Hello All,
I recently became a new owner of a 2018 Honda Clarity, Base model, and so far I've been loving the car. What I haven't been loving is the AVAS and how I can always hear it when driving under 20mph. I was able to *allegedly* disable the AVAS speaker on my car and thought I'd share how I did it since I've seen a lot of questions about it but no one posting a solution.
DISCLAIMER: I'm an engineer, not a lawyer, and take no responsibility if you decided to perform this modification on your vehicle. This post is for information purposes only and you should consult your legal professional for information pertaining to the legality of disabling the AVAS on your vehicle.
To start, the AVAS speaker on the 2018 model is located right behind the lower bumper assembly on the driver's side. Its a simple round looking speaker thing bolted onto a bracket.
You can't get to the speaker from the top side of the engine bay, you have to access it from underneath the car. Getting to it isn't too hard, simply remove the lower shroud between the lower bumper and the shroud that goes under the engine. Removing it requires removing two screws (10mm hex head) and about 800 million plastic rivet clips. Once the shroud is removed, you can access the speaker from underneath the front bumper.
To remove the speaker, simply unscrew the two fasteners on the bracket, disconnect the power clip, and it drops right out.
The speaker's made by Denso and only has power going to it. No wires for CAN, LIN, etc and appears to be just a speaker without any additional electronics. I wanted to first try silencing the speaker with some insulation before completely disconnecting it as I thought the car might throw some DTC's with it being disconnected. To do this I took the speaker cover off:
and found the speaker to be a simple paper cone attached to a voice coil. I then packed it full of insulation:
and put the cover back and installed it in the car. This helped a lot but the thing was still rather loud and I could still hear it with the windows up. So plan B, I then tried disconnecting the speaker and made some boots for the connectors out of a rubber glove and zip ties to prevent any water intrusion.
I then put the shroud back in place, put all the 800 million plastic rivets back in, and so far I haven't had any errors or check engine lights come up. Since there's no electronics in the speaker the only way for the car to know its been disconnected is if its reading the voltage and/or resistance across the speaker's cable which I don't think Honda would do in this case. Compared to other AVAS implementations out there, including those by Honda, this one appears to be an afterthought. This would make sense as the Clarity was first released in 2016 and the AVAS legislation wasn't really adopted until 2018.
I'll continue to *allegedly* leave the speaker disconnected and see if the car complains at all. If it does I'll report back with plan C.
I recently became a new owner of a 2018 Honda Clarity, Base model, and so far I've been loving the car. What I haven't been loving is the AVAS and how I can always hear it when driving under 20mph. I was able to *allegedly* disable the AVAS speaker on my car and thought I'd share how I did it since I've seen a lot of questions about it but no one posting a solution.
DISCLAIMER: I'm an engineer, not a lawyer, and take no responsibility if you decided to perform this modification on your vehicle. This post is for information purposes only and you should consult your legal professional for information pertaining to the legality of disabling the AVAS on your vehicle.
To start, the AVAS speaker on the 2018 model is located right behind the lower bumper assembly on the driver's side. Its a simple round looking speaker thing bolted onto a bracket.
You can't get to the speaker from the top side of the engine bay, you have to access it from underneath the car. Getting to it isn't too hard, simply remove the lower shroud between the lower bumper and the shroud that goes under the engine. Removing it requires removing two screws (10mm hex head) and about 800 million plastic rivet clips. Once the shroud is removed, you can access the speaker from underneath the front bumper.
To remove the speaker, simply unscrew the two fasteners on the bracket, disconnect the power clip, and it drops right out.
The speaker's made by Denso and only has power going to it. No wires for CAN, LIN, etc and appears to be just a speaker without any additional electronics. I wanted to first try silencing the speaker with some insulation before completely disconnecting it as I thought the car might throw some DTC's with it being disconnected. To do this I took the speaker cover off:
and found the speaker to be a simple paper cone attached to a voice coil. I then packed it full of insulation:
and put the cover back and installed it in the car. This helped a lot but the thing was still rather loud and I could still hear it with the windows up. So plan B, I then tried disconnecting the speaker and made some boots for the connectors out of a rubber glove and zip ties to prevent any water intrusion.
I then put the shroud back in place, put all the 800 million plastic rivets back in, and so far I haven't had any errors or check engine lights come up. Since there's no electronics in the speaker the only way for the car to know its been disconnected is if its reading the voltage and/or resistance across the speaker's cable which I don't think Honda would do in this case. Compared to other AVAS implementations out there, including those by Honda, this one appears to be an afterthought. This would make sense as the Clarity was first released in 2016 and the AVAS legislation wasn't really adopted until 2018.
I'll continue to *allegedly* leave the speaker disconnected and see if the car complains at all. If it does I'll report back with plan C.
