Had a strange thing happen with the FEH today.

Driving in the #1 lane of the freeway and traffic slows to a crawl for an accident ahead. We crawl along at 10mph for several miles, running EV only. I start to notice that I've been in EV for a much longer distance than I have come to expect with this vehicle.

I look at the Scangauge and SoC is 32% and FwT is 130F and I'm still in EV. Seconds after this traffic opens up and I need to accelerate but can barely get above 50mph as the ICE seems to struggle without any assistance from the electric motor. SoC eventually returned to 53% and performance returned to normal.

So what happened here? I thought either the low SoC or cool water temperature would have restarted the ICE during the traffic crawl.

 

Don, I've never had a recal drain the battery like that or even below ~53%. My experience has always been a high charge and a hard assist or EV to drain the battery back to 53%.

It sounds like what happen to me when I ran out of gas on I-95 in my '05 FEH and I ran the battery down below ~32% in EV to get gas. My '09 will slow to a stop at 32% when I run out of gas, but the '05 will run past 32% SoC.

I'm thinking you had a problem of gas starvation by the fuel pump, filter or something and fuel pressure came back and the engine started. Were you low on fuel and going down hill when this happen?

GaryG

 

Gary, I had a nearly full tank of gas and was on a very level stretch of highway. No dashboard warnings occurred.

The lack of power when trying to accelerate was reminiscent of the time I intentionally drained the SoC to 35% to disable EV. Along with the loss of power was a whining sound which I assume was a generator recharging under heavy load.

All very strange but everything appears back to normal now.

 

econoline - hey GaryG's got a point.

I don't hold much in the "on a slope issue." You really have to be steep to have the gas pump lose suction.

But my experience with electric fuel pumps is that they go at about 100,000+ miles and fail. I've seen this enough on my Suburban (436,000+) that I now schedule it to that interval. (Consider losing a fuel pump and getting stuck in a -20ºF winter.)

I've also seen a dirty fuel filter cause hesitation and power loss.

So how may miles do you have on your FEH?

Replacing the fuel filter is only called for in normal use every 100,000. But if you're in a dirty & dusty area...

The fuel pump is easily accessible through a plate in the floor pan of your FEH. So if that's it it's not too difficult. (On my Suburban you have to drop the fuel tank.)

 

I don't think this is a fuel related issue. At no time during the event did the ICE attempt to restart. This is something that seemed to inhibit the ICE from attempting to restart well beyond the SoC and water temperature conditions that should have initiated a restart.

 

Did you ever have it in N? If so this might just be the FEH going back into warm-up mode due to cat temp. I have had this happen to me when stuck in traffic for a long time and draining the SoC down to near 40%. When it dropped below 40%, kicking the engine on, warm-up mode started and the SoC dropped down to the low 30's before getting out of warm-up mode. And this has happened to me when outside temps were pretty high, like in the 90's. But if it was in D the entire time then I have no idea why this would happen. But if it was caused by a problem I would think a message or light would have appeared, if only briefly. An engine that fails to start would surely cause a MIL to light, I think?

 

For my last recalibration, the SOC went below 40 (I think mid 30's) and up to 90 or so (I didn't write down the values).

 

I've never had a drain in SoC before a recal in both my FEH's. I do drain the SoC most likely more than anyone here to low 30's during the warm-up strategy all the time. This is because I always park the night before with a drained battery using EV. Maybe the computer sees no need to do another drain in my FEH. Is it possible you seldom drain your FEH battery like I do Steve?

Anyone else here seen a recal with a drain in SoC below 40% without a restart other than during the warm-up strategy? This is the first time I've heard of this in all my years of posting.

GaryG

 

I've never seen a warning light when I ran out of fuel in my '05 FEH (2 times), but I get a "Stop Safely Now" (2 times) when I ran out of gas in my '09 FEH.

GaryG

 

No, I don't run mine down before stopping for the night. I prefer to have that energy for the morning startup routine. It is bad enough that the engine has to recharge after it drains - it really pulls down the performance. I'm not a hypermiler like you!

Every morning when I take the kids to school, the engine goes to 1500 RPM and stays there for the first mile. After that (it is generally around 46 SOC by then), the engine needs to rev up to recharge the battery, which drains the power.