Coastal EV Mod

I've had the Coastal EV mod installed on my car for a couple of months now and use it on almost every trip I take. I consider it $50 well spent. But recently I had an experience where it refused to engage for several trips.

Here's the scenario: I was doing an experiment on the way home from work yesterday where I stayed in EV mode longer than usual. I knew there was a long hill up ahead and I wanted to see if I could get to the top of the hill in EV mode and then regeneratively charged the battery going down the hill. It was a great plan. Unfortunately, the hill was not long enough or steep enough to give me back much of a SOC and I wound up getting home with only 3 bars of charge. Well, at least I tried.

So I wasn't surprised in the morning when the car didn't go into EV mode after I started it (well, I *was* surprised until I rememberd my failed experiment). Only I didn't get the usual "3 beep" refusal notice - I got nothing but the sound of the ICE starting up. Strange.

I drove my errand and watched my mileage average take the expected hit as the ICE recharged the battery. By the time I got to my destination the SOC was a solid 6 bars. Cool, I though, I'll EV part of my way home. Only once again it refused to engage and once again I got no audio signal of an EV request refusal.

This scenario repeated itself for the next two trips - no EV mode even though the SOC was well above 4 bars. Finally on the fourth trip I called for EV mode and it engage like nothing was ever wrong.

Has anyone observerd anything similar to my experience? I was beginning to think I had a faulty Coastal unit but now I'm wondering if the car's computer was 'punishing' me for abusing the feature.

 

Update: The mod stopped working again this morning. I couldn't get it to engage for two trips so I opened up the mod area and looked around.

I checked the two wire taps and they looked solid. I superstitiously jiggled the wires, reinserted the plug and started the car. EV wouldn't engage. I shut things down and pulled the plug again, this time focusing on the pin that got inserted for the mod. Looked good so I replaced the plug powered-on the car and tried EV mode. Worked, and kept working for the rest of the day.

Sounds like I may have an intermittant contact on the pin. We'll see how long it continues to work.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hdrygas @ Apr 3 2006, 07:58 PM) [snapback]234493[/snapback]</div>

Oh, I'm already hooked on the car.

Thanks for the suggestions. I tend to agree that the pin is intermittant and I will make an attempt to reseat it ASAP.

I'll also check out the monitors you suggest. You can never have too much information, right?

BTW, the EV-mod is still working.