Traveling downhill, with no throttle input. The car is regenerating power as I coast down the hill. I hear the engine turn on and rev up. I glance at the Scangauge and see RPM is at 3045 or so. MPG is still 9999 and SOC is 77.
View 13 RepliesHow the synergy drive is working. Why when coming down on a long down hill (mountain pass for example) the car stays at high RPM ? That usually happens when battery is charge to its MAX of 80%.
View 19 RepliesI have a 2005 Honda Civic that was making noise on the front passenger side wheel and what sounded like the front driver side strut clanging (bottoming out) when I hit a bump, sharp right turn heading down hill, or hit a pot hole (small or large). I brought it in to a mechanic to diagnose the issue. They told me I had a bad wheel bearing and also needed new struts. They quoted me a price on parts and labor that I thought was too high, so I checked a few other mechanics to make sure that I needed the work and try to get a better quote. All said the same work needed to be done, so I eventually had them repaired.
My car seems to ride better and I don't hear the noise from the front passenger side wheel anymore or the noise from the front driver side strut, however, there is now a clunking like sound coming from the front suspension (left and right sides). It sounds kind of like something might be loose. I can hear it over slight bumps, and when turning whether I'm going slow or even coming out of a parked spot.
Is there something else that may need repair after having all this other work done? Have I caused a "needed repair chain reaction" or something?
2005 Ford Escape, 4-cylinder with ~75,000 miles. I experience engine misfire when driving on the highway after 1+ hours that only occurs when I'm going DOWNHILL. The misfire will last between 36-41 seconds and then goes back to operating fine. Doesn't occur on every downhill and doesn't occur on steep downhills during in-town driving. The diagnostics always show the error for cylinders 1 and 4. The following repairs have been made:
Replaced all 4 spark plugs and ignition coils, replaced fuel filter, fuel injectors cleaned and tested showing no concerns.
Misfires reoccur during next long drive 6 months later, compression test performed and failed. All four fuel injectors replaced and one connector replaced.
Misfires reoccurred again during next long drive 4 months later.
I am stumped as to why the problem keeps happening, why it only occurs when going downhill, and why it seems to last for a fairly consistent length of time.
I have noticed a couple times now on my Automatic S that the engine keeps revving an additional 1,000 - 2,000 rpms when I am braking going down a hill. Is this normal? It doesn't occur on flat roads or going uphill, but only downhill. It's almost as if it downshifts when I brake. Not sure if this is normal or not, but it just didn't feel right.
View 3 RepliesV10 - When you shift into tiptronic to brake going downhill, the engine first revs up and then the transmission engages. Sort of an automatic double clutch!
View 2 RepliesI have a 1987 ramcharger with a 318 and auto tranny. I just put a new carburetor on it. The previous owner partially deleted the lean burn system but didn't change out the carb. I put a Carter 2bbl on it. The truck will start fine and drive fine until I try to go down hill, it then stalls. It doesn't do it as much going up hill, but is still a problem then. If I keep on the accelerator it stays running. I cant figure out what the deal is and is absolutely driving me nuts.
View 2 RepliesI have a 1995 Oldsmobile 98 sedan with engine braking problems. It has the 3800 engine (complete with a slight intake manifold leak, as per the GM custom) and low miles. I recently moved from the midwest to the west coast, where this battleship encountered real mountains for the first time on the road trip west. Driving into Yellowstone NP from Cody, Wyoming I encountered a particularly hilly stretch of US highway that had a steep grade and plenty of curves down the hill.
I took the car out of overdrive and put it down a gear to let the engine braking assist. Nothing happened. The car continued to speed up with no assistance from the engine, even in 2nd, which should have held me at around 45-50. To test this on the next big drop, I started at the top from a full stop, and in first gear. I should have been walking down the mountain, but instead the car kept speeding up to around 40 and 4000 rpms before I relented and shifted up.
Is this a transmission problem? Or would the lack of engine braking downhill but no transmission problems when tooling around town elsewhere indicate something else? Maybe a vacuum leak?
Right now my husband and I are driving from San Luis Obispo Ca to LA and back in a day. We noticed right before the grape vine on the I5 that the engine was really working, even on flat ground. Looked at the battery and it was purple. We have been driving for about 2 hours averaging about 70mph on mostly flat land. The battery finally charged itself on the big downhill of the grapevine (I5) but we're noticing we're running right through it again unless we start to break more. So, it's not getting any recharge during driving, just breaking. Can it be the generator? What causes this?
