No READY. P1A15 error. Condenser charge timeout.

[civjdh]

Thanks Kiev, I'll head over there and see what they say. Will pop back in with (hopefully) a resolution.

[DBMandrake]

Simon (username: DBMandrake) is the smartest guy in Scotland for solving problems and he knows how to open a pack and change cells because he did it. There is an EV forum at SpeakEV with lots of UK and EU folks, that may be able to help you find somebody local.

I'm flattered. I saw civjdh's post on SpeakEV but after a few days nobody else had replied to it as there's really only 2 or 3 of us on that forum who have experience fixing these cars and I don't think any of us has dealt with P1A15. (I certainly haven't)

I've done a cell swap on my car, also an onboard charger repair (as you know) and more recently had to replace a failed vacuum pump with a modified after market one, however after the second major failure in 6 months and looming rust underneath and on brake pipes (enough for an MOT test warning) I'd had enough so I traded my Ion in on a 2016 Leaf before something else went wrong! That's why I haven't been poking my nose in here much lately.

I'm only about 30 miles from civjd and would normally try to give a bit of help unfortunately Coronavirus is really blowing up here again and we're actually going into a 2 week partial lockdown tonight where we're not even supposed to be driving between different council areas for anything other than work. Crazy times, and not a good time to be repairing a problematic car - another reason why I took the jump and traded the Ion in for something a bit newer and (hopefully) more reliable as the onboard charger failure happened only 3 weeks before the nationwide 6 month lockdown we had - quite a close call. I could have been without a working car for a long time had it failed a few weeks later.

[kiev]

i hope the Laef works out well for you, they are nice cars--almost luxury compared to the triples. i fixed one up for my daughter and she is loving it.

Take care, let's hope we can all survive this virus and lockdown mess.

[DBMandrake]

i hope the Laef works out well for you, they are nice cars--almost luxury compared to the triples. i fixed one up for my daughter and she is loving it.

Take care, let's hope we can all survive this virus and lockdown mess.

Thanks.

Yeah there's a lot to like about a 30kWh Leaf, it does Kinda feel like luxury compared to the Ion, especially in the heating and insulation department. The doors all have a thick layer of carpet underfelt behind the door cards and it seems to be draught free as well making it feel warm and cosy, and once warmed up (or preheated) the heater is just ticking over unless its near freezing outside. On top of that the heat pump and instant heat ceramic PTC heater means it can put out a lot of heat quickly without much power. Timed plugged in preheat is luxury in cold weather too, and remote preheat via the smartphone app is nice when not plugged in. (As the timer only works plugged in)

Probably the biggest disappointment with the Leaf for me is the Leather seats while more comfortable than the park bench seats in the Ion (which were extremely uncomfortable for me even with a seat cover) still aren't very comfortable as they're somewhat hard and the side bolsters in the base are hard, pointy and too close together and nip into the side of your legs, so I've been experimenting with different seat covers to mitigate that.

But other than that it's going really well. Summer range in my Ion was down to 50-55 miles and 30-35 miles in winter. On the same commute I was getting 107 miles range on the Leaf back in warm July weather and am still getting around 90 miles in near freezing (0C) conditions last week, so nearly 3x the winter range of the Ion - and that's with the heater turned up to a warm toasty 22C vs using bare minimum heater in the Ion and layers of warm clothes..

[Sandrosan]

Yes it does go to the bottom of the lower right corner of Lic's photo, to Connector CN4, labelled "VDC". The red and blue wires are from the (+) side of the pack and route to pins 1 and 2; the white wire is from the (-) side of the pack and routes to pin 5.

CN4p1 then routes to CN5p1, labelled "VDC-R", which is a red wire running to the large silver-colored resistor on the heatsink, ~50W power resistor, 510 Ohms. The other end runs back to CN5p5, thru a white wire. This is the quick bleed resistor for the large "condenser", the big black 800 uF capacitor in the top plenum. CN5p5 routes to the Drain of the big FET2; the gate is driven by the output of optocoupler PC7; and the Source is connected to pack (-) thru CN4p5. This RC combination has a time constant of about 0.4 seconds and would drain the big cap in about 1.2 seconds.

In parallel from CN4p1 is a voltage sensing circuit running from CN4p1 to a series string of six 100k resistors and a 6.8k that route to the hybrid chip board pin 1 labelled "VH" with the return on pin 2 labelled "VI", that connects back to pack (-) thru CN4p5. This is a voltage divider to drop the high voltage down by a factor of ~90: for 360 Volts at the condenser, the voltage at the Hybrid is about 4 Volts.

If any portion of that sense hybrid circuitry were not working properly, then it may be that the HV is not reading properly.

Your test to remove the jumper wires at the pack buss bars seems to indicate a problem down below on the main board in the bottom plenum of the MCU. Did the car go to READY when you ran that test? i would guess not, but you did prove that the bottom circuit is pulling down the pack voltage at the "condensor" and throwing the P1A15 DTC.

[edit: corrected some hasty notes from yesterday and added details of voltage divider and fast bleed resistor; and sketch of circuit]

sketch of circuit

Hello to everyone,

Sorry Kiev, are you sure about the value of the 3 small capacitors in parallel? Just 5 pF each or 390nF like the French guy mentioned?
(C227, C229 and C231 surface mount capacitors as 390 nF). Thanks a lot and this forum is formed by great people!

[kiev]

Thank you for looking at this in detail, it's always good to have someone else to check the drawings.

My finding was from a measurement on the board using smart tweezers; with all the parallel paths it is not likely an accurate value.

i haven't removed any parts to measure separately, but for sure i would be happy to change the values to a better measurement. 3 parallel 390nF gives nearly 1uF, so that is likely the design target and the three were used to provide some redundancy?

[Sandrosan]

Thank you for looking at this in detail, it's always good to have someone else to check the drawings.

My finding was from a measurement on the board using smart tweezers; with all the parallel paths it is not likely an accurate value.

i haven't removed any parts to measure separately, but for sure i would be happy to change the values to a better measurement. 3 parallel 390nF gives nearly 1uF, so that is likely the design target and the three were used to provide some redundancy?

Thank you Kiev,

Yes I also think the target design was for 1 micro F and there are 3 of them in parallel for some redundancy. However I would have use more serious capacitors for such delicate detection circuit The problem as you know is that disconnecting such small capacitors for measuring we likely damage them.
In near future I will should a chance to measure something on that board and I report the results, but it will be an iOn not an iMiev.