Quick Background:
Car is a 2008 Civic hybrid with just under 90K miles.
Purchased from my sister who was the 2nd owner.During her ownership, the battery was replaced due to the IMA light coming on and it being under warranty (at the Honda dealership). As far as maintenance, basically she just did whatever the dealer said to do, which involved 1 CVTflush and typical oil/filter intervals. Outside of that nothing has been done. She put 50-60K on the car during ownership.

She never reported fantastic mileage with the car, usuallyaround 33ish mpg. She also said the car is “super slow and dangerous to passother cars with on 2 lane roads”. I thought she was just exaggerating, however, I found this to be true, this is the SLOWEST car I’ve owned to date !

In Washington, I live on a hillside so driving down to thefreeway is easy and charges the car but going up the hill back or over to my parents’house from our house eats up the battery life quickly. It’s one of the few cars that I feel like I have to go 50 mph at the bottom of the hill to reach my turnat 35 mph without pinning the throttle and eating up my MPGs.

One issue I discovered upon getting the car and researchingtires is the dealer just put some random passenger tires on it! I have since put on some BS Ecopia’s (at 39psi) which made the mileage jump from 32/33 to 35without any additional changes.

Questions:

1. Last tank I got 36 mpgs (indicated on dash,calculated to 39 with miles/fill gallons). This took a lot of effort. I do amix of freeway/city driving on my commute and end up with some stop and go onthe way home. I always use cruise control, even at lower speeds to attempt tomaximize mileage. I coast like crazy and try my best to get the auto/off towork to my advantage. For those getting 40 mpg plus, are you constantly in astate of “fuel saving driving” techniques or do you just drive like you would atypical car? I feel like this car takes MAXIMUM EFFORT to get MPGs. I drivevery conservatively and still feel it takes above and beyond to do. I let mywife drive it once for a few miles and it dropped 3 mpgs in that time and tookmore or less the rest of the tank for me to regain it!
2. Is the car only charging when the green bars areindicating? I only ask because I get the weird charge issue when my bars dropto 2, it begins force charging, then sometimes shortly after without much timein “the green” the bars march up to 8 or 9. Typically if I don’t let it getthat low they take much longer to charge up. Is this a state of charge issue orbattery degradation issue? Can someone explain the 3x reset thing to reset thestate of charge? I know its removing 12v batt cables but don’t know what the 3xpart involves
3. The little 4 cylinder is a pretty noisy/rattleysounding engine, especially on startup. I keep it in the garage so it’s notsuper cold or anything. I haven’t investigated further, does anyone else noticethis? Any oil adjustments that help? I’m running Mobil 1 0w-20.
4. I’ve ordered everything to do the CVTdrain/fill, outside of this and filter/oil changes, should I be doing any othermaintenance soon?

 

1) See #2

2) Nothing matters but #2 concerning mpgs. What you are describing are recalibrations. It's a symptom of an imbalanced or very low capacity IMA battery. The forced charging at 2 bars indicated robs you of your mileage. You essentially have a non-functional IMA battery that makes mpg WORSE than if it didn't have one due to the forced charging.

The 3X 12V reset thing is to clear the computers so they don't know the battery's state. Once reset and started, the car's response is to apply a charge at idle and assess the battery's response to compute SoC. Doing this 3 times forces the car to charge the battery to "full" (as full as it can get in the car which is likely around 80-85% SoC).

Given that you don't have an IMA light, you could likely recover the battery with a grid charger/discharger from Hybrid Automotive; however, it will be something you need to continue doing periodically.

3) You likely need to do a valve adjustment and/or your motor mounts need to be replaced.

4) Search for the A, B, 1, 2, 3 "maintenance minder" codes and make sure everything is done. If it has only had 1 CVT change in the last 50-60K miles, it needs a flush. 3X drain and fill with a week's worth of driving in between. The 3 qt replaced is only a little more than 1/2 the capacity. You need 3 changes to get 90+% fresh fluid. Continue with CVT fluid changes every other oil change (about 15K miles).

