[woodrowisu]

I had an issue with my Pacifica Hybrid in a local car wash. I figured this issue would be encountered by most owners at some point so wanted to make a little public service announcement.

This car wash is the type that pushes your vehicle through the wash so it’s necessary to have your vehicle in neutral. At the end of the wash, the vehicle rolls off of the line and is then driven by employees to a drying bay. As I was watching the van finish the process, it suddenly locked the wheels and “jumped”off the rails. The employees jumped in and disengaged the parking break before any damage was able to occur.

Assuming it was a safety feature that caused the parking brake to auto engage, I looked through the owner’s manual and found a safety feature called SafeHold. Here are the details from the owner’s manual (page 290

SafeHold is a safety feature of the Electric Park Brake
System that will engage the park brake automatically if the
vehicle is left unsecured. If the automatic transmission is
not in PARK, the seat belt is unbuckled, the driver door is
open, the vehicle is at a standstill, and there is no attempt
to depress the brake pedal or accelerator pedal, the park
brake will automatically engage to prevent the vehicle
from rolling

I haven’t gone back to the wash yet but when I do I’ll follow the temporary bypass instructions and see if that fixes this issue for me (page 290

SafeHold can be temporarily bypassed by pushing the
Electric Park Brake Switch while the driver door is open
and brake pedal is pressed. Once manually bypassed,
SafeHold will be enabled again once the vehicle reaches
12 mph (20 km/h) or the ignition is cycled to the OFF
position and back to ON again.


If anyone else has encountered this before and knows better instructions, please let me know.

Hope this helps!

 

[woodrowisu]

Page 290, not sure why my 0 got turned into a smiley face...

 

[mickeyboat]

If you do not activate the electronic parking brake feature, does this problem occur? Another reason not to use the electronic parking brake IMHO. Here is a case of too many safety features can get you into trouble.

 

[woodrowisu]

If you do not activate the electronic parking brake feature, does this problem occur? Another reason not to use the electronic parking brake IMHO. Here is a case of too many safety features can get you into trouble.

The van was ON, placed in N, and no parking break was engaged. The van rolled freely through the wash and only had the breaks applied at the end. I'm assuming that is due to the end of the process has a tiny decline so the vehicles exit the wash and can be driven by an employee. I'm not sure what difference it would make it the van was placed in N, turned Off, and sent through the wash.

 

[mickeyboat]

I am sure those folks at the car washes making minimum wage or less know exactly how to deal with this kind of issue as more and more cars use an automated parking brake (smiley face). I have had our van through just such car wash several times with the slight downgrade at the end and they have never had a problem and they have a window to watch as my van rolls through. The electronic parking brake has never once been activated since I owned the van. Only issue they have had is once when I forgot to leave the key fob in the van so that when they were through vacuuming they could drive it to start the washing.

 

[krkdnose]

I'm not sure what difference it would make it the van was placed in N, turned Off, and sent through the wash.

You can't leave the car in N and turn it off, can you? I thought that it automatically switches to P if you do that.

 

[Norbert]

I've had a similar problem. Going through a car wash I set the tranny to neutral. At the end when I was supposed to drive off the conveyor belt, I was in a semi panic as the shifter wouldn't shift to drive! All my other cars you can shift back and forth from neutral to drive with no problems. I had to step on the brake then it would allow me to shift to drive. Of course all the while the car behind me was getting closer and closer!

 

[EVNoob]

I encountered a similar issue with the car wash. in this case, I was inside, setting the car into N and turning off the Auto Wipers, and Park sense. After the wash, it appears you must place the vehicle into Park before it will go back into Drive, and to do that, you must stop fully before it will work... that was fun...

 

[Bluesfox]

I've had a similar problem. Going through a car wash I set the tranny to neutral. At the end when I was supposed to drive off the conveyor belt, I was in a semi panic as the shifter wouldn't shift to drive! All my other cars you can shift back and forth from neutral to drive with no problems. I had to step on the brake then it would allow me to shift to drive. Of course all the while the car behind me was getting closer and closer!

Yes, had the exact same occur with our vehicle. Posted in some other thread here. Scared the &^$# out of us at the time. Needed to place foot on the brake before it would shift out of Neutral. We do not need to perform this step in our Sienna. Not saying one is better than the other, but certainly different approach. Like you mention, makes for a close call with the car behind.

 

[cue003]

Interesting. This will impact how many use the car wash. I wonder if the 2018 odyssey has to have the whole depress brake to switch to drive or reverse from neutral? I know they don't have the requirement to shift into park in order to open the sliding doors so maybe they thought about the car wash stuff during their design.

 

[PacificaLimited]

FYI: You do *NOT* need to actually ENGAGE the brake to shift to Drive - I go through the carwash routinely and all you need to do is lightly TOUCH the brake, enough that your brakelights go on... then the knob will freely rotate to DRIVE. You can even feel it by slightly attempting to rotate clockwise (obviously, it won't let you) but you'll feel it RELEASE as you gently touch the brake pedal and it drops into drive.

... at least it does for ME, anyway...