Grdinding and smoke for the alternator?

This is copied from the thread you will go to in the last link of DumbJarheads post. It describes the exact same symptoms and the Honda dealers rapid recognition of the apparently "familiar issue" when described to him over the phone. Fell even more confident now that the AC relay was indeed the issue.

" Dead battery, A/C made horrible noise/smoke after getting started.
Went out yesterday to a dead battery. My '08 RTL has 200K miles now, and this battery is just 2 years old. Battery terminals were pretty corroded, so cleaned everything up, jump started the truck, and when it started, left it to run for a few minutes to charge battery up. After running for about 30 seconds, all of a sudden there was a horrible, loud screeching sound from the right (front) side of the engine, and what appeared to be a large amount of smoke came out. I quickly shut off the engine, let it sit for a few minutes, then restarted it. Same thing happened again, so I called my Honda dealership to have it towed in. I was afraid the alternator had frozen up (hence the dead battery) and I assumed the serpentine belt was slipping on the locked up alternator pulley.

My great Honda service advisor, whom I've gotten to know quite well over the 200K miles, stopped me in mid sentence and said he knew right away what the problem was. He told me he thought the A/C clutch relay was bad, causing the A/C compressor clutch to stay energized even when the key was off, which was what killed the battery, and that when I jump started it, the noise I heard was the A/C system over-pressurizing and blowing off the pressure, which appeared to be smoke but was in fact freon and oil from the A/C system. He advised me to pull the relay (middle of three small square relays about 1 inch square in the fuse/relay panel under the hood at the passenger side rear of the engine compartment near the firewall). Simple to pull the relay, which released the A/C compressor, drive to the dealership, spend $25 for a new, upgraded relay (Honda has apparently realized a problem exists with the O/E relay), plug it in, and good to go. No problems or noises since, and what great service from a Honda service advisor that could have let me spend $100 on a tow, and another $100 to diagnose. Big thumbs up here. I did not even need to recharge the A/C system, but I suppose that might have been a possibility had it lost too much."

Thank gawd for this file, this just happened to me (2007 RTS).

Battery absolutely flat this morning, searched for an explanation and found none. Jumped the car and headed up to Denver (~60 miles). Had lunch, was trying to find my way through a strange part of Denver and pulled over to check the map (yhea, revoke my man card ). Suddenly a roar from the front right under the hood and [what I thought] smoke pouring out. Turned off the car and went to check.

[Though I wasn't aware of it at the time, I didn't smell burning rubber which I should have if the compressor had seized]

Not noticing the lack of burning rubber smell, I guessed the compressor had seized and turned off the A/C and restarted the car and all was fine. Drove immediately home (another ~60 miles) with no problems. Started goggling the symptoms and low and behold this thread!

Given the guidelines in this thread, I checked for parasitic draw on the battery and measured about 0.25A. Removed the A/C compressor relay and it dropped to about 0.06A, Left the relay out, drove to the Honda dealer and picked up a new relay (~$10), plugged it in and the parasitic load stayed at 0.06A.

So mine was much more intermittent than the original posters.

By the way, if you've done either of the "power outlet always on" mods, the relay that you remove in both cases is the same as the A/C compressor relay, so hold onto them! Wish I had checked before I bought another!

So final question, do I need to get a Freon (or whatever poor substitute they use to be "green" nowadays) refill?

Roak