Yesterday evening, while driving home from work I noticed a distinct 'whirring' noise coming from the engine area. I turned off the iPod, AC, fan, etc. to listen up. Whenever I accelerated, the whirring grew louder and would last quite a few seconds. I also noticed that the Assist meter would show maximum assist yet I would not get much acceleration out of it. So then I began to fool around with it. Stepping on the gas would not give anymore acceleration, just louder whirring and more on the assist meter.

I dropped it off at the local Honda dealer last night. They checked it in without any comment other than they would get back to me today.

I am thinking that it is the electric motor not kicking in and just winding up. Hopefully it gets fixed today. I will let you know the outcome.

Sounds like it came loose! Will be interesting to hear what happened.

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OK, day 1 at the dealer. I get a call in the afternoon.... "Sir, we have test driven your car and all is 100% OK, we found no problems whatsoever". Of course I thought. I asked if they had given it a test drive per my advise.... drive down the highway a bit, let it get up to about 70 downhill and it will surely happen. "No, we drove around the block and observed no problems". Long story short... I told the service advisor that he had not followed my directions and that surely the car would still have the problem and that if he should decide not to follow my directions to simply state such on the work order. He stuttered a bit. I said I would be happy to come down and take them on the test drive. He said sure. When I got there an hour later, "Sorry sir but we have no Techs available for the rest of the day to be able to drive with you". Of course, I thought.
So, today I am expecting a call from their Quality Control Manager. Yippee.
Did I mention, as a rental they wanted to give me a full size V8 truck? Ha! From a 50mpg HCH to a 15 mpg truck. Thanks a bunch Honda.

Today, the Quality Control Manager drove my car per my recommendations and sure enough he had the same issues arise for him. No IMA assist power and engine whirring noises.

They have been in touch with "The Honda Tech Line" as they have not yet seen this problem. I was told that it could possibly be the CVT needing to be replaced.

There are just 2100 miles on this car!

Stay tuned....

Keep us posted. I'm glad you were able to get someone to drive it who experienced the problem first hand. I hate it when you take a car in for warranty service and they pull the whole "Well it didn't do it for us" thing. It was most likely something defective right from the factory, or something broken durring assembly. Honda is not struggling for money these days the way companies like GM and Mitsubishi are. They should be able to take care of you.

My fingers are crossed for you. Definitely keep us updated; you'll have a lot of CVT folks interested to see what happened and happens.

OK, I picked it up today. After 1 week the dealer could find no problems and Honda had no other similar reports. I took the Honda Tech for a 50 mile test drive and of course, no duplication of problem.

I was told by the Service Advisor that they had made no adjustments or changes to the car, yet the Tech told me that they had plugged in to the computer to check for errors and found none as well as disconnect and re-set all IMA electronic components. I also noticed that someone had been fiddling around near the rear windshield (interior) as it had smudge marks all over it.

For now, they are keeping my work order open to see if any problems return.

IF there were smudge marks at the bottom of the rear window or the sides it is likely they took out the rear deck and back seat to get at the battery.

My hydroponics experiment

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