And now my I will not charge!!

[kiev]

There may be other damage also, so check the capacitors while the board is out.

i don't recognize the connector, there may be a clamshell cover. Jay (jray3) just recently swapped one out so he will likely know how.

 

[jray3]

I’ve found someone in my local area who can replace the resistor so I’m removing the inverter at the moment.

Can someone tell me the secret to this connector? Where is the release mechanism?

https://imgur.com/a/P9mZyxe

Thanks

Yes, I wrestled with that one too, but there is a release tab on the skinny side of the female connector.

 

[1pk]

I did figure it out eventually and the inverter is now at a local shop for repair. The owner didn’t seem too confident about removing the bottom board from the box. I’ve sent him a link to this thread for reference so if anyone has any additional info that could be helpful please post it here.

Kiev, have you had a look at Jrays inverter yet? Curious to see if the board is soldered or just screwed down.

I spent money on gas today. I didn’t like that much

 

[jray3]

Kiev, have you had a look at Jrays inverter yet?

I finally shipped the the old unit yesterday, so Kiev is at least a week out from rendering any verdicts. IIRC, the lower board was screwed in place. Those Phillips screws are quite soft, btw- had me wanting a small impact driver.

 

[1pk]

So did you remove the bottom board? If it is held only with screws then any repair job will be much simpler.

 

[kiev]

@1pk,

i was wrong about the solder joints. Skylogger over in Western Australia has removed the board and the power devices came out with it--no need to desolder to remove the board.

 

[1pk]

I just heard from the electronic repair guy who is working on my inverter

Here is the body of his email:

Have managed to remove the top Printed Circuit Board. Closer inspection indicates that both Resistors are Cracked and the one that is discoloured has been overheated by excessive current. I have little hope that just replacing it will correct the problem. Something else must be Shorted. The resistor still needs to be removed in order to determine its value.

There is a massive heat sink on the underside of the board. It has 56 points of soldered connections thru the board.
This must be removed to gain access to the Resistor solder joints.

I have researched all part numbers that are on the board to see if it is available = no results.
Next step is to unsolder all 56 points & remove the heatsink/circuit module.

I’ve asked him to keep going.

Is it possible that the resistors were damaged by overheating or is it possible to tell if overcurrent was the cause as he said?

 

[Aerowhatt]

Is it possible that the resistors were damaged by overheating or is it possible to tell if overcurrent was the cause as he said?

Yes over current is caused by over voltage with a resistor (or less common, resistance value drifting out of spec). Over current results in overheating which damages the resistor. So overheating without over current will achieve the same cracked ceramic resistor.

Aerowhatt

 

[coulomb]

... Closer inspection indicates that both Resistors are Cracked and the one that is discoloured has been overheated by excessive current. I have little hope that just replacing it will correct the problem. Something else must be Shorted.
...
Is it possible that the resistors were damaged by overheating or is it possible to tell if overcurrent was the cause as he said?

The schematic for these chargers hasn't been traced yet, so we don't know anything for certain. However, it's reasonably likely that we can learn from experience with other EV chargers. We strongly suspect that at least one of these resistors, probably the one that was cracked, in a pre-charge resistor. In normal operation, it will be shorted by the input relay about a second after mains is applied. This resistor has a hard life, pulsing a lot of power over a short period of time. (Then it does nothing for 99.9% of the charge time). But to crack, it likely seen this high power for longer than the usual one second or less. This can happen if the input relay doesn't come on, or if its contacts are burned. In Elcon/TC chargers, a common failure mode is that a pair of the MOSFETs short out, putting a short on the DC bus, which causes the power supply to drop out, which then causes the input relay to drop out. Now the pre-charge resistor is supplying 120 V or 240 V into more or less a short circuit. It will see possibly 10x or 100x its nominal power rating, which causes it to overheat. It appears to be a wire-wound type, which will often act as a fuse, going open circuit. There are other fuses there, but the pre-charge resistor often prevents the current from reaching a level where the actual fuses will blow. 200 watts will blow a 5 W resistor to pieces, but it's well short of the current normally passed by the charger (up to 3.3 kW).

So the short answer is, unfortunately, that I agree with the repairer: something else has likely shorted. Hopefully Kenny will be able to trace at least the pre-charge part of the schematic soon, so we know more about what's going on. For example, we don't know why there are two large white resistors. My guess is that one of them is a bleed resistor, so it will have a high value (hundreds of kilo ohms), and the other will be the pre-charge resistor (tens of ohms).

It's not uncommon for high power ceramic resistors like these to discolor with age, so the other resistor could well be fine. But of course cracking is not normal.

 

[1pk]

Here is the latest from my inverter repair

IMIEV. Took two hours to remove the 56 pin heat-sink circuit.
As careful as I was, I do not believe that all of the 56 thru the board 'eyelets' came out of it intact. These eyelets allow components to be soldered in place & also provide circuit continuity from one side of the board to the other. Because of the large heat sink, all de-soldering has to be done from only one side of the board.

Managed to get at the leads for the resistors & unsolder/remove them. There is a 5 Watt & a 10 Watt. These are Ceramic wire wound dual 'radial' leads. Both are labelled 4.7 ohm but BOTH measure OPEN. This is not encouraging as I have not read anywhere about this much damage being repaired successfully. There must be shorted components elsewhere that have caused these resistors to overheat like this.

There is overheating damage to two other surface mount component circuits but this is probably secondary damage.

My opinion is that this item is NOT Repairable.

So that doesn’t sound good. Im going to go talk to him this afternoon and I’ll post pictures of the board.



