"We will see what happens next week when the new rack is installed."

Well, what's happening with the installation? It's been 11 days!

 

So an update on the steering rack replacement.

After 3 trips to the dealer, the new electric steering rack has been installed.

After a day of diagnostics, a replacement rack was ordered. The rack came in, and during its installation it was discovered that several installation pieces of hardware (some special screws and washers) were not available, so the old rack was reinstalled. We refused the car and got a rental instead and the car sat for 4 days. The missing parts came in, the rack was installed and we got to car back. Then we found that the steering wheel was not on straight. It was off about 3 degrees when the car was driven straight. So the car went back a 3rd time, and unfortunately I had to tutor the tech on the importance of having the steering wheel on straight. He did not get it because he checked the alignment and it was correct, ergo there was not a problem. It took much explaining to him to get the issue resolved.

As a side note in-between visits 2 and 3, I performed the B2 maintenance on the car, and when it came time to take the wheels off to rotate them, I found that my impact wrench would not loosen the front wheel bolts, they were on plenty tight, and certainly more than the 80 ft/lbs specification. I used my torque wrench to take them off, and I had to set it at 145 ft/lbs. to get them loose. Obviously they had been put on with an air wrench.

When I quizzed the tech who put the rack on if he had taken the wheels off, he acknowledged that he had, and that he had used a 80 ft/lbs torque stick on his air wrench to put them on. When I told him that they were on at 145 ft/lbs., he was astonished, because he trusted his tool and his air wrench. He did not have a clue that he was using defective tools. I would suggest to everyone that has a dealer rotate your tires to check to see that your lug bolts are not over tightened. As you know over-tightening lug bolts can lead to disk brake rotors warping.

So after all of this, the steering is again fine, but my auto-stop feature still does not seem to work most of the time. When the car comes to s stop, the revs will drop like the engine is turning off, but will pop back on just before I fully stop (3-4 miles per hour).

The battery charge is 7 bars, the climate control has the a/c off, and the fan on low-low, the ambient temp is 70 degrees, and the car is fully warmed up.

There are no warning lights on, so I am still at a loss as to why the auto-stop does not seem to want to work most of the time.

ideas?

As a final note, I have opened a formal case on the car with AHM.

 

My HCH will do that before the ICE has warmed up. Is your temp getting high enough? Maybe your themostate is not closing? You for sure have a problem!!! I run my car with the climate control on auto.all the time. Even on days over a 100 D , and you know the air is on ,it will still auto stop. I normally set it at around 80 on very hot days. In the winter mths. I set the temp about 70 deg. Hope you find the proble, H

 

Yesterday, I did a search of auto-stop discussions, and the one that caught my eye was about putting the car in neutral as it comes to a stop and engaging auto-stop.

I had actually never tried putting the car in neutral and rolling to a stop, so I tried it, put the car in neutral and the car went into auto-stop at 7 miles per hour just like it should at a stop.

Then I put it back in gear, and from that point forward the auto-stop has worked exactly like it should, even with a SOC of only 3 bars!

This morning I drove the car all morning, and auto-stop worked perfectly at every stop. I now wonder what got set (or cleared) that allows the auto-stop to work now?

BTW, you can really tell the effect of regenerative braking by stopping the car in neutral. It is like stopping on ice with the car in neutral.

 

That is a good find Gary.

You know what?

I would suggest you unplug the 12V battery for roughly 10 minutes or so. Then plug it back in and go for a 15 minute drive (mostly to get your SoC to read correctly again).

During this drive you should also see if a AS works as expected.

Cheers;

MSantos

 

That is wierd!!! H

 

From my experience, footwear plays a significant part in whether or not the autostop
functions as we hope it will.

Last spring I switched from high-top shoes (boots?) to crocs. I noticed an immediate
improvemet in FE, more than could be accounted for by the seasonal increase in temperature.
They have become my driving shoes of choice. Not sure what I'll wear this coming winter.

I also generally downshift prior to stopping, a lifelong habit. Sometimes I forget to shift back to "D"
before the speed drops below 7 miles per hour and this negates the autostop. Then I swear at myself.

Best wishes for a steady foot.

 

That reminds me of the Honda salesman who told me (when I was trying to explain how important it was for me to "fit" well in the driver's seat being that I am short)...that it depended on what type of shoes I was wearing.
He also tried to talk me out of buying a hybrid.
I did not listen to him on either count.

 

I find I get the best fuel economy when I don't wear any shoes at all.

 

So since I last wrote about the auto-stop problem, and how it had seemed to disappear after the steering rack was replaced, the problem came back and persisted.

Last Thursday, I took the car back to the dealer for diagnosis and repair. Of course by the time I got it over there, it was on one of its tangents and working perfectly. I persisted, and had written up a description of the problem, how it was intermittent and the conditions in which it would happen and what clues I had of when it would happen looked like.

They kept the car overnight, and over the next 3 days, started to see the issue pop up, and then compared my car to other 07 Hybrids, both used and new off the lot. By Saturday, they were convinced that there was an issue, they just did not know what it was.

On Monday, the technician finally escalated the problem to the Honda Tech line, who gave him a list of things to check. One item was to check for faults in the HVAC subsystem. Sure enough there were 2 faults, B2990, & B2998 which deal with the air-conditioner compressor control module. This module is back in the IPU case behind the back seat with all of the other IMA control modules. This module was finally replaced today, and several items were re-calibrated, and now everything seems to be working as advertised.

The dealer, Capitol Honda here in San Jose was very professional and accommodating during this repair, providing us with a rental car, etc.

The only thing that I don't understand is why the tech did not first do a dump of all of the module fault memories. It appears that initially he only looked at the engine and transmission fault memories. There are fewer than 20 modules, and HVAC is certainly a important part of the IMA system. If that one had been dumped last week, this whole episode might have only taken 2 days instead of 7 days.

So I keep my fingers crossed that our HCHII is finally back up to 100%.