My wife has a 06 HCH that we bought from an individual owner January of last year. It's been running fine, until Jan 5th of this year. It seems the IMA battery is degrading, but that shouldn't cause the issue we are having. Randomly, the instrument panel goes bonkers, lights flashing like a christmas tree. That's odd, but the worst part is, at this time, power steering and brakes fail. The engine is still running, but very low RPMS. Almost dead, but if you gas it, it revs back up.
I turned the IMA battery off (factory switch behind back seat) and obviously it drives very odd in that mode, but the panel didn't go nuts. A week later, I turned the battery back on, and it seemed to drive 'as normal' for one whole day before acting up again.
After research, it seems that you should be able to drive the HCH with a failing/failed IMA battery mostly normally, but no accel. assist.
Could this be a bad fuse somewhere? [Which? I've never seen a car with this many fuses..] Bad IMA controller board? Just a bad ground somewhere??
I'm pretty good with mechanics...and computers, but this is a different ball park for me...
Additional Info:
- ~143,000 Miles
- Prev. owner 'replaced' IMA battery at unknown time frame (via dealership)
- From above, I would hope it also received the firmware update
- Lil'battery has been tested OK by O'Reilly's and charged up just in case [Lil, it's the size of a powerwheel's battery, sheesh..]
I'm going to be looking more into any corrosion on the Pos/Neg leads on their respective grounds, but they look ok at a glance.
Any help at all would be appreciated. Thanks.