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Idle stop off permanently

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#22 ·
Ts1ngta0 said:
I picked up a 2017 TLX a couple weeks ago and would definitely be interested in this thing. Not being able to disable the auto stop/start bothers me.
Click to expand...
You CAN disable auto start/stop (button on the shift module). But if you want to never worry about it and turn OFF that feature (without interaction), follow @Crashmaster thread here:
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Idlestopper - The end of Auto Idle Stop

As the original owner of a 2015 TLX Advanced 3.5L purchased new, my biggest downside of the car was the Auto Idle Stop. I detested my car shutting off and then automatically turning back on. I found this slight delay almost dangerous in many situations, not to mention I believe that turning my...
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#23 ·
I know about the button, but it is tedious and I often forget until that first stop. I should have said 'permanently disable', as in the settings screens. It won't matter in a few days though as I have an Idlestopper on the way. :)

Thanks for the reply Gary/
 
#24 ·
First thing is that there’s no rocket science to idle stop. When you don’t want the engine to shut off, just don’t push the pedal down all the way. It’s that simple. Second thing is idle stop is a good thing to have. We don’t need to idle our engines for 30 minutes a day (equals ~ 180 hours a year or 7.5 days). That is a hell of a lot of fuel saved. It’s a lot less carbon dioxide emissions (for you americans who take off their catalytic converters it’s a lot less carbon monoxide). And, it’s a lot less wear and tear on your engine.
 
#25 ·
In my opinion: I would qualify that idle off is a good thing for the manufacturers and regulators, but NOT a good thing for the consumers.

Idling your engine (modern fuel injected vehicles) will not cost you much when idling. Keep in mind that you are only using enough fuel to turn the engine and torque converter. There is no appreciable load on the engine that uses more fuel. Most fuel is used when trying to move your 3700 pound TLX vehicle from a stop or a hard acceleration.

The real reason we have an idle stop system is so that the car manufacturers can legally gain in the fuel consumption tests. These are very important numbers for the manufacturers and regulators. Unfortunately the tests are not really a representation of real day driving. Rarely will anyone get the stated MPG as advertised. One important and large part of the test is the amount of fuel used when the car is stopped. In the city test, almost half of the test is done stopped. This gives a very large disproportionate of time the engine is not running, hence idle off. This is the true reason we have that feature.

Let’s talk about heat soak for a minute. What happens when you have been driving your vehicle on a hot day and then it shuts off for 60 seconds or so? What do you think happens to all the aluminum parts, starter and even your oil as it sit boiling in the engine? Then rinse and repeat this 30 times a day.

If you have been on this forum as long as I have you have seen the numerous threads of: Start Stop Failed to Restart. Almost Got Into Accident when Stop Start Failed. Etc. Etc. Do you want to be one of these statistics? Not to mention, there is an inherent pause when the vehicle re-starts: meaning if you are trying to avoid an accident or need to move quickly, there is about a 1 second pause. There has also been threads about how our AGM batteries fail all too quickly. Does starting your engine 20 to 30 times a day as opposed to 2 or 3 times a day have any cause for early failure of your battery and starter? I think it does.

I think the advantages of disabling the Engine Idle Off outweighs leaving it on. Especially since it wasn’t really designed for consumer safety or cost. That’s why I use an Idlestopper on all my cars.
 
#26 ·
Here’s where we disagree. Heat soak happens when you reach a steady state temperature and all parts eventually reach their quiescent temperature. Sitting still, idling in stopped traffic adds more heat to the engine bay than it can remove. The mean temperature of everything keeps rising until you start moving fast enough to dissipate the heat being added from combustion. When we remove the combustion, we remove the input source of additional heat. This is not friendly to turbocharger bearings, but everything else is just fine waiting, dissipating heat by convection until the car starts moving again.

The waste of fuel while idling is well known and so is the added air pollution, especially in more built-up urban areas. Where air quality is already bad to begin with.

