auto stop stalled, then ran like i was dragging a deal elephant
 

Hi guys,

As Steve had warned, i made a bad purchase when i bought by civic, the battery appeared ok for 3 months and now is displaying that it is in a degraded state.

The only real frustration has been not knowing how the car would act: Will i get full normal assist as I merge this time or will it give me nothing or next to nothing? Will the regen braking take me down to almost stop or cut out -- forcing me to hit the brake considerably harder?


Well, this day I was driving around PA, an 80 degree day, earlier the IMA light had even shut off for a time.
Now it was in stop and go, and while the SoC was near the top, auto-stop was not functioning. At a stop lite before a hill I key-ed OFF the car.

The light went green, I keyed on the car and just as I put it in gear, it stalled (i've driven stick for 10 years, it wasn't pilot error) Then it would turn but not start for 2 seconds.

After waiting another 2-3 seconds I got it running and did everything I could to move with the utmost possible haste (line of traffic behind me, many were antsy)

0 assist, and the car felt like it was dragging a dead elephant even up at 5k RPM (where the IMA hardly makes a difference).
It may have been just me but i swear the motor sounded like it was really whirring also--like a semi truck -- more than just high RPM noises ... might have been the AC was on but most cars disable that when at wide open throttle. (and I had the AC fan down at like 2 or 3 clicks...barely on)

I've tried searching for this behavior, but many people describe the CVT fault as "whirring" also... If anybody else had posted about this... its lost in the haystack of posts CVT issues....

a quarter mile up the road I pulled into a lot and did everything I could to repeat the behavior but the car acted completely normally.


When the car did start it was the IMA and not the backup starter.

Any ideas outside the obvious that the battery needs service?

Re: auto stop stalled, then ran like i was dragging a deal elephant
 

side note: before the ECU/BCU decided to trip the error light, the battery appeared to perform just fine, I hardly ever had the SoC drop below 30% and by that time I was done with the hills and at highway speed so it could steal some ICE power to charge back to 50%

I'm going to purchase a grid charger eventually but nobody will commit to giving me even average life extension with grid charger useage. I explain that I understand that I may fair better or worse but vendors don't believe me. 460bucks is alot of money... if it only extends the cars life another year I would call that wasted money as I'll never buy another one of these cars again.

ya burned me Honda. I expected the same as my 1987 accord (300k no problems) and 98 civic (240k, developed a short in the electrical system, maybe the alternator...)

Re: auto stop stalled, then ran like i was dragging a deal elephant
 

You're asking for a fortune teller. It might be a few days, it might be a few years. Anyone giving you an answer is guessing or lying, and you thinking the question is valid is folly. Many have used them successfully for years. Many have bought one thinking they found a cheap solution, and found it didn't work at all.

Not sure why you're talking about CVT if you're driving a manual.

They can be exceptionally gutless if you're in the middle of a negative recal. It can seem like the car lost half its power.

Re: auto stop stalled, then ran like i was dragging a deal elephant
 

These are automobiles not cancer patients. "No case is typical." is what they say at cancer treatment centers but even then the doctors can still give ranges of prognosis to patients.
For example if you take care of a 12V battery and *typically* you get 5 years out of it, if you only get 3 years, well, your situation/part wasn't typical sorry better luck next time.
Take care of your ICE in a Honda, you can *typically* expect 100k miles or even over 200k, but some do less....

Ask around and the only big players in grid chargers are 2 which are regularly discussed on here.... one would think they have at least some data to give them reason to believe the product they produce is worth it even if its just "well my personal car gave me this experience but thats only one isolated vehicle"
HA has a really good rep... but his site has marketing (which I messaged Steve about) that borders on questionable.... that leaves a sour taste in my mouth too...

Maybe it was a recal, there was 0 assist so...


I'm not talking about CVT, everybody else is, and that makes searching for MY issue impossible because all that comes up are the well documented CVT issues with descriptions that appear similar to google and bing algorithms ...but upon human inspection are completely different.

Re: auto stop stalled, then ran like i was dragging a deal elephant
 

No case is typical. It is all dependent on the condition of 120 individual NiMH cells. All packs vary. Anything labeled as "typical" has no real-world applicability to your situation. Every pack is different. Given that yours is "reconditioned" and you had such issues with it in the beginning, it's likely even more uncertain. Who knows what he/she/it stuck in there.

HA has the feedback of dozens if not hundreds of folks on the IC website. I seriously doubt either org has a lot of data to support anything. It's all anecdotal. Furthermore, I don't believe either org is involved in grid charger manufacturing on a full-time basis. They are ancillary to other related businesses. To be clear, this is all speculation on my part.

Here are the only two things you can count on:

1) if it has a dead cell, it won't work.
2) if it doesn't have a dead cell, it might work.
2a) If it works, it might work for a long time or a short time.

Now, if you pull your pack apart and do some detailed testing of your sticks, you can start to give a meaningful prediction... but that defeats the process of grid charging, no?

Re: auto stop stalled, then ran like i was dragging a deal elephant
 

The place where you totally lose me in saying nothing is typical is that the ECU will always trigger when specific conditions are met right?
I doubt that the first time they are met varies a great deal from car to car.

Most often probably just go from slightly above the CEL trigger value, to a range below it. -- and at that point you almost have a baseline to begin working from. -- now as time passes I can see how uncertainty would absolutely increase but for a bunch of vehicles which all hit the same fail criteria I don't think its at all unreasonable to think they are within a predictable range -- so long as other conditions are not all that dissimilar.

I will concede that there is added uncertainty in my particular case.


That said, I missed this line from the HA site
" In over 90% of these cases, our customers report significant improvement when using our Prolong Battery Charger."
Ok, I'll take that, my question about longevity is in the same vein.

And yes it certainly does defeat grid charging. LOL
At that point one would need a stick which had been recouped the same way and has been tested to be behaving the same way for a meaningful refurb I would think.
And that would be difficult without buying a whole pack to sift thru I would think.

Re: auto stop stalled, then ran like i was dragging a deal elephant
 

on the upside I lost out on buying a 500 dollar pack on ebay which had been refurbished to hold a 157V charge.... based on my research since, thats actually not that great.

Re: auto stop stalled, then ran like i was dragging a deal elephant
 

Depends. If that's after months, that's fantastic. If it's a few weeks, still very good. If it's just for a few days, poo.

EDIT: And it also depends on if the 10 tap voltages are close. If they're not, poo.

Re: auto stop stalled, then ran like i was dragging a deal elephant
 

You're assuming that the condition is always from the same root cause. It's not. It can be due to:

a) one cell with excessive SD
b) more than cell with excessive SD
c) one cell with excessive IR
d) more than cell with excessive IR
e) one cell with capacity loss due to voltage depression
f) more than one cell with capacity loss due to voltage depression
g) one cell with permanent capacity loss from degredation (cycle wear)
h) more than one cell with permanent capacity loss from degredation (cycle wear)
i) a & c
j) a & d
k) a & e
l) a & f
m) a & g
n) a & h
etc.

You get the idea?

The car can't see any of the above. It can only see how voltages are responding to current at a given temperature.

Re: auto stop stalled, then ran like i was dragging a deal elephant
 

I'm thinking good poo.... which is still poo. since he said he was reconditioning it again prior to selling it.