Hello, all

I am fairly new to cars and just recently bought a 2007 HCH. All was good until yesterday, when my IMA, CEL, and battery light all came on. It seemed like the battery wasn’t charging and the engine began making strange noises and jerking. The car also struggled to accelerate. I looked into buying a new battery from bumblebee and went to O’Reillys to check the codes to confirm it was indeed the battery that was failing. The obd2 showed no codes. I talked to the bumblebee representative about this, who told me that sometimes the scanners they use can’t read IMA codes. Knowing that, I found one that other people had used for their hybrids, the centech, but it again read no codes. I decided to simply erase the codes and see if they would pop up again after a drive. To my surprise, the car was no longer making strange noises or jerking and seemed to function normally again. I could also see that the battery was charging and the auto-stop as well. Has this happened to anyone before? Like I said, I don’t really have any mechanical experience and this is my first car. Any input helps. Thank you!

 

Generally speaking, consumer grade code readers are not particularly reliable for hybrids. I have experienced many issues where one code reader will work fine on one car, but on the exact same make and model with the same problem - no codes.

Consistent with Bumblebee's assertion, there are many codes that NO consumer grade reader can pull.

The next time you have issues, try taking the car to Oreilly. If that doesn't work, you can blink the codes:

https://99mpg.com/mikestips/readingtheblinkcod/

or take it to a professional.