12V battery not charging after a jump-start
 

I have Honda Civic Hybrid 2007. It's bought in Dec 2006 . I have put about 18k miles on it.

Yesterday afternoon, I left my radio on for about 6 hours, a stupid mistake.

When I found that, the radio was still on, but I couldn't start the engine. And, my mpg numbers for both trip A and B are reset while the actual miles for those trips didn't get reset.

Anyway, I got a jump start. I tried to drive around for a while and started to pull the car out of my driveway when I realized that steering was really heavy to the extent that it's dangerous to drive. Then, i found that multiple indicators were on:

- IMA indicator
- Charging system indicator
- braking system light
- Malfunction indicator

And, my IMA batter seems to have been completely drained (zero bar)

I left the car idling for over 20 minutes, but the charging system indicator never went off.

I tried to move the car around a little bit. Steering was still heavy and I gave up and put the car back onto my driveway when the engine went off.



When I tried to restart, I couldn't apparently because the battery had not been charged at all and was too weak to start the engine.

Something similar had happened about a year and half ago except that this time I didn't have any trouble with shifting out of park.
(back then, I couldn't shift out of park and had to unlock the shifting 'manually'. ) It turned out that it's due to the 'braking light - grease' issue. By that point, Honda Austrailia had issued a recall, but Honda Amera had not. Anyway, it's taken care of. Several months later, Honda America issued a recall and I brought the car to a dealership again and made sure that it's fixed.

Given all these, the problem today is different from what I had experienced a year and half ago.

HCH II is my only car and today is Sunday. So, perhaps I have to wait until tomorrow for any dealership to open. In the meantime, I'd really appreciate any insight on this issue.

P.S.

BTW, the headlights were really dim when I moved it around a bit. When it's at rest, the headlights were brighter. However, with the headlights on, the dashboard got dimmed out.

Another curious thing is that the power window didn't work for the front left while it worked for all other 3.

Re: 12V battery not charging after a jump-start
 

Most likely the 12volt battery under the hood reached end of life, I bet a new battery will fix your issues. Allowing the 12 v battery to drain to nothing can kill it.

Do not try for a larger battery - the DC to DC convert that charges it cannot handle too many amps and the factory battery is pretty close the the limit.

Unless you have a battery specially store, your Honda dealer may be the only source.

If all else fails a riding lawn mower battery could be used til the correct battery is found.

Smaller is better than too big.

Re: 12V battery not charging after a jump-start
 

Definitely get it to the dealer. Your battery is under warranty if you only have 18k miles on it. After it's installed, I would have the dealership make sure everything else is fine.

Re: 12V battery not charging after a jump-start
 

Thank you all for the advice. I brought my car to the nearest dealership. Indeed, it's the battery. They replaced it with a new one under the warranty and everything seems fine (I'm not sure whether they went through a thorough testing. My invoice has an item 'CORE RETURN', whose meaning I don't know.

Re: 12V battery not charging after a jump-start
 

'Core Return' is the old battery.