View 5 RepliesI'd like to stay in EV mode when driving my sons to school, but we live on top of a hill, and with a full charge, no matter what speed I go down that hill, the ICE always comes on. I've tried braking to limit my speed to 35 mph or 45 mph or just coasting, in which case I get up to 53 mph. It's usually about 60 degrees out and I don't use seat heaters or A/C. Is there anything I can do to stay in EV? I'm guessing the battery gets too full from the coasting and/or braking on the first half of the downhill and that's why it switches the ICE on halfway down. I sometimes wonder if I should use the timer to prevent the battery from charging up all the way...or just drive around the block a few times before going down the hill to "free up some space" in the battery for the energy I will get going down.
View 4 RepliesI've been mostly content with my Prius Plug-in for nearly a year now. But, as a driver very consciously aware of what my car is doing, I have many complaints concerning the internal combustion engine igniting when not needed, or remaining on for far too long. I do my best to work around them, but I feel the need to enumerate my complaints and vent about them. Note I live in southern California where cold weather is extremely rare, and I consciously don't use the heater or AC.
ICE ignites when braking downhill on a full charge. I've heard users say this is necessary because if the battery is full, regenerative braking will overcharge the battery.
ICE ignites if I step on the accelerator ever so slightly too hard. I understand that Toyota claims it needs to use ICE to deliver the extra power to the wheels asked for by the driver, but I just don't believe that. The engine usually simply idles and does not power the wheels at all when this happens, meanwhile the wheels are still running on 100% EV power. I know this because I've become in tune to exactly when the ICE powers the wheels and when it's not. The easiest sign of ICE actually powering wheels is when the accelerator begins to vibrate and I hear the ICE rev up. The second sign is by watching the MPG meter. If you're cruising at something like 50 MPH, and the ICE is idling, you'll see it getting about 80-90 MPG. When it actually supplies useful power, it suddenly drops down to 50 or below.
ICE ignites if the car moves faster than 65 MPH. This seems totally arbitrary to me. For example, it does not matter if you're accelerating steep downhill in neutral, or on a level highway just very slowly accelerating past 65. You can watch the power meter the whole time, and even if it doesn't get anywhere near the (power) section to the far right, the ICE still ignites as soon as you hit 66. In those situations, why does it even think it needs any extra power? And to top it all off, all it really does is idle for at least a minute anyway.
The ICE runs only momentarily, but here's the kicker: If you immediately let go of the accelerator, decelerate to below 65 MPH, or even come to a full stop at a red light, the ICE still continues to run for at least a minute or two. Worse still, it idles for about a minute regardless of speed or power, then suddenly decides that it should power the wheels for a few seconds even if no variables have changed, and it does this for about 30 seconds more before finally deciding to suddenly pop back into pure EV mode. How you work around all of this? Stop at a red light, shut off the car, and restart it. As it powers on, it stays in EV mode, proving to you that it never needed to be sitting there idling in the first place.
Twice now, while going downhill hill (steep grade on freeway) my Prius has revved up to over 4,000 RPMs with the cruise control set at approximately 65 mph. The noise of the engine was my tipoff and I immediately had to turn the cruise control off. This just doesn't make sense to me! Seems like this could be a potential problem for those of us utilizing cruise control!!!
View 15 RepliesI've always been a little curious why the ICE receives fuel when going downhill in B-mode. I've noticed that at times (especially at lower speeds) going downhill in B-mode that the instantaneous consumption bar will be in the 30-50 mpg range at times that I don't think the engine would be receiving fuel if the system were in D-mode.
View 8 RepliesI think that the EV indicator works very strangely on my 2015 Prius. Consider this: I'm driving downhill at 40mph and the EV indicator is on. As my speed increases (coasting the whole way - using neither the accelerator nor the breaks) and crosses 46mph, the EV indicator goes out. Why? I saw somewhere in the forums that 47mph is too fast for the motor-generator, and so it switches off --- but my real-time mpg indicator still shows 100mpg, which wouldn't seem to be the case if the Internal Combustion Engine has just kicked in. Why the EV indicator goes out? Should I even care?
View 5 RepliesI drive a 2005 Ford Explorer (automatic) with 84k miles on it. Recently when I was driving on cruise control at 35 mp/h down a hill and applied the breaks to make a turn, the engine completely shut off. The lights came on, the power steering went off, the engine had shut off. I pulled over, turned the key off, turned it back on and it started no problem. I drove it for 3 days without problems (and without using cruise control of course), then I took the car to a shop. They ran diagnostics on it, test drove it, but couldn't find anything wrong with the cruise control or the transmission. I don't think they tested this driving downhill as the shop is not in a hilly area. Tonight, I went down the same road again, 35 mp/h in cruise control, slowed down for the same turn, and the engine shut off again exactly the same way it did before. What this could be?