The bottom line is that americans resent not having control over this. That is why they put up a stink. They think their constitutional rights to waste as much fossil fuel and pollute the atmosphere shouldn’t be infringed upon for any reason. Enlightened people are not resentful. They appreciate that this helps people now who have pulmonary diseases breath with fewer problems, and that fossil fuels will be conserved for future generations.

Crashmaster said:
In my opinion: I would qualify that idle off is a good thing for the manufacturers and regulators, but NOT a good thing for the consumers.

Idling your engine (modern fuel injected vehicles) will not cost you much when idling. Keep in mind that you are only using enough fuel to turn the engine and torque converter. There is no appreciable load on the engine that uses more fuel. Most fuel is used when trying to move your 3700 pound TLX vehicle from a stop or a hard acceleration.

The real reason we have an idle stop system is so that the car manufacturers can legally gain in the fuel consumption tests. These are very important numbers for the manufacturers and regulators. Unfortunately the tests are not really a representation of real day driving. Rarely will anyone get the stated MPG as advertised. One important and large part of the test is the amount of fuel used when the car is stopped. In the city test, almost half of the test is done stopped. This gives a very large disproportionate of time the engine is not running, hence idle off. This is the true reason we have that feature.

Let’s talk about heat soak for a minute. What happens when you have been driving your vehicle on a hot day and then it shuts off for 60 seconds or so? What do you think happens to all the aluminum parts, starter and even your oil as it sit boiling in the engine? Then rinse and repeat this 30 times a day.

If you have been on this forum as long as I have you have seen the numerous threads of: Start Stop Failed to Restart. Almost Got Into Accident when Stop Start Failed. Etc. Etc. Do you want to be one of these statistics? Not to mention, there is an inherent pause when the vehicle re-starts: meaning if you are trying to avoid an accident or need to move quickly, there is about a 1 second pause. There has also been threads about how our AGM batteries fail all too quickly. Does starting your engine 20 to 30 times a day as opposed to 2 or 3 times a day have any cause for early failure of your battery and starter? I think it does.

I think the advantages of disabling the Engine Idle Off outweighs leaving it on. Especially since it wasn’t really designed for consumer safety or cost. That’s why I use an Idlestopper on all my cars.
Click to expand...
 
#27 ·
You bring up good points and I think the bottom line is: It’s your car and you can use idle stop or not – for whatever reasons you believe.

Good job!

Crashmaster


#11 said:
Here’s where we disagree. Heat soak happens when you reach a steady state temperature and all parts eventually reach their quiescent temperature. Sitting still, idling in stopped traffic adds more heat to the engine bay than it can remove. The mean temperature of everything keeps rising until you start moving fast enough to dissipate the heat being added from combustion. When we remove the combustion, we remove the input source of additional heat. This is not friendly to turbocharger bearings, but everything else is just fine waiting, dissipating heat by convection until the car starts moving again.

The waste of fuel while idling is well known and so is the added air pollution, especially in more built-up urban areas. Where air quality is already bad to begin with.

The bottom line is that americans resent not having control over this. That is why they put up a stink. They think their constitutional rights to waste as much fossil fuel and pollute the atmosphere shouldn’t be infringed upon for any reason. Enlightened people are not resentful. They appreciate that this helps people now who have pulmonary diseases breath with fewer problems, and that fossil fuels will be conserved for future generations.
Click to expand...
 
#28 ·
Goawayidlestop said:
Hello all! I am a long time lurker of this forum but never registered to post before. I am a Honda technician with over 10 years experience and I have been working on a device (figured it out now) that will automatically turn off the auto idle stop every time the vehicle is started. This device would be placed under your console and connected to three wires under your console and that’s all that’s needed for install. The reason I’m posting this is to find out how many people would be interested in a device that did this on their vehicle. I mostly hear complaints about auto idle stop as it’s an annoyance or as the vehicle ages we are seeing a lot of problems with the vehicle not restarting after an auto idle stop. I can make quite a bit of these devices if needed, I was just trying to put a feeler out there to gauge interest in this idea. You can reply to this post or message me and let me know if you are interested. If enough people are interested I can make a lot of these devices and would be able to sell them I’m guessing on some other platform or website.
Thanks for reading!
Click to expand...
I would buy one today, tired of putting on defrost or setting passenger heat to HI.