I’d he

 

[kiev]

i posted the schematic in the troubleshooting thread.

The two big 4.7 Ohm ceramic resistors are connected in series and provide a bypass path across the relay contacts. These are made by Tamura, the larger one with green ink (TAM P10K series) is a thin-film current-limiting fuse, and the smaller one with blue ink (TAM 5K series) is a wire-wound cement-filled ceramic-housed resistor.

i checked the www and Tamura seems to have sold off their resistor business, or doesn't list these parts in their products list.

P10K series, green ink
- Thermal-Links/Resistor Assembly is a product which is made of pellet type thermal-links and 10W type resistor.
- P10K is RoHS compliance product, non-Pb and non-Cd contains.
- P10K got excellent interception characteristic when abnormality overload happened.
- Especially, P10K adopted excellent characteristic resistive element against the In-rush current, and it is the best for preventing In-rush current.


5K series, blue ink
- Cement resistor is a product that combined with 5W wire wound resistor (ceramics insulator) type.
- 5K is RoHS compliance product, non-Pb and non-Cd contains.
- Especially, 5K adopted excellent characteristic resistive element against the In-rush current, and it is the best for preventing In-rush current.

 

[1pk]

Hi Kiev,

Thanks for that. I'm going to wait for the results of your investigation into the working of the charger and see what my options are. I haven't pickup up my unit yet, but when I do I'll post some pics of that it looks like. For the moment I'm going to work on hypermiling a 2005 Honda Odyssey. Got it down to 8.2L/100km so far. I've realized that I've developed an "Empty Tank Anxiety"! Just dreading another fillup, gas is pricey here (for NA anyway).

My battery is degraded, I'm down to 34 ah and when my charger failed and I was hopping between fast chargers I drained the battery down to creep mode and canion said it was at 7.5% SOC so I'm not sure if spending several thousand dollars on a charger will be worth it if I my battery warranty runs out and the range is limited.

Keep up the great work. I really appreciate it.

 

[1pk]

I picked up my charger yesterday. I want to share the images of the damage.

Here are the cracked resistors

https://imgur.com/a/kv2rqAS

Here is the bottom of the board they came out of with damaged areas circled

https://imgur.com/a/DDuznXC

This is where all those pins were desoldered to release the board

https://imgur.com/a/IxcoaLr

I’ve purchases a charger from a 2013, I’m going to need some advice on installing it, I will post that in my other thread

 

[kiev]

Were those circled diodes damaged?

Was the white solder pad strip already scorched, or did that happen during the de-soldering?

 

[1pk]

He circled the diodes because the area was darkened and he assumed they were damaged.

Bottom

https://imgur.com/a/OyxxED3

Top

https://imgur.com/a/3npx9Ne

And here’s s comparison of the solder pad strips. His only comment on those was how much work it was removing the board.

https://imgur.com/a/C1QELw2

https://imgur.com/a/DVC6rg4

 

[1pk]

So its been a month and my new OBC is working well however I have tried two different fast chargers in the last week and neither would charge my car.

The error code I get from the unit is DTC 25003. I assume this is a trouble code. Can anyone translate it into english?

A little more info.

I have successfully used both these chargers dozens of times.
I know they are working because there were cars charging when I arrived.
when my OBC was not working but still in the car I was hopping between these for a week to keep my car going.
I have not successfully fast charged my car since the new OBC was put in.

I'm hoping this in something simple and not another adventure into the bowels of my car.

thanks

 

[coulomb]

I know they are working because there were cars charging when I arrived.
when my OBC was not working but still in the car I was hopping between these for a week to keep my car going.
I have not successfully fast charged my car since the new OBC was put in.

Wow. That sounds like there might be some sort of compatibility issue with other computers, perhaps.

When you say "fast charrgers", do you mean higher powered AC chargers (so you get the full ~3.3 kW through your internal charrger), or a DC fast charger through the CHAdeMO port?

If it's DC fast charging, you might have disturbed or forgotten to restore some part needed only for external DC charging.

I'm hoping this is something simple and not another adventure into the bowels of my car.

Aw, where's your sense of adventure, man?

 

[kiev]

..
The error code I get from the unit is DTC 25003. I assume this is a trouble code. Can anyone translate it into english?

That does't appear to be a DTC code, where did you get that number? DTCs have a letter prefix such as P1A14

 

[1pk]

Coulomb, Chademo level 3 charging is what is not working.

Kiev, that code comes from the fast charger display. I believe it’s made by ABB but I’ll check later. It also states that the session was ended by my car.

 

[coulomb]

So its been a month and my new OBC is working well however I have tried two different fast chargers in the last week and neither would charge my car.
...
I have not successfully fast charged my car since the new OBC was put in.

I happened across this discussion about a Nissan Leaf charrger today:

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=23491&start=40#p511787

The poster seems to say that the on-board charrger is used to do the protocol handshaking with the CHAdeMO charrger. The Nissan Leafs also use a Nichicon charrger, though with some differences, as you can see in a nearby photo. [ Edit: this can't be true for iMiEVs at least; see next post on following page. ]

I thought that it would be the Battery Monitoring ECU that would talk to the CHAdeMO CAN bus. But maybe it's something that the on-board charrger at least mediates, and your 2013 replacement charrger somehow doesn't have the right firmware. Or maybe this is a VIN locking issue, that somehow doesn't show up for ordinary on-board charging. VIN locking for CHAdeMO only does seem unlikely.

Has anyone else with a replaced charrger been able to do a CHAdeMO charge?