I just bought on 08 Lancer last weekend (first car debt! whee!) and it's exhibiting some weird behavior. I'll accelerate and coast for a few seconds, and everything seems fine. Then it feels as if someone taps the brakes: there is a small sound (kind of a *whump*) and the car doesn't roll quite as fast. It's almost as if the car is trying to charge a battery from the wheels being motion. The car only has 220 miles on it. Is this a normal occurrence? It's not stopping normal operation or anything, it just feels weird. Cars shouldn't slow down without hitting the brake. It's a '08 ED CVT. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

it sounds like your car is behaving normally. I have a manual, and if I run up to redline or engine brake going down a loooooooooong downhill grade I'll feel the engine braking kick in a little more in stages. This occurs because of two different reasons:

1) for lower emissions, the ECU opens an air by-pass valve to prevent fuel vapors from condensing on the inside of the intake runners and as a result making the engine braking fuel mix really rich. This allows the left over vapors to burn off. Engine braking isn't as strong in our car as it is in older cars that do not allow air to by pass the throttle body. So, by comparison our car takes a long as time to "rev down" from high RPMs.

2) The MIVEC system is changing the valve timing in an attempt to predict what you're going to do next. The longer you're in engine braking mode the more you'll notice the MIVEC system altering things, and the more engine braking you'll get and you'll feel it in miniature steps.

As for the "whump" you hear, I'd check for loose objects in your car. I hear no such thing when I'm engine braking with my car.

I have live about half way up a mountain and have a long *** downhill straight (2 miles) that I go down every morning. It's 30MPH in the residential section and 35MPH in the commercial section. In the 30MPH section, I accelerate to the limit and then I engine brake (coast) in second gear the entire way. A few seconds after I start engine braking, I can feel a minor "jerk" (almost as if someone tapped the brakes), and then the car maintains speed going down the hill.

On flat ground, I can feel these little "jerks" at a couple of different stages. If I'm "coasting" in 2nd, I can feel the first kick in around 45mph, and the next is around 30 MPH.

In your CVT, if you're in "Sport" mode (do DE's have sport mode?), the car will behave like a manual does. So, taking your foot of the throttle will result in the car slowing down due to engine braking.

 

Well, that seems to match everything perfectly. My driving is almost 100% city, I get up to 2nd or third then either coast or brake, depending on traffic lights. So everything makes sense from that perspective. No sport mode here, just the 5 speed automatic.

And, to be honest, I have no idea what engine braking is. Or MIVEC. So I'm off to wikipedia to do some research. Car ownership is fun. Thank you for your reply!

 

If you have an ES CVT, then I don't think you have 5 gears. I own the same trim, and all you have for forward is Drive and Low. Drive is what you use normally, and it has an infinity of gears (Continuously Variable Transmission, and Low is equivalent of 1st gear in a manual gear box).

The engine brake that you feel when you take your foot off the gas pedal it's there on purpose, and it helps your car to engine brake on snow or ice when using your service brake or Low gear would be hazardous. So it does the engine brake (or motor brake) for you without the hassle of a clutch like in a manual gear box.

Yeah, I know it's annoying sometimes when you want to let your car coast and it slows down quicker than a regular automatic. But the regular automatics usually have more gears that you can manually change to engine brake though.

What I do to overcome this issue is keep my foot on the gas pedal slightly pressed or go ahead and pop it in neutral.


What I wrote above is just the explanation that I found for myself when I had the same question a while back. So judge yourself if it makes sense.

 

@master.axu. Indeed it does. I used to pop my previous car (a 4-door 99 Sunfire) into N whenever I was going downhill, just to ensure the constant unrestricted kinetic motion.

Then it died of transmission problems. (Well, not quite, it's just that the cost to fix the transmission would cost more then the car itself. Well, that and a misfiring cylinder.) I'm a bit wary of messing around with the gear while driving now. However, I feel much more comfortable having an understanding of what is going on underneath the hood. I wholeheartedly believe that my prior car-ignorance killed my sunfire. (There were lots of early transmission-is-dying signs, I just ignored them. To my own demise.) I'm going to have to check into this CVT thing; I've never heard of it before, but it sounds like a pretty interesting concept. It seems that automatic cars these days have a lot more options, rather then simply not having a clutch and gearshift. One of the other cars I test drove was a Mazda3, which apparently has a almost-sort-of-manual mode that lets you shift gears by pressing down on the gearshift. Car technology has certainly come a long way since `99.

Cars are simply amazing devices that work well even when you don't care about them. But when you stop and learn the internals, it seems like you can at least double a cars life, at minimum.

 

yeah....my CVT 08 GTS does this too...at first I thought it was my tranny being defective because my jetta's tranny did this after it went bad...but kind of differently....the VW slammed into the next gear while the lancer is slowing itself down and the pulley system creates a weird feeling when stopping!...at least i hope this is normal haha