Thank you iShift and goodbye

A week ago I got an offer it would have been silly not to take.

Our lovely Honda Dealership called us out of the blue to see whether we'd be interested in a special offer they'd put together to sell off the final GE08 Jazz cars they had left in stock.

They were up front with the reason to make the offer - the new 2015 Honda Jazz GE09 is coming out soon.

On one hand our iShift is all paid for, had taken us over a faultless 135000 miles, we'd just got the valves adjusted at a cost of £150 and I wanted to get an idea of how far a well looked after Jazz would go. On the other hand we could have a delivery mileage CVT Jazz for £12260 including £2000 trade-in for our iShift. That's a saving of  £2390 off the list price. Throw in 3 years of 0% APR contract lease finance with a monthly outlay the same as what we saving into our Next Jazz/car rainy day savings account all meant that changing was the right thing to do.

It was still an emotional day when we exchanged cars. Beyond servicing, one set of front brake disks and a few sets of tyres, our iShift had a rear spring changed and that's it. Reflecting back on that change I'm happy to say  I think the spring change was due to a combination of lack of washing of the suspension components after winter road salting.

How well did Shifty drive after all those miles?

That's a tricky question to answer. I found as the mileage increased the more "problems" I heard. It's with great respect to my Dealer that they listened to my reported problems and checked the car over finding nothing at fault  on almost all occasions. The spring rattle and the CV joint clicking being the only real problems. The CV joint wasn't changed. Rather it was just repacked with molybdenum grease and that happened tens of thousands of miles back.

I did notice a change in cruising quietness after about 110K miles. The car tended to transfer more road noise through to the body. At a guess (and believe me I'm no expert) I guess the rubber mounts at the tops of the suspension struts were wearing out. Also the gear shifts made by iShift could occasionally make a clunking sound. Usually this occurred when deceleration was quicker than usual down to me not anticipating the road ahead. Typically I'd brake harder (iShift downshifting for engine braking usually meant I'd only really need to apply the brakes as the car nearly had stopped ) and the downshift to the lower gear would "clack". I'd not hear that in 99% of driving so I didn't bother reporting it to the garage.

I'm one if those bad people that warm up their engine before driving. I'd do this to make driving easier when the car engine is cold. Honda's use of fast idle on a cold engine (initially as much as1500'rpm) means that you tend to fight against the engine when negotiating parked cars etc.

It's okay when you've got a manually operated clutch to slip but when it's computer controlled it can be tricky. Wait until the engine cold warning lamp goes out and idle speed is down at a normal 700rpm and it's all fine and driving is easy.

Also I noticed after about 120000 miles that if I did drive away from cold the first gear upshift was a tiny bit crashy. It think the synchromesh was a bit sluggish in operation when the transmission oil was cold. I think it would be the same on the manually operated transmissions - they're basically the same gearbox albeit the iShift has one extra gear - 6th.

By waiting until the cold engine lamp extinguished, 53 deg C, driving was fine and first upshift change crash only happened on coolish days, less than 5 degs C. And on those days if I waiting until then engine was hotter, say 80 deg C, the crashiness didn't happen.

In summary then iShift was a really reliable transmission. Partnered with our unhurried driving styles and semi-rural commute regularly gave us 58 miles per imperial gallon in UK winter and 62 MPiG in summer. One summertime long holiday drive a few thousand miles ago  gave 68+ MPiG. For a 1.4 normally aspirated petrol engine, I find that impressive. It's a fuel consumption figure I don't expect to ever see in our new CVT.

Thank you Shifty. You were fantastic.