Three problems related to vehicle shudder have been reported for the 2005 Honda Civic Hybrid. The most recently reported issues are listed below.
Several months ago, I notice my car would shudder/ judder when it starts to drive/go. Then I read online that it is happening to quite a few cars from 2003 to 2005 experiencing this problem. I bought a extend warranty (7 years) but the Honda dealership will not honor anything anymore. I recommend there just be a recall on this issue. It's dangerous situation. . Read more...
A friend was driving us back home on the highway at speeds of 55-65 miles per hour, getting on an off ramps. She is an experienced driver and it was the first time she had driven my car. She told me that the steering wheel was very wobbly, the car was shaking and she felt she had no control over the vehicle; she had trouble steering. I had several incidents after that when I had start-up/judder vibration and extreme grinding when accelerating from a stop. It felt like the car was slipping out of gear. Honda determined the cvt transmission was bad; it was classified as slip/judder in Honda's service bulletins 07-049 and 07-050 but I never received a recall notice. Honda paid 50% of the cost of replacing the clutch in September 2013 but the severe acceleration/slipping problems continued and within a week of having the clutch replaced I sold the car. I had bought it used with 28k miles on it; I sold it when it had 41k miles (I had driven it only 12k miles in six years and took a big loss on the sale). I was afraid I would have a terrible accident in it as it was absolutely unsafe. When I told Honda I was still having these problems after the clutch replacement they told me to take it back to the dealer again; this had been four months of dealing with cvt transmission problems and I had spent enormous amounts of time on trying to fix a known Civic Hybrid defect so I traded in the car.
When accelerating quickly from a stop, the car makes a huge grinding noise--heard mostly in the front end. When accelerating slowly, no noise is heard. The car also slips horribly on wet or slippery pavement when accelerating from a stop. I have had the dealer say "this is a normal sound" when it failed when they tested it (I have recorded this in my files at the dealer when it was under warranty) and also when I brought it to an independent garage. They found nothing wrong with any of the front end parts and diagnosed it as an internal problem that they couldn't find or fix.