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I hate it, I will from now on be one of those guys in an old car. I hate those guys. God dammit
I just got a car that shuts off when stopped. I hate it. Especially when you stop at a stop sign for a second too long and it shuts off then you hit the gas and it hesitates because it has to literally start the engine before moving.
I have been renting a lot of cars lately. The hybrids do the best job because hybrid. The gas cars can be hit or miss. A jeep renegade I rented did ok except that sometimes it would auto stop, sometimes it wouldn’t. You had to be stopped and the. Push the brake a little harder to engage.
I have a Volvo and if you stop at a pace other than very gentle, it will shut off the engine before you’ve stopped moving. That one is annoying.
Got a newer Volvo as a loaner and the baby hybrid system in them is FAR better. You can’t even really hear it start up. I believe it doesn’t have a traditional starter, you hear almost nothing when you start it for the first time. It just kind of goes from being off to running without any sound or vibration. Very weird but kinda cool.
Each system is a little different, some are not very good, others you don’t even notice.
That feature never affected my driving at all and never bothered me at all. In fact I don’t think I ever remembered that it was a thing after the first week or two.
I haven’t seen one where this can’t be disabled as a setting. Assume you’ve checked? If not imagine someone has found a hack for this.
Some cars, like mine, only allow you to temporarily disable the start-stop system, and it turns on every time you (fully) start the engine.
In my car specifically, if you manually turn the system back on, for whatever reason you have to reach a minimum speed of 10km/h before it works.
My guess is because it has to check again if your car’s state meets all the requirements for it to engage. It takes a combination of factors for the car to allow start-stop to engage (engine temp, battery health, A/C, etc.), and if you just turned it on again after it was disabled, it need to get to a certain speed to be able to recalculate.
It seems unnecessary, they could just have its user-set switch as one of those factors rather than forgetting everything upon disablng it.
You can get a module that disables it, bad news is it’s like $100, but if you’ve decently good with electronics you can diy one cheaper.
At this point my muscle memory simply toggles it off as soon as the engine is on, occasionally I even manage to predict when I have to stop for more than 5 seconds and turn it on in time.
There’s a button in mine that’s like an @ with a capital A. Have to push it every time I start the car, but it stays running until I manually shut off the car.
Lower right, under the radio tuning knob.
I bought a car in December that does this. Literally all you have to do is let off the brake wait half a second to 1 second and it starts right back up not a big deal. Just maybe you know have a slight bit of patience in your driving.
I’m guessing they have a bunch of oil squirters engineered into the design but seems to me that constantly letting oil drain into the crank case while sitting then firing up again is going to cause a short life for these engines.
I’ve only riden in two vehicles that have this idiotic feature but they could both be disabled after the initial startup.
Modern oils and modern cylinder lining makes this a non-issue.
You’re more likely to have a modern car with bad rings as they chase fuel economy numbers. Honestly, a hybrid is a very solid choice anymore. Lifts the burden of the gas engine having to be hyper-efficient and eases the extreme tolerances required to get there.
Shame that there are very few fun hybrids, crazy expensive things don’t count.
Infiniti made an m35h that actually had more power than the gas version and it got better mileage. Granted, it is a porky sedan, but that thing would still haul its fat ass.
Smack the fuel tank half a dozen times with a sledge hammer, the fuel filter is probably clogged.
Can confirm, I just did this yesterday.
Don’t do this. If you unclog the filter the next stop for the junk you knocked loose is the engine.
Fuel filters are cheap and easy to replace.
Fuel filter indeed is not cheap or easy to replace, not on a 96 Sonoma anyways. You either gotta drop the tank, or remove the pickup bed, to access the fuel pump, where the primary fuel sock filter is located.
Not easy or cheap to replace.
Been a while, but this can also work on the starter. Just a suggestion, keep the hammer weight under 2lbs.
Kept a hammer in the passenger footwell of my '89 Volvo wagon for exactly this reason.
No start? Pop the hood, and pop the starter.
Preferably with a rubber head
Oh shit, 1000%!
You just reminded me that I have a rubber mallet, that needs to go in the truck…
Sidebar, would love to do an electric swap on that blazer. Then it could shut off for a whole new reason.
Stop taking pictures of my truck! I’ll get her going again soon…just have to get parts!
Does that actually do anything or is it planned obsolescence? I was under the impression turning off your engine and restarting at a stop wears the starter and it not worth the gas savings. Dealer service centers must be making bank if true.
I don’t think that’s true anymore with modern engines. It’s my understanding that the on / off strain is no longer a limiting factor on engine wear and that the emissions and fuel saving benefits may be mild but are real from a net efficiency standpoint. While emissions savings are probably the greatest, I’m using this primarily to save anything I can with wartime gas prices.
Newer engines use different starter motor technology to reduce starter motor wear and the oil channels are designed to retain oil in the engine where previously there would be a moment of low pressure which you could hear as a slight tinny sound before oil flow.
Source: I’m no mechanic but I’ve dealt in parts for stop-start engines.
Turning on and off increases wear in cars not designed for it. The cars that have the feature have beefy starters, it is a non-issue. And it does save a bit of gas and emissions at red lights, and stopped in traffic, and especially for assholes that leave the car on while their partner goes for a “quick” grocery run.
One of the nice things about EVs is being able to just run the aircon whenever I want, even in a closed garage. I charge on solar, the energy doesn’t matter.
I was thinking about this while driving my hybrid (Hyundai Santa Fe) after watching Technology Connections (and/or Connextras) video about hybrid powertrains.
My car stops its engine when it’s not needed. But then it starts back up so smoothly? How? There’s no cranking. It just goes, already at matching revs.
But then I realized that an electric motor is a starter. Duh.
Really recommend the videos (and channels) for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet.
The hybrid power train really is an amazingly simple thing.
Oh, regen braking? Just as I had thought, it’s basically engine braking. Except when you’re engine braking in an ice car, that energy is all wasted as heat and noise…in electric/hybrid, your motor turns into an Eaton Crank Radio, powered by the momentum of the wheels.
I used to drive ever-so-gently trying to minimize using the gas engine. But he made it so obvious that that’s the wrong way to do it. All the energy that the car uses comes from gas, and it either gets used to push the car forward, or to recharge the batteries…and charging the batteries is a conversion step with its own implicit losses.
My lunati race cam 👁️🫦👁️
Yeah, but how many degrees of overlap?!
It happens to the best of us which is why I now only use Weber or Holley depending on the application
