Hi,
My wife and I own a 2004 Honda Civic Hybrid; we bought it used in August with about 74,000 miles on it, and it now has about 80,000.

Two weeks ago I had to re-start the car quickly after parking when I realized I needed to move forwards about a foot in the parking spot. When I turned the key, I got that sinking straining starter feeling of any regular car with a very low battery, but got the car running on the second or third try. The next day, the IMA battery depleted a 60+% charge in less than 5 minutes of driving, and the IMA (and hence also Check Engine) lights came on. More recently, the car has begun charging and draining the IMA battery in an erratic fashion (sometimes behaving normally, sometimes doing things like showing green charging bars when driving uphill with the battery more than 75% charged, sometimes doing things like running the IMA down to 0 (!) bars and then not charging while idling at a stop sign or red light).

We learned that the "basic" code is P1600, and then took the car in to the dealer, which wants to hold onto the car for a day because the car is reading out with several more specific codes for seemingly random problems (I'm hoping they're going to do physical mechanical checks of each of the components the computer says is malfunctioning, with the fingers-crossed result that all of them are actually fine).

A service associate at the dealer said that tripping the IMA light can often cause false codes in the "check engine" department, so I'm hoping that's what's going on now -- that the "regular" battery is worn out, which caused the IMA to have to pump it up quickly, which drained the IMA, which tripped the IMA and Check Engine lights. A second hope is that something is amiss computer-wise in the interface between the car and the battery, which was replaced (under warranty, thankfully) about 1000 miles ago.

Do these guesses sound reasonable? Has anyone had similar experiences? (I gather there are a lot of people with '03-'05 HCHs driving around with their check engine lights on). Do we need to be worried?

Thanks in advance for helpful replies,
Nathan

 

Update: the battery now will not hold a charge for long while the car is in motion -- the charge depletes and we see minimum action on the gauges for charging *and* for IMA assist. I.e., the battery isn't being tapped to power the car much, according to the gauges. The battery recharges when the car sits at idle, but does so (according to the gauges) very rapidly, and without the charging gauge lighting up green (making us suspect the gauges themselves, too). The battery is less than 2000 miles old.

As before, any help is appreciated.

Thanks,
Nathan