View 7 RepliesSo our car has performed flawlessly since 2005/135K miles. Still getting 55 mpg in the display in the summer, 45 mpg in the winter. Only issue is traction battery SOC quickly goes to full green when coasting downhill, and 1 or 2 purple bars when climbing. In Colorado, this happens a lot. Within a mile or so coasting downhill the SOC is full green. Question is: should I replace the traction battery? Is there any harm to continuing to experience this behavior? When full green, I realize I am using friction braking over regen braking, have actually felt the crossover from regen to the pads, as the SOC goes full green.
View 4 RepliesMy 07 prius with 190k started shaking violently when going down hill if I press the gas or brake at all is goes a way suddenly, this happens only around the high 40's to low 50 mph range and once at 75, this happened just after my tires where balanced and rotated brought it back they re balanced them and said they balanced out perfectly and the problem still protested. I drive on dirt roads all the time and i hit a big pot hole earlier last spring but the issue just started after the balance a week ago.
View 13 RepliesYesterday was driving my 2008 Prius (75K) down a paved road from a ski-hill (no snow/rain, perfect weather and completely dry road). Not hard driving, 20-30 mph some curves, very smooth road with no potholes, etc. Battery turned all green, its fan initiated and I also rolled back window during this 75 degF day (not unusual to have battery fan turn on in this condition, it's occured plenty of time before). Wasn't braking hard either. Out of know where, I first noticed upon slightly accelerating that I had no acceleration, like the hybrid had disengaged from the ICE, and then check engine, (!), red triangle, VSC light!! At this point, couldn't tell if car was on or off, the wheels disappeared from the main display, although the ICE/electric motors continued to show although there was a red warning top left corner.
It did scare the hell out of me going downhill with curves wondering if I was really still in control of the car. I pulled over as soon as I could maybe 1/2 mile downhill. I then shut car off, waiting maybe 1 minute, turned back on. The VSC cleared I believe, but all other lights continued on. Next, I only knew to drive it to the Toyota dealership. It was odd, as the Prius was now in some sort of weird, pseudo on-state. It had virtually no acceleration, maybe 40 mph after 1 mile and that was it. Drove it maybe 8 miles like this thru town in this pseudo on-state. Pulled into dealership. They pulled codes and found P0A1D-HYBRID POWERTRAIN CONTROL MODULE INFO 1 AND P3000-BATTERY CONTROL SYSTEM. They stated vehicle was found with problem with hybrid control ECU. They cleared the codes and test drove with no issue repeated. That's it. If it comes back I'm told I will need to replace hybrid control ECU.
2012 Prius with 10K miles.
One of the features I really like over the '06 Prius is the ability of the cruise control to hold the set speed on downhills (until the battery fills up and it switches to compression braking "B" mode, but that's a different topic).
After taking it in for the 10K mile service, it no longer engages regenerative braking on downhills with cruise control set. This is on the same hills where previously it would hold speed.
Did Toyota do a software upgrade that disables this feature?
This is just a basic Sentra 2.0L with a CVT, about 80k miles.
I park on a very very slight downhill grade.. very slight.. almost flat.. The car starts just fine, put it in reverse, push the pedal to the floor, engine revs up to about 1500 rpms (I'm assuming it has a limiter on it because it won't go past 1500) and the car sits still. Release the accelerator, floor it again, car moves about 6", repeat a few times and eventually I can back out. That ain't normal.
It does a similar thing when in Drive, except it will actually start moving but very slowly. So slow that I'm afraid I'm going to get T-boned if I try to make a left turn. Once I get up to about 10mph it starts to feel somewhat normal.
Once it starts moving it doesn't seem to have any trouble maintaining highway speeds. The engine might be running a little faster than normal, but to be honest I'm not sure if it is or not. Pulls up some pretty significant hills at 60mph at around 3k RPM.. which seems reasonable.
What it could be? Transmission is still under warranty so I'm hoping it's that.. I don't really have the $ to throw at this thing right now. By the way - it's not throwing any codes or anything.
While driving a mountain road (hwy 17) going downhill this morning I lost power braking and power steering and a got the following error message on the display
TRANSMISSION P LOCK MECHANISM
PARK CAR ON FLAT SURFACE AND APPLY BRAKES
I was able to stop the car on a flat area. I turned the ignition off and then restarted the car and the power steering and brakes came back, but the red triangle remained. I drove to the Toyota dealership and left the car for service.