Perhaps someone else has encountered this. I recently made a brief stop along the highway and when I got back in the car, I inadvertantly pulled the gear selector back one notch too far and went to D rather than overdrive. I ran the car at 65 for about 10-15 miles and didn't notice it because the car is so quiet anyway and I had XM going.

Since that incident, my mileage has gone down the tubes! Where I used to get 46 or better, now I'm struggling to make 36 on the same course. I'm wondering if disconnecting the battery and doing a reboot will help, or if anyone else has any good suggestions.

Thanks

 

You mean you're only getting 36 on this tank, right? Refuel and reset your trip odometer. Several miles at speed without overdrive will certainly kill a tank. But only that tank.

If you already are resetting your odometer for each trip and are getting such mileage, chack your tach. What are your rpms at 60mph? Should be ~2k, IIRC, with OD and lockup. If you cannot see each gearshift on the tach you have some other problem that needs to be looked at. It shifts to 5th at 42mph, lockup at 48.

I certainly hope its just your odometer that needs to be reset.

 

I was just getting really lousy numbers from the average indicator under the speedometer. Yes, I know that's just an average, but when it drops 10mpg, something is wrong. I was out of town when I wrote that entry last night, so I thought this would be a perfect time to try resetting the computer and see if the change made any difference on the trip home.

I had been driving around town after filling up yesterday and was getting about 28 according to the indicator. That number kept falling, no matter what I did. This morning I decided to try resetting the computer by disconnecting the battery and seeing what happened. I removed the negative cable and let the car set for about 5-10 minutes.

When I started driving around town again, the mileage went to 33 and would go up or down depending on the circumstances. Before it would only go down. Also, last week I took a 385 mile trip (one way) and 200 of that was on interstate highway. I found that at 70mph, the mileage kept steadily dropping. By the time I'd reached my destination, the mpg indicator was down to 32. When I did the paper/pencil calculation, that's about what it was. Much lower than it had been running prior to the drive gear issue.

After resetting the computer today, I filled up and headed home. It's a 200 mile drive with 1500 feet elevation increase. I've never seen the mpg indicator actually continue to climb at 70mph while on this leg. Today it acted completely different after I had reset the battery connection. By the time I was home, the indicator was showing nearly 40mpg. It appears to me that this was exactly what was needed.

Hopefully this will help others who might experience a big unexplained change in their mileage.

 

hmm. good to hear it seems to have cleared itself, but a little disconcerting to hear that a Microsoft-like fix was required

I can't for the life of me think of the sequence that caused the issue, and won't try to. Especially since you had shut the engine off several times after the event, too. Anyone here have some thoughts?

 

What overdrive are you guys talking about?

 

5th gear. 4th, too. Both are <1 ratios. Also explains why the car has "D3" instead of "D4."

My understanding of the term 'overdrive' is any gear with an output speed that exceeds the input speed. Am I using the term incorrectly?

2005 Accord Hybrid (from C&D writeup):
Gear, Ratio, Mph/1000 rpm, Max test speed
I, 2.69, 6.5, 42 mph (6500 rpm)
II, 1.57, 11.1, 72 mph (6500 rpm)
III, 1.02, 17.0, 110 mph (6500 rpm)
IV, 0.73, 23.8, 131 mph (5500 rpm)
V, 0.53, 32.8, 131 mph (4000 rpm)