. To reset the car you had to pull the battery. That of course forced you to have the radio code to use the radio again.
The car's code was at home, and all he had to do was call Audi dealer, and over the phone they told him the code. no charge... Sorry Honda..

If you cannot find the code somewhere in your car printed on the infamous 'white label' please save yourself some time and call Honda at 800.999.1009. I called them after calling the dealer where my car was originally purchased. The service manager, a very nice gentleman, advised me to take the vehicle to a local Honda store and they could retrieve the code for me. At this point I called Honda, pressed option 5 and spoke with a very nice lady who quickly walked me through the steps to access the serial number for ymy stereo (pressing 1 and 6 while turning the radio on). She then pulled up the unlock code for my radio.
Here's a recap -

800.999.1009

option #5

tell her what you need. She will help you with a smile. She says she can't cound the number of times she has performed this operation to help people get their radio unlocked.

FYI, not all codes are the same. But once you have the code it will work forever.

thanks to everyone who posted on this forum, I really appreciate it. It is amazing how much we can get done when we communicate with each other.

Paul Crawford
2002 Honda Accord
Man I LOVE to drive this car!

I just purchased a 2004 Honda Civic Coupe about a month ago. When I took the car for a test drive the first thing that I noticed was that the audio display said "CODE" When I returned to the dealer they said don't worry we will get the code from Honda and it will work perfect. It was going to be week before they could get an appointment. So during that week one of my friends, who owns a 2002 Honda Accord said "You don't have to go to Honda the "CODE" is on a white sticker in your glove box". He showed me and I entered the 5 digit code and it beeped and started playing. This was cool until about a week later I was playing a CD and it just stopped. The CD player stopped working altogether, however the radio didn't. Thank God I purchased the extended warranty, because it payed for a NEW Honda radio/CD player and of course it came with a New CODE, LOL

Scott how much are you being payed to start this thread? 3/4 of the posters so far are on post #1....

lol