Now MR BEAN won’t charge!

So last week the final payment on my 5 yr, 0% financing clears the bank and I’m waiting for the title to arrive free and clear while gorging on information here in Portland at the 11th annual EV Roadmap conference, and the wife sends this..

Place your bets, gentlemen, since according to my wife it goes into ready mode but lights up all the warnings and will not charge (but for one of three attempts and for less than a minute), I’m leaning towards a failing cell, perhaps a charger issue, but will pull codes and double check the 12V when I get home.... Also ordered an i-carsoft 909 clone of the MUT3.

For those of you who can't see it, the photo shows the READY light on, the battery symbol lit up, the tire with an exclamation point through it, and the car symbol with an exclamation point through it.

jray3, hopefully it's just the 12v battery (you might have jinxed it by bragging about it recently), but going into READY the dc-dc should have made it good....

What is this EV Roadmap Conference? Maybe start a new thread and tell us about it?

If it is an old, weak and worn out aux battery, then that's where i'm placing my bet.

Yeah, when you wait for things to fail before you replace them, it usually happens to your wife when she's away from home and you're out of town - Been there, done that many, many yeas ago. Lesson learned!

Don

Just a comment about the battery.

My 2012 had a weak battery and the car wouldn't start.

It was brought back to life by simply adding water to each cell.

It was very dry.

veimi said:

Just a comment about the battery.

My 2012 had a weak battery and the car wouldn't start.

It was brought back to life by simply adding water to each cell.

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. . . . and now that same, old, tired, worn out battery will have a second chance to let you down. Hopefully, it will happen one morning at home and not leave you stranded somewhere and, if you're really lucky, it will happen when you're not in a hurry to get someplace - Like when your wife's water breaks and you have to depend on a cab to get her to the hospital

As I mentioned earlier - A lesson learned a long time ago

It did give you a plain as day prediction of what will happen next, so you can't say you weren't warned . . . . .

IMO, it's a real shame to turn one of the most reliable cars on the planet into questionable transportation by trying to get another 6 months of use out of an old lead acid battery. You may think you're saving $5, but 6 months from now when you have to buy a battery quickly instead of shopping around for a week or so now, you may end up paying $25 more for a 'must get one today' replacement

Don

Don said:

IMO, it's a real shame to turn one of the most reliable cars on the planet into questionable transportation by trying to get another 6 months of use out of an old lead acid battery.

Don

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My point was to demonstrate that adding water to the battery might provide a simple and zero cost diagnostic tool to verify or eliminate the battery as a contributor to this problem.

It would appear that you feel it would be better to shotgun diagnose the problem by immediately running out and buying a new battery.

veimi said:

My point was to demonstrate that adding water to the battery might provide a simple and zero cost diagnostic tool to verify or eliminate the battery as a contributor to this problem.

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My apologies - You didn't make that very clear

Another lesson learned - Thank you

Don

Don, I will gladly take your barbs and freely admit when I’m wrong, and I wouldn’t have expected anything less when making such a post. However I’ve tested my house battery once again and found it to be good, but I knew that if I resort to the dealer they will want to replace it as well, so I went ahead and replaced it with a brand new May 2018 manufactured BCI-151R.
No change in the symptoms.

Luckily I turned in a different core and can now see how long the original battery lasts cranking my garden tractor!!

Also, I opened the upper dc-dc box (on left site with 6 bolted tabs and two toroidal magnets inside) and confirmed that fuse as good, like all fuses in the cabin and under-hood fuse boxes, but there is no voltage present on the dc-dc leads with the car turned on or off.. Now waiting for the MUT clone to arrive today. A conventional OBD tool reported a communication error.

(PS- the TPMS warning is simply because I’m on my summer set of wheels and didn’t re-synch the sensors after winter).

Ok, thanks to the wealth of knowledge on this forum, I found the blown fuse in the inverter, ....which feeds the DC-DC? Now to find a couple of PEC 20A DC450V, expecting to blow another and show some internal fault...
Thank you KiEV http://myimiev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=3897&p=35473&hilit=Failed+dc+dc#p35473

jray3 said:

the TPMS warning is simply because I’m on my summer set of wheels and didn’t re-synch the sensors after winter.

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When you figure out how to reset that (yourself) please post it here - I hope to be needing that info soon

Don

Indeed Don- doing our own TPMS handshake with a second set of wheels would be a great DIY tool. My dad had the same issue I originally did at a Discount Tire store, with the service manager claiming success on the data link, "just drive around a while for the light to go away"......

Yesterday's main item of business was to remove MR BEAN's battery charger/DC-DC assembly and replace it with a junkyard unit. Still waiting on the correct 400 VDC 20A fuse that goes into the inverter to test charging and DCDC function. Without that fuse, the contactors click as normal and the battery fan blows for a few seconds, then nothing... I have not found a source outside the Mitsu dealer for the the $38 fuse , and ordering on Thursday for "Overnight Shipping" would allow me to pick it up at the dealer on Monday, and of course I should order two... I'm still looking for a properly-rated fuse that I could just put some pigtails on for testing purposes... I'm only dreading the prospect of a VIN-Locked charger.

