As most of you know, we have an early 07 HCHII. The car has about 12K miles on it and has been flawless until yesterday morning.

On the way to work yesterday morning, my wife called to tell me that the IMA, CEL, and Battery light suddenly came on in the car, and that it seemed to loose power.

I called our local Honda Dealer, and they seemed concerned enough to ask if we could bring in the car right away. My wife drove over to the dealership, and left it.

By 2 in the afternoon, they called to say that there was a sensor problem, and that they had been directed by Honda to replace both the IMAM and the Battery Module, and ship them back to Torrance for analysis. Only problem is that the IMAM is on backorder to Japan, so the car will be out of service at least until the 16th.

In the mean time, Honda gave us a nice 07 Accord.

I went over to the dealership yesterday to get some more info, and it looks like our car has the same problem that several others have reported with early 07 cars.

The DTCs were P15A5 and P0A3F, which are "Motor Current Sensor Circuit malfunction" and "Motor Rotor Position Circuit Malfunction".

I find it curious that Honda wants the whole IMAM back as well as the battery pack. I plan on staying on top of the progress on this, so that I can get some pictures of the disassembly.

All in all, this first service experience has been very positive, we got the car looked at within 3 hours of the failure, and got a replacement car from Honda no questions asked. Now, will they be able to fix the problem so that it stays fixed?

The Dealership is Capitol Honda in San Jose.

Stay tuned.

 

I'm not... Honda's seeing enough of these going bad that they want to figure out why. We do the same thing in my business... one or two go bad, we swap and go on our way. Fifty go bad, and we start asking for the things back so we can figure out why.

 

This is exactly the problem I had with mine at 3000 miles. The dealer replaced the "Motor Rotor Sensor" and the problem has not recurred. Because this problem has been happening more often on the early 07's maybe Honda is using your car to examine the Battery Module, etc. to see if the sensors are going bad because of something else. From what MSantos has told us on this forum, Honda is now getting the sensors from another source.

 

That is why I am only now getting my second HCH-2. Its build date is set for May 17 and it definitely has that problem resolved.


Cheers & good luck with your car Gary.

MSantos

 

After my 06 was totalled, I now have an 07--- what VIN numbers would be considered "early" 07, so I can keep an eye out for this problem?

Thanks in advance!!

 

I would wager that it could affect cars manufactured between October and December of 2006.

 

Thank you. very appreciated.

PM

 

My car's last four digits of the VIN is 4325, which is the actual serial number. The sticker on the door says manufactured in October 2006. I haven't heard from anyone who has a higher serial number but it would be interesting to find out how high this number goes with the problem. Maybe MSantos can give us an answer.

 

Mine is 3444. It was made within a week of yours.

 

The P15A5 and P0A3F codes releate to a problem that is a little different from what some people with "motor position sensor" issues have experienced.

Let me explain:
The Motor stator assembly has 6 position sensors. These sensors feed their signals into the MCM module (Motor Control Module). These signals arrive in a form of clocked pulses and inform the MCM of the progress of power delivery to the power train.

Now, typically the MCM must be calibrated to the readings of these sensors so that the system may operate as expected. If one of the sensors is bad then the stator assembly must be changed. That is the problem that some of the 07 HCH's had.

The P15A5 and P0A3F codes that your car registered, indicate a failure not just on one or more of the sensors but also a malfunction on the MCM's input circuitry itself. So that means that updating the MCM software or even calibrating the sensors to the MCM will not work. Also, you cannot update the MCM software unless the version of the updating software is different from the one already installed. Since they may not have an updated/newer version of the software then they must extract the whole module and replace it with a known good one. That is the standard approach.

That is why your problem appears to be a little different from most of the other cases I've reviewed.

Cheers;

MSantos