Just picked up a new 2.0 Gt Sport which has i-stop fitted but it never turns the engine off in stationery traffic. Does the engine need to do a certain number of miles before working or am I am missing something. And yes I have worked out how to use the manual on/off i-stop switch…
Have a read in the manual, it should attribute the stop/start feature working to a number of factors.
I can say with my daily driver (a SEAT) that has stop/start in this weather it would rarely work due to the fan/climate control working overtime so thus it will overide the S/S.
Other factors too like low battery (unlikely in summer) or the engine isn’t up to operating temp, or as above it needs to cool it down etc.
1 Like
It worked on mine from the start. Are you sure you’re following the correct procedure set out in section 4-4 of the Owner’s handbook? You don’t ride the clutch with the car in gear do you? If so it doesn’t work, the car must be in neutral with the clutch up, you re-start the car by putting the clutch down.
Nope. Sit there at traffic lights with nothing touching anything and the engine stays on.
It looks like a return to the dealers may be necessary!
If you dig into the infotainment system there is a page that will give you status of capacitor charging etc, worth a look to see what that’s telling you.
My experience with stop start on my daily driver and a lot of other vehicles of different makes is that he battery needs to be charged to a higher level than you may think. A week of low mileage in city traffic will inhibit the stop start until th battery or batteries are charged to somethng approaching 70%, a good long run of 50 miles plus seems to be required. I once collected a car from a customer who complained that the stop start never worked. On the drive back to the Dealership I wondered why it was so cold. Further inspection revealed that the air con was on max and minimum temp. This was apparently the way the customer always drove the vehicle from new, unsurprisingly the stop start was overridden in order to achieve the required temperature. The customer finally admitted that he liked to be cold even in the middle of winter.
2 Likes
The most common cause of iStop not stopping is the heater being set too hot or too cold. The system will prioritise obtaining the desired cabin temperature over iStop. Try it with the heater fan off.
1 Like
My BMW is as above, however when it does stop/start it annoys me so I always drive in sport mode or switch the feature off.
1 Like
As above I rarely use mine but it came with the car and makes the VED £30 which is a better feature of owning the car
2 Likes
Some interesting comments but my wife’s Ford Focus stops and starts the engine at every pause. Nothing to worry about on battery charge, aircon, heater on or off, steering wheel aligned correctly. Why is it that the Mazda system is so fussy when Ford has a very simple system that just works…
My wife’s last company car, a fabulous VW Scirocco, had one of these start / stop gizmos on it - annoyed the hell out of me, so I got into the habit of just cancelling the thing every time I drove it.
Her present 2016 Mazda 3 has it too - bloody annoying if you ask me. So again, I just cancel it as an automatic reaction every time I start it up.
So if I was the OP, I wouldn’t worry about it. Still, each to his own !
1 Like
Had a rental Fiat 500 a couple of years back with Istop.
I had no idea it was thus for a few miles and then it dawned. Frankly, though I tried to absorb this new technology after a few days I found it intrusive and even disconcerting at times especially at junctions and roundabouts so I consulted the handbook and switched it off. I guess Im old school but if I need the engine to cease, Ill do it. What crossed my mind was the longevity of all the components eg ring gears & starter motor but I assume they are all over-engineered to take it. Just seems nanny state overkill.
2 Likes
They don’t all operate the same way. Mazda’s stops the petrol engines in a precise position and injects fuel and spark in the relevant cylinder to restart it. Some manufacturers use beefed up starters, other use combined alternator/starters where the alternator is driven backwards to start the engine. Most use a bigger/better battery to cope with the extra accessory draw when stopped.
The ‘why’ is answered by the way emissions requirements work and are tested. Mazda says its cars with i-stop use 8% less fuel on the Japanese standard test cycle. Whether they do in the real world is highly debatable I should think.
2 Likes
Another Thing if it’s like my Mazda 3 Stop/Start will not work if the heater control is set to the windscreen
1 Like
I have a 20-19 RF ND Automatic
If I stop at say traffic lights and just touch the brakes enough to stop the car moving forward the i-stop never kicks in
But if I press harder on the brake pedal it turns off instantly
The car is 8 months old and according to the screen that pops up when you shut down the engine I have not saved any trees yet…
Well, the way I see it with our Mazda 3, is that trees absorb CO2, so keeping the engine running will make trees grow!
The tree in ours hasn’t grown either by the way!!
Hi all. My ND iStop has given up, probably because I ran the battery very low over lockdown and then recharged connecting the charger directly to the battery. Lessons learned!
There is a complicated procedure to reset, but has anyone done a reset using the OBDII port?
Thanks
Nick
Just do a long journey. It will sort itself out.