Car loses power when goind up a hill. I will be driving and the car will have a loss of accelaration / power. When pressing the gas pedal there is no increase in rpm either. Also noticed mild burning brake smell. I am suspecting the clutch? Any informed ideas on this subject???
Thanks for any help you can provide.

 

If the clutch is slipping, the RPM would increase without the road speed increasing.

How about dragging brakes?

 

Thanks for your reply. I will check the brakes today to see if they are heating up. I don't seem to feel any braking when coasting... I have an appointment to have the car checked out tomorrow.

 

Please don't take offense but are you downshifting for the hill? No one told me you had to downshift for a hill when I learned stick and I pressed the pedal to the floor in 6th, resulting in what you described.

Have to check the easy fixes first, right?

 

No offence taken, you must eliminate the obvious first.

Got the car back from the dealership today.

I had a pre- existing condition with the downstream 02 sensor which I have been ignoring and directed them to change it while in the shop. Other work done at my request was oil change, spark plug change and mvi.

The 02 sensor change cleared the code, no other fault found.

They took the car for a drive and could not duplicate the fault. (It only happened twice to me).

They theorized that the Vtech sensor identified particulate in the oil and limited the RPM thereby explaining the lack of power. (Could this be correct? It's one heck of an engine if it can this.)

Drove it home without incident...more to follow should the fault repeat itself.

 

Well, not so much IDENTIFYING particulates in the oil, but the vtec mechanism operates by oil pressure. Low oil pressure messes that up, so it's not some magic on-line oil analysis that's going on.

If it's running on the cam settings appropriate for low-RPM, that would explain lack of power at higher RPM.

 

Thanks. Very interesting, works very much like aircraft I work on, when oil pressure increases the system goes into bypass allowing the aircraft to continue the flight, but is noticed by the ground crew.

One concern I have is the oil only had 7000 km, around 4300 miles, and this happenned. The oil was changed by a local garage. Would the wrong oil weight be to blame? 5/30 vs 5/20? Did the garage actually change the filter??? This has convinced me that dealer service is more reliable.

 

The owners manual says to change the oil filter EVERY OTHER oil change. Is that stupid or what?? Think your shop changed the oil but left in the old filter? That would be according to the letter of the published procedure, so even a dealer might do that...

The older VTEC engines had an on-off switch arrangement. The ECU would energize the VTEC solenoid which allowed oil pressure to activate the VTEC cam followers. If that arrangement was clogged with sludgy oil, it wouldn't work right & that would trigger the check-engine lamp. That's probably what your mechanic was talking about.

YOUR 2003 i-VTEC is more sophisticated than that, it also has progressive control of camshaft timing. Also controlled by the ECU, but operated by oil pressure. That never screwed up on MY 2003, so I never had to go through troubleshooting of it. But there must be some consequence of oil sludge mucking things up.

If it becomes common, maybe you should do a couple of really short oil changes (with new filters...) to clean things up. Then use good oil. Open the valve cover to evaluate whether YOUR engine has any kind of a sludge problem. Maybe use a coathanger to root around inside the oil pan (looking for sludge) next time you drain the oil.