My Accord Transmission died while driving

[phasornc]

I was driving on a local street and all of a sudden an Power System (or something like that) warning came on, accompanied by a thud! I could still drive at low speeds but it felt like driving over the warning bumps coming up to an old toll booth. The car seemed okay over 40mph, but it electric mode was gone even though I had some charge still in the battery.

Short story I went to the dealer, $18,000 for transmission plus battery. Fortunately there are 56,000 miles on the car. Looks like I get to see what Honda does with that 5 year/60,000 mile powertrain warranty.

I'm wondering if they are really going to fix it or offer me and incentive to get out of it?

 

[Jamphev]

Ouch! I though the battery for covered for 8-10 years. Good luck, keep us posted

 

[phasornc]

Okay that problem turned out to be simple. I had 2 bad ignition coils on cylinders one and two. Bought myself a wifi OBD2 reader and found the errors. It was nice enough to tell me which cylinders were problematic. Honda wanted something like $20 per spark plug and $250 per ignition coil and they would only do all 4 coils. This came out to something like $1300. So, I just bought 2 coils online for approx $112 and then a fresh set of spark plugs and a new spark plug wrench. Total damage around $260 and I got a nice spark plug wrench and an OBD reader and iOS software (I bought the OBD Fusion app ... it works well)

Still worried about coils failing at less than 60,000 miles

 

[phasornc]

if you check out my other post, you'll started having limited battery life and weird battery charge status issues around the same time. However, for the previous year I barely used the gas engine at all. 8 mile commute to work... charger at work ... 8 mile commute home, stop at grocery store, pick up kids. Sometimes I could go weeks without every having the gas engine turn on ... [sidenote my life didn't feel that boring at the time] So yes it's strange that the coils would fail, this is my fourth Honda and I've never changed a coil.

After detail my battery problems it sounds like cells were just going bad. I have incremental not gradual loss of range... like about 2.5 miles at time. 15 - 12.5 - 10 and now 7.5 miles on a good day. While I know the hybrid electric system should by isolated from the 12volt electrical system, could a sudden drop in power have triggered some kind of overload in the gas engines electric system?

I know nothing about this ... but just speculating ... my dealer certainly won't know...