Thank You

Ian
 
#30 ·
I like the idea of the idle-stop feature but the reality is that it doesn't work very well. I have had numerous times where my 2015 TLX vehicle refused to start right away once I lifted my foot off the brake (once it nearly caused an accident while my wife was driving the vehicle). And the system is also hard on batteries. Insteas of selling the vehicle like my wife wanted to do, I decided to kill the system permanently (because my wife doesn't always remember to push the off button and I don't like systems that decrease the reliability of my vehicle without an appreciable benefit). Of course you can unplug the sensor from the battery but then you get an annoying warning on the dash (that is not wife-friendly). Since I know the sensor measures battery voltage and won't work if the battery is low, I tried inserting resistors in the wires between the sensor and the battery. I started with lower resistance but what appears to work pretty well is to take two 1/4W 20 ohm resistors in parallel and solder them into the wires on both sides of battery. Bit of a pain in the butt to do because the wires are tiny so I had to figure out how to hold the resistor leads on the relatively fine wires. Turns out you can twist the resistor leads together and then wrap then around the wire before you try to solder and that seems to hold things in place. So fairly straightforward if you have moderate DIY skills and if you ever wanted to, you could always remove the resistors. Bottom line is that for about $0.50 in materials I disabled the idle-shutoff feature (of course, you have to buy resistors in bulk so it will probably end up costing you $5-6 to get 100 of them but if you have some in stock then you are golden). I suspect the same thing could be done by changing programing in the vehicle but that is more complicated and would take a fair amount of trial and error so I decided to keep my solution technically simple. I will update this post if it turns out I need to increase the resistance for some edge case (seems unlikely but time will tell). And if anyone else tries this, let me know if also works for you.
 
Discussion starter · #31 · (Edited)
StevenearChicago said:
I like the idea of the idle-stop feature but the reality is that it doesn't work very well. I have had numerous times where my 2015 TLX vehicle refused to start right away once I lifted my foot off the brake (once it nearly caused an accident while my wife was driving the vehicle). And the system is also hard on batteries. Insteas of selling the vehicle like my wife wanted to do, I decided to kill the system permanently (because my wife doesn't always remember to push the off button and I don't like systems that decrease the reliability of my vehicle without an appreciable benefit). Of course you can unplug the sensor from the battery but then you get an annoying warning on the dash (that is not wife-friendly). Since I know the sensor measures battery voltage and won't work if the battery is low, I tried inserting resistors in the wires between the sensor and the battery. I started with lower resistance but what appears to work pretty well is to take two 1/4W 20 ohm resistors in parallel and solder them into the wires on both sides of battery. Bit of a pain in the butt to do because the wires are tiny so I had to figure out how to hold the resistor leads on the relatively fine wires. Turns out you can twist the resistor leads together and then wrap then around the wire before you try to solder and that seems to hold things in place. So fairly straightforward if you have moderate DIY skills and if you ever wanted to, you could always remove the resistors. Bottom line is that for about $0.50 in materials I disabled the idle-shutoff feature (of course, you have to buy resistors in bulk so it will probably end up costing you $5-6 to get 100 of them but if you have some in stock then you are golden). I suspect the same thing could be done by changing programing in the vehicle but that is more complicated and would take a fair amount of trial and error so I decided to keep my solution technically simple. I will update this post if it turns out I need to increase the resistance for some edge case (seems unlikely but time will tell). And if anyone else tries this, let me know if also works for you.
Click to expand...

