MSantos & Shawn,

I have a complication with the hot seat. Saturday we took the same trip down & back to Phoenix and the rear seat did not get warm and the A/C operated normally. It appears to be an intermittent problem. We first noticed the heat last weekend on a Phoenix trip. The only difference was that we had a third passenger last week - more weight. I just hope the service tech can duplicate the problem or at least detect that there is something that is loose or wrong.

What would make a bad unit suddenly run normal ?- possibly a loose wire?

also could you please define: MCM. IPU fan etc so I can describe to the service tech the area of potential problem.


Thanks

Ed

 

Ed, the 06 Civic Hybrid service and repair checklists do identify loose connections as potential problems that can occur.
I hope that the service person follows those checklists. Any other approach would not be satisfactory to me.
Please refer to my previous post as a summary of what else is likely to be the cause of your discrepancy.

- The MCM module is the Motor Control Module responsible for "Driving" the IMA electric assist DC motor.
- The BCM is the battery control module and is reponsible for monitoring and managing the operational and environmental variables of the NiMH battery pack.
- The IPU fan is an active cooling device (DC operated fan) that is responsible for forcing the "downstream" air circulation through the various IPU modules that need cooling.
- The AC driver is the subsystem responsible for controlling the operation of the Air conditioning DC compressor.
- The DC to DC converter simply provides DC voltage conversion and step-up primarily used under motive initialization.

Cheers;

MSantos

 

Well, Honda had the car for two days and could not find anything wrong. Even though the Service Rep verified that the seat was "Warm" when I dropped it off. They test drove it for 5o miles and could not duplicate the symptoms. The analyzer came back all OK. They stated further that if the IPU or any of it's components had over heated then the IMA would have recorded the fault and it would have popped up immediately. They bumped up my service to the Service Manager who handled all the tests himself. They acknowledged that the Hybrid will run very hot when under stress. But could not explain why it was the A/C driver side and not the battery side that got hot. They promise to look into the matter further with Honda but as of yesterday there was no other HCH 06 with the same symptoms. They did manage to update 3 computers systems on the car - one dealing with the A/C Compressor. So, I guess I will have to keep driving it until it overheats again.

If this is true and is in fact a normal occurrence (due to normal stress i.e. hot weather & mountains)than I can say with certainty that the HCH is not suitable for climates like AZ, where I live.

Any suggestions on the next step? Maybe the A/C Compressor update will cure the problem.
Ed

 

What systems did they update?

software?

 

Ed, since the dealer had a good look at the problem and they claimed to have applied some "updates", I would give them the benefit of the doubt and remain watchful of the backseat-heating situation.

If the discrepancy re-occurs I would visit them again or perhaps I would visit yet another dealer (if possible).

Obviously they are not totally ignorant of the fact that the IPU normally runs very hot - lets us just say, too hot to touch. This is a good " first sign" that they are not ignoring the basic attributes of the technology. For now, I would just monitor the situation and enjoy the vehicle.

With luck, your problem was just a subsystems' software management/update issue.


Cheers;


MSantos

 

Thanks for the positive feedback. It should be noted that we did the Phoenix round trip today with the car fully loaded and the seat remained cool. Will keep a watchful eye on the problem.

G'Day Steve. Love OZ and visited twice in '05. Tassie is beautiful. Regarding the software updates: the only one I remembered was "A/C Compressor" and the Service Mgr could not tell me what it was changing. Unfortunately. I failed to remember the other two systems that he said were updated but one might have been the Transmission.

Ed