i-MiEV Cuts Out After Hitting Bump

[JoeS]

Last summer a good friend of mine in Los Angeles bought a 2012 i-MiEV (with replacement pack) after visiting us. His wife glommed onto it and loves it!

Recently, she has had three instances of going over speed bumps and the car cut out on her. She had no problem pulling over and restarting the car and continuing on her way. Needless to say, this has made them a bit nervous.

I share their nervousness because, unlike me, she's not the type of driver who hits a speed bump at 40mph.

My initial suggestions -

* clean and re-torque the 12v battery terminations
* check the tire pressures
* take a photo of the dashboard the next time this happens

Hate these intermittents as in this case it could be anything from a loose connector to a relay or contactor getting jarred.

If it continues, I guess I'll send him my i909 and see if he can figure out how to get it to read any error codes.

Anyone have any suggestions?

 

[PV1]

Loose 12 volt battery connections would be my first guess. Beyond that, make sure all the fuses are pushed in all the way (remember the cold-weather radio problems some of us had?).

 

[JoeS]

PV1, thanks for reminding me about the fuses.
I've also offered to swap cars with them so I can troubleshoot at home ... dang, I just checked, still not enough CHAdeMO stations to take a direct route to SoCal (but looks like I could do it going down Highway 99). Those ElectrifyAmerica stations are somewhat expensive, and I see that yet another place along the way is charging $0.59/kWh + $2.95 hookup fee and it's only 25kW! :twisted: https://www.plugshare.com/location/94737
Love my Tesla for long distances!!

 

[sandange]

Looking backward to my ICE driving days .
Had a thought .....
I remember a similar situation where the owner had a huge amount of keys attached to the cars ignition switch.
Over time & many miles the rattling keys damaged the ignition switch and the car car would periodically cut out.

 

[JoeS]

sandange, thank you, and I've passed it on. If my friend doesn't have any success I'll probably hop into the Tesla and go down there and play with it... after first contacting the previous owner just in case it had been an issue in the past.

 

[pbui19]

A while ago, my motorcycle died right after hitting a pothole. Apparently the shock loosen something in the 12v battery and sorted it out thus overloaded the generator/alternator. I would also check the 12v health.

 

[phb10186]

I had an issue with the battery on the Imiev just like this when I stuck an old (but still good) Insight Gen2 battery in the IMIEV when the original IMIEV one was toast. I had to use terminal adaptors, as the Imiev battery has the larger type 12v battery terminals, while the Honda (same battery otherwise) has smaller terminals - using terminal adaptors was fine, but the thing just needed tightening a bit.... been fine since.

the only other stuff I would just check if that doesn't solve the problem, and the fuses look OK is the stuff that draws higher currents, namely the seat heaters, AC fan and AC compressor. Seats, make sure they are off, AC fan, check its smooth and nothing is blocking its free rotational movement, and the AC compressor, just that it's working well. Everything else I can think of is less straightforward. If you have a dash cam (or any other stuff) jumpered off one of the main fuses, that's also an obvious place to go - as would any wiring adaptations done aftermarket.

Even though it's easy to jump to a more complex electrical issue, the 12v side of things is fairly standard, and is certainly the place to eliminate all possibilities initially.

Probably wouldn't go a miss to just check the coolant level under the rear motor cover too - but unsure if this has a 'low level' indicator, and assume it wouldn't lead to a total loss of power either - though if there is and it's low and the coolant is sloshing about over bumps, who knows.

 

[JoeS]

Thank you all for your suggestions. So, my friend cleaned up the 12v battery terminals and reseated all the fuses and removed a bunch of junk off his wife's keychain and we'll see what happens before proceeding with phb10186's suggestions ... so far, no news is good news.

 

[phb10186]

Thank you all for your suggestions. So, my friend cleaned up the 12v battery terminals and reseated all the fuses and removed a bunch of junk off his wife's keychain and we'll see what happens before proceeding with phb10186's suggestions ... so far, no news is good news.

Joe - I should probably add that if any of the stuff I mentioned overloaded it would likely blow a fuse, especially the AC stuff - though difficult to say if there is internal overload protection on those motors respectively (which there may well be, not studied any wiring diagrams on the i)... hence my suggestion. If that was the case. then you could potentially have, for example, the AC compressor stopping, perhaps shutting the car off - even though the fuse doesn't blow. However, I cant see that total loss of power would be intelligent by design there, so I am less drawn to those items.

That said, you are absolutely right to check the simple stuff first, as the 12v battery is very likely to be the culprit.

One last bit of anecdote, as Sandage also reported, years and years ago I had a Mazda Protege (323), which had a faulty ignition switch that was causing both intermittent total shut-off and intermittent engagement of the starter while the engine was on, and that was a very low cost fix. That could be another thing to look at if all else fails, I had fun isolating that one - but it does switch the entire 12v side on and off, so may be worth a look.

Ben

 

[meier]

I know this is a bit old -

But i have had the car cut out on a few occasions ... It was because of the way the key is designed, it was "bent" downwards - and my knee hit it - turning it off ... after that i always insert the key the other way around so it cant bend down ( does this make sense )