The component swap was pretty painless, lost only about a cup of coolant. Was able to break loose the hoses by prying with a screwdriver while also pulling at different angles. Main thing to keep in mind is that the J1772 power input wires have no snap-together connector and land inside the charger on three screw terminals. Junkyards will ALWAYS cut that wiring bundle rather than open a sealed unit.

As expected, MR BEAN charges normally on CHAdeMO, and I'm keeping the house battery on an external charger, enabling almost-normal use!

The only errors I pulled from the MUT clone CarSoft i909 besides my four out-of-synch TPMS were as follows:
POA09 DCDC converter fail (oh, hence the red 12V error light)
P1A12 OBC abnormal stop (the charger stopped.. wow)

I found no zorch marks or other signs of failure inside the original charger, and will make it available if a member wants to attempt diagnosis and repair. I haven't pulled the upper boards to get a look at the DCDC converter yet...

Here's the spec sheet for our 20A fuse under the inverter inspection cover. Still haven't found an online vendor.
https://www.pecj.co.jp/fuse/files/PEC_EVFG72_en.pdf

jray3 said:

...
I found no zorch marks or other signs of failure inside the original charger, and will make it available if a member wants to attempt diagnosis and repair. I haven't pulled the upper boards to get a look at the DCDC converter yet...

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i'm gonna speak for Paul (Piev), and say that he and i will take a look at fixing it for you. He is also down here in the huntsville, alabama area and we have 4.125 mievs between the both of us. It sure seems like there is a rash of failed chargers here lately... we need to figure out what's going on with these thangs?

Thanks Kenny, I was hoping you’d pipe up. Will start looking for the right box.
I’m happy to report “Mission Accomplished” on the charger/DCDC swap. With the correct fuse not arriving till next week (only one in the USA dealer inventory system), I routed that juice through a spare solar combiner box with two 10A 600 V fuses in parallel.
DCDC and charger have been working normally for two hours so far. Hope this report ain’t premature!

Takeaways:
-NO VIN LOCKING on the charger.
-Coolant system appears to be self-purging of air. I lost little coolant with no precautions taken, it took as much in make-up water, and the bubbles worked out quickly.
-DCFC can save your bacon in the event of a charger failure.
-Remember to fully charge the 12V battery in the event of DCDC failure. I drove 56 miles without it (with two DCFC sessions, as the charger failed at 1/3 SOC).
-The vacuum pump stopped running first as 12V voltage dropped, and braking was not noticeably affected, probly because I still have very little free play in the brakes and not much pedal travel required.

PS: Yep, one full normal recharge completed and all is well.

Today I received that pesky 20A 400V fuse under the inverter inspection cover that pops when there is a charger or DCDC fault. It is part #2759 from the mfr; PEC, but is stocked as “FUSE, MOTOR” Mitsubishi part #9499A656. Thanks go out to Concord Mitsubishi of Concord, CA for shipping it directly to me. MR BEAN is back to 100% after a quick installation. (I ran the last several days and about 300 miles with some make-do solar array fuses spliced in its place!)

Thanks for taking the time in investigating & sharing this information with the forum,
This is hitting the nail on the head in addressing a major reoccurring failure that has shown up in more & more Mievs
as they start to rack up the miles.
The blown fuse, in other instances, has indicated a serial number locked out unit failure that made the repair $ costs estimates
more than the resale value of the vehicle rendering it disposable.
Should your findings here solve how to work out the serial number lock outs or discover a cost effective repair solution,
you would bring many "otherwise considered" scrap i Mievs" back to useful service status.
Your expertise in very much appreciated
Thank you for showing us the way.

X2! - Thanks for all your work. Knowledge like this is why we all get together here and it's a 'big deal' when someone comes up with things which can benefit us all

Don

jray3 said:

Here's the spec sheet for our 20A fuse under the inverter inspection cover. Still haven't found an online vendor.

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It's an unusually compact fuse for the rating. It's like a 3AB ceramic fuse with tags, but slightly larger diameter. I believe that PEC might stand for Panasonic Electronic Components, in case that helps any. [ Edit: this is WRONG. See my correction. ] It agrees with "Country of origin: Japan".

kiev said:

It sure seems like there is a rash of failed chargers here lately... we need to figure out what's going on with these thangs?

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My guess is electrolytic capacitors coming to their end of life, and going high internal resistance and/or low capacity.

Some photos I've seen have the plastic no longer covering the tops of the capacitors (so that the full diameter of aluminum is visible from above), which suggests a lot of heat. Electrolytics hate heat; it ages them. Hopefully, it won't be like the Elcon EV chargers, where electrolytic capacitors are protecting the switching MOSFETs or IGBTs.