I like slowing down really gently so the I-Stop activates before the car has actually stopped, you can the let the car roll gently and get more I-Stop time than stopped time. The little scroll wheel has a little fit!
It’s the small things in life isn’t it!
There are certainly quite a few wrinkles to learn about the ND controls. Another is the light switch, where Auto aligns with OFF when activated!
David
So I found another screen in the fuel economy monitor on the way home. This is more like the type of thing I’d expect to be displayed at switch off rather than the one it does.
Yes, indeed. Talk about blinding with science… You need to carry a ruler or tape measure to measure and read the vertical scales.
David
Mine decided to come out of hibernation and kick into life today 
Mea Culpa.
I lied. Or rather exaggerated. “I’ve told you a million times, stop exaggerating!”
As of Weds morning iStop had extended the range by 79.5 miles.
Whoopy do; that’s 0.3% improvement over 25,978miles. Whereas getting a good smooth journey can get to 50mpg (16% improvement on my overall average) and I’ve seen 57.8mpg on one journey!
Actually iStop was working overtime on Weds as it was raining so the traffic was terrible! On a ten mile journey iStop said it extended the range by 0.8miles, which was all in the last mile, having only stopped a few seconds in most of the journey then iStop operated for 8m19s out of 10m44s stationary.
Intriguingly iStop only works when stopped, in neutral and clutch disengaged. So no riding the clutch - which seems good idea but apparently at odds with modern driving training according to my daughters as you have to be (what seems more like quite aggressively) quick responding to traffic, this confirmed by a friend who is an ADI.
My i-Stop works fine at all times, but when the car is being charged - even with a battery conditioner/Ctek - it prefers the charger to be disconnected very soon after the indicator lights show full charge.
If the charger is left connected for long periods, the system requires about 400miles of driving (as someone previously stated) to begin working again. I think the IBS causes some confusion to the system as to where this “mystery” charge has come from if not the alternator.
Thanks to you all for your patience! I finally found what you knew about all along.
If I understand it correctly, this cute attempt at recommending i-stop tells me that on this journey i-stop had been on for 52% of the time when stopped; and that i-stop had provided me with 18.6km free kilometres of travel over the total course of my travelling since new. I presume that I can reset that to zero somehow, but that can wait for another day.)
And this photo shows the hard to interpret graph of “mpg” in (litres/100 km) against time. Not a very good result, as it was a short journey in start/stop traffic. There is quite a lot of clicking and wheel turning required to switch between these two displays.
At the bottom of the second picture you can see the cheap, but sufficiently accurate battery voltage monitor that I have proudly installed, as mentioned above.
David
Unless you drive in stop-start traffic all the time, iStop saves no fuel to speak of. In over 2 years, iStop in the CX-5, which I allow to work as designed, has saved less than 30 miles, or about a fiver’s worth of petrol. The added complexity and source of faults is pointless. It’s there to get a better WLTP score, that’s all.
By the way, it does use the starter motor as well as combustion to restart the engine (you have to read the Mazda description with a fine toothcomb!). The kick from an uncompressed cylinder wouldn’t be enough on its own, as you can’t burn much fuel in it at all. The compression quickly leaks away when the engine is stopped.
I don’t really care too much about how much money it saves me. I think the reduction of emissions is more important, especially in city centres.
CO2 emissions are proportional to petrol burned, though, so still virtually nothing is saved. In terms of toxic local emissions, it’s also negligible. The cat deals with it very well at idle, with next to no NOx or anything else. NOx and particulates are more of an issue under load (NOx overwhelms the cat and the CX-5 doesn’t have a GPF).
I’m all for reducing emissions but iStop is a drop in the ocean compared to choosing the right vehicle, choosing a good time and route, and driving thoughtfully.
Thanks for all the input final fix dealer suggestion was charge till full, disconnect charge shut bonnet lock doors and leave for 12 hours. 80 miles later istop now ready.
So, we are to assume that the car needs 12 hours to digest and accept the information that the battery has been charged by a (not invented here) device?
:):)
David
I live in a city centre and most of my driving is in stop/go traffic where the traffic lights take a lot longer to change from red back to green. If I drive across town for 25 minutes, the i-stop readout usually tells me that for 7 minutes of that time I was stationary and that during most of them the engine was off. This seems to me to be a good thing, however you evaluate it!
David
Ordered a Suzuki Swift 1.4 “SoftTurbo” Hybrid last week.
Wont get it from Japan till July.
The 1.2s are made in India, but they kept the top-of-range 1400cc turbos to themselves for whatever reasons. Basically a Suzy bodyshell but mechanically a complete departure…even the boot is oddly smaller.
Thankfully it comes with an Istop delete set button.
And a Lane Change delete
And a Nanny State frontal sensor anchor slapper delete setting.
I know when to brake thanks and keep a safe distance.
Our kind of driving mostly excludes built up urban anyhow.
Open A9 up the Trossachs etc.
…as does the Miata. I use this when I have not driven the car for a week or so, so as to ensure that the battery charges all the time. However, it may perhaps be that the Mazda engineers know what they are doing, and that this precaution is unnecessary.
As for the other features, I have got used to them and now that I understand what the various signals are telling me, I find them quite useful. For instance, the lane change warning has taught me to use the “trafficator” more often! But I agree: as soon as I find them unbearable, I shall turn them off. When it comes to braking and keeping a safe distance, I personally dont trigger the warnings; but the most irritating thing about keeping a safe distance is the many other motorists who “kindly” fill in the gap I have left!
David
You can turn istop off permanently but you need to use the OBD port and ForScan software. Lot of info on the Mazda 3 forums. I’m looking to turn auto door locking on which is disabled in Europe. Cheap ELM adapters do not give all the ForScan options, so don’t be tempted to get a £20 one.
Which do you recommend?
David
Some people have had success with cheap ones, others, like me, haven’t.
ForScan recommends some in the chart here
This one for Windows
UPDATE ON i-STOP RESETTING
As you (may) know, if you use a Battery Minder on the MX5 with i-Stop, it really doesn’t like it.
To mitigate, do not put charge leads across the battery, positive to battery + post is OK but negative to ground on the body somewhere is recommended. However, this did not work for me as i-Stop stopped working (again).
This time I also got a “Battery Management Malfunction” warning light and a little yellow triangle along with an i-Stop Not Working message.
After using the battery minder, battery voltage was 12.57v. It was new 12 months ago.
Before, I had used instructions I posted above which I found on the web but this time, it wouldn’t clear the messages so I investigated further and found a Malaysian video that showed step-by-step instructions. Although it wasn’t an MX5 that was being cleared, the instructions are almost the same.
I will post a link to the video below, but here are the differences I noticed.
After reconnecting the negative terminal and waiting 30 seconds before reattaching the sensor, I shut the bonnet (unlike the video instructions). This is because the MX5 has a bonnet switch that tells the car it’s in maintenance mode and it stops i-stop from working (sensible when you think of it, a mechanic will not want to be working on an engine that keeps stopping!).
Secondly, in the video, it says the i-Stop light turns green - on my MX5 it is orange or off. Read “i-Stop off” instead of “i-Stop flashing green” in the video.
Otherwise, it all reset perfectly and a short drive and i-Stop was doing what it should do - whereas using previous instructions I’d found, it could take a couple of hundred miles before starting to work again. I believe the secret of the success of this video is disconnecting the sensor plug from the voltage sensor on the (-) battery lead allowing it to reset.