I would be concerned about tapping into or messing with the battery sensor. I’d think it would have some negative effect on the battery as well. You are basically tricking the pcm into not idle stopping because the battery reading or load percentage is changed with your resistors. The car now thinks the load percentages are too high or the battery voltage is too low to perform an idle stop. The battery may get overcharged using this method however because when the pcm sees that the battery voltage is not correct or coming back into specs it’s constantly trying to fully recharge the battery but now since it doesn’t think the battery is fully charged it’s constantly sending extra voltage and amperage to the battery from the alternator ALL OF THE TIME and I can’t imagine that would be good long term. That’s my 2 cents at least
 
#32 ·
I have to speak up against this idea. Auto idle stop isn’t mysterious and it’s not part of any conspiracy, so I suggest getting used to it. The thinking man (and woman) will realize the system is easy to control when you genuinely don’t want it triggering, such as in city driving when traffic is actually flowing, but stop and go. The people who have trouble with technical features such as this, LKAS, LDW, traction control, ABS, air bags etc... should have thought twice before they bought or leased their TLX. Those people are in denial, and fighting something they will never win, because these features are rapidly becoming standard on most new cars. Perhaps those technophobic people should be driving a 1970 Bug. Just a thought ...
 
#34 ·
Goawayidlestop said:
I would be concerned about tapping into or messing with the battery sensor. I’d think it would have some negative effect on the battery as well. You are basically tricking the pcm into not idle stopping because the battery reading or load percentage is changed with your resistors. The car now thinks the load percentages are too high or the battery voltage is too low to perform an idle stop. The battery may get overcharged using this method however because when the pcm sees that the battery voltage is not correct or coming back into specs it’s constantly trying to fully recharge the battery but now since it doesn’t think the battery is fully charged it’s constantly sending extra voltage and amperage to the battery from the alternator ALL OF THE TIME and I can’t imagine that would be good long term. That’s my 2 cents at least
Click to expand...
It used to be that the battery was constantly charged and batteries were fine. Now the battery is rarely charged to full. Fully charging your battery isn’t going to hurt it and mainly it is not fully charged to improve fuel economy and I am confident my battery will last longer than batteries of people that have not disabled idle autostop. But if you are concerned or if you don’t mind idle autostop then you don’t have to make the modification. My hack is for people that hate idle autostop, not for people that love it 😀
 
#35 ·
Goawayidlestop said:
Hello all! I am a long time lurker of this forum but never registered to post before. I am a Honda technician with over 10 years experience and I have been working on a device (figured it out now) that will automatically turn off the auto idle stop every time the vehicle is started. This device would be placed under your console and connected to three wires under your console and that’s all that’s needed for install. The reason I’m posting this is to find out how many people would be interested in a device that did this on their vehicle. I mostly hear complaints about auto idle stop as it’s an annoyance or as the vehicle ages we are seeing a lot of problems with the vehicle not restarting after an auto idle stop. I can make quite a bit of these devices if needed, I was just trying to put a feeler out there to gauge interest in this idea. You can reply to this post or message me and let me know if you are interested. If enough people are interested I can make a lot of these devices and would be able to sell them I’m guessing on some other platform or website.
Thanks for reading!
Click to expand...
I would love a device to override the idle stop. How would this modification affect the vehicle warranty? Thanks.
 
#36 ·
There are numerous companies/individuals already producing what you are proposing. I installed one from a company www.idlestopper.com and it was a very easy plug and play connection (about a 30 minute install). I even did a write up here on this board. Search for it if you want to read it.

As for how it would affect warranty, it might only if you are trying to get something covered that your idlestopper affected. Honda/Acura cannot void your warranty because you installed this device. I've had mine for over a year and it works perfect. It did take me about 2 months to stop automatically hitting the idle off button on my console. It really became a habit.
 
Discussion starter · #37 ·
MrMoo said:
I'd say make it plug and play. I'm sure it will cost a little more, but people will be willing to pay and you would a lot less emails from users having issue with install.
Lastly, what might be best is to make a youtube video on how to install it...you can also advertise that people can buy them from you on that video.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the suggestions from before and I am glad to say that they are now full plug and play with oem connectors! Install videos up too 👍🏻
 
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