Also, people tend to neglect these spark plugs because they are butt-rapey expensive, and there are 8 of them. Get only the NGK or Denso OEM spec long-life laser iridium unobtanium plugs ($14 each at Oreilly - a little cheaper online).

Keep your expectations low. The 06-08 HCH2 has the second worst hybrid battery ever made. I have personally owned 15 BATTERIES (for 2 cars). Of those 15 batteries, I was able to build 3 good ones. The remaining 12 battery's worth of subpacks are not suitable for use in any vehicle.

If you're curious about the WORST battery ever made, 09-11 HCH2.

Good luck,

Steve

 

Thanks for the reply Steve.

I was afraid you were going to say something along those lines. So here's what I'm working on now.

just did a drain/fill of CVT today. Fluid didn't look too bad honestly but I will do it again next oil change (I'm about half way there, so about 3k). Also did a quick TB clean and idle recalibration, I think the idle is much smoother now for sure, way less fluctuations with loads!

I listened to the engine while running today, honestly, the noises I'm hearing seems to just be loud injectors. I inspected the upper and lower motor mounts and didn't find any evidence of wear on them and the engine doesn't shake or anything, think I'm ok there.

lastly, after discussing with the wife, I pulled the trigger on this bad boy:

https://www.ebay.com/i/222644312511

hoping it was worth the extra coin to get the fancy discharge unit. The light bulb method seems kinda goofy but whatever haha! I'm sure I'll have questions after I get it hooked up and going through some cycles.

my main goal with all this is for it to be in good running condition for my wife to drive in a few months when our other cars lease is up. I just don't want her to end up getting like 30mpg and complaining of it lagging around all the time. I know she won't try and hyper mile it as much as I do but would like it to perform more or less the way honda intended it to.

 

You linked a $500 battery from ebay.

 

That's so random it keeps linking me to that

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg587/bluezreef/6C8477A1-1C8E-41F8-81C7-704CDF67461B_zpsgwfeegcw.png

 

a user on here had it posted on eBay. It's the delux hybrid auto kit with discharger

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/222620103455

 

Nice. That's barely more than the value version with the bulb discharger.

 

It’s been a long time since I posted, figured I’d give an update.

i did a full battery conditioning with my Hybrid Automotive grid charger and intelligent discharger. Drain and fill on trans, all filters swapped, TB clean, and oil change. Also got a new set of eco tires thaf I keep at 40psi max. Dealer did my Takata airbag recall also. My last full up was the best MPG I’ve had to date, 44 MPG! This is mixed driving as I commute and get stuck in slow and stop and go on my drive home at a minimum if not on my way in some days as well. The system hasn’t done a single recall since the reconditioning. Battery lasts much longer, easy to tell on hill climbs that basically depleted it before it will only use 2-3 bars.

big shout out to SKeith and Hybrid Automotive for all the help, this can literally never got above 35mpg prior to this, super happy with my results.

 

Sounds good.

44mpg for mixed is pretty typical for an HCH2 with a good battery.

You need to be on the watch for the recalibrations. Those are a sign that you need a grid charge. The first may be a fluke, but the second means you have real imbalance.

Moving forward, start with quarterly grid charges with a single discharge once a year to the 106V level. Let the frequency of recalibrations dictate a more aggressive process if necessary.

Additionally, having experienced the extremes (constant recalibrations vs. a "like-new" battery), you will likely get a "seat-of-the-pants" trigger where you notice the car just isn't performing like it should. Note that spring and fall are the best mileage months due to the mild weather and lack of A/C use. Winter and summer tend to be the worst - winter needs heat from the ICE, and the battery has limited function below 50°F. Summer needs A/C to keep it cool.

And keep those Bridgestones between 38-40. If you can tolerate the harsher ride, going to the max pressure on the sidewall is entirely acceptable.

Good luck!