Battery pack change plans

[kiev]

There are some fuses inside the EMI filter box, but that is a very very rare failure. i don't think those scorch marks mean anything, but it doesn't hurt to open the EMI box and look inside.

If you tried charging and your 12V battery was old, weak or worn out, then you likely had the main contactors open while charging and it blew the fuse under the little cover of the MCU, the motor drive inverter next to the OBC.

You can pull that cover to check for voltage on the HV lines into the MCU (should be none), then check the fuse for continuity.

If it is blown then the OBC likely has blown the snubber caps on the output section, also the dc/dc converter will no longer work although the car will go to READY and drive. This will deplete the 12V battery and the car will leave you stranded where it sits--no way to start or charge without a good strong 12V battery.

With the OBC open you can remove a few screws and lay the control board over to the side to see the power board below. That is what you want to take a picture and inspect.

 

[alviseven]

There are some fuses inside the EMI filter box, but that is a very very rare failure. i don't think those scorch marks mean anything, but it doesn't hurt to open the EMI box and look inside.

If you tried charging and your 12V battery was old, weak or worn out, then you likely had the main contactors open while charging and it blew the fuse under the little cover of the MCU, the motor drive inverter next to the OBC.

You can pull that cover to check for voltage on the HV lines into the MCU (should be none), then check the fuse for continuity.

If it is blown then the OBC likely has blown the snubber caps on the output section, also the dc/dc converter will no longer work although the car will go to READY and drive. This will deplete the 12V battery and the car will leave you stranded where it sits--no way to start or charge without a good strong 12V battery.

With the OBC open you can remove a few screws and lay the control board over to the side to see the power board below. That is what you want to take a picture and inspect.

tomorrows job then.
What do you mean test for HV voltage are we taking about 360 to 400V on a orange line? test between the input and earth or the input and return and how to I know which is what? The fuse is easy to check I guess. No idea what snubber caps are unless they are the massive capacitors in the OBC we can see the tops of? Will it have damaged the DC converter or just not let it work?

Cheers for the pointers and help - got to sort it now it bugs me. Assume that the white car with the red BMS boards will not have the same OBC and will not yield parts or is it not that serious yet?

 

[kiev]

There are lots of pictures in the first post of the OBC troubleshooting thread (it is split into 3 parts due to the large size) that would give you an idea of what you are seeing and will be looking for. All the repairs from that first year have links to their story, what the issue was and how it was repaired. The links only seem to work when clicked from the AEVA site.

So use your voltmeter to make a safety and sanity check, before touching anything inside the MCU, between the 2 copper buss bars to which the orange cables are attached. There should be no voltage; then it is safe to touch the fuse if necessary after you check it and find it is blown. If it is not blown then you are in good shape to fix the OBC.

 

[coulomb]

Every time i try to follow a link it folds back to the first post on page 1.

I sorted that out in this post. That's why all the AEVA links work. My guess is that their conversion software (converting the posts database to prepare for the new forum software) had a bug. A lot of links would be to the first post of a thread, so they just didn't notice.

In short: "So just copy the last 5 digits of the link to the clipboard, paste in the constant "https://myimiev.com/threads/the-troubleshooting-and-repair-for-on-board-charger-obc-thread.4079/post-" without the quotes, ^V to paste the post number, and you have an initial URL."

Arrgh! That "[/URL]"should not be in the original post. Now I can't edit it. Sigh.

@kiev, now that you wear that shiny moderator badge, maybe the AEVA page is redundant now? Between us, we could find all the links that need repairing, add the bits where I made an improvement (in my humble opinion, of course), and leave the AEVA page alone, as a long term last-ditch backup maybe.

 

[kiev]

The links only seem to work when clicked from the AEVA site. i have no plans to mess with something that is not broken.

if it's possible for me to correct the links here, then i could give it a try, but i would hate to mess up anything over at AEVA.

i think it is good to have somewhat of a backup site for all of this info--it would be painful to try to re-create all the circuit details.

 

[coulomb]

if it's possible for me to correct the links here, then i could give it a try,

Sorry, that's what I meant. Just edit one or two of the links in the myImiev.com index to be of the form ...4079/post-nnnnn, and use preview to make sure it seems to work. Hopefully your browser won't lose your work, but if it's only one or two links, then there is no great loss if it does. I can't see why using that link from AEVA instead of iMiev.com would make any difference; you just have to have the exact right form of the URL. They all look the same at first glance, but there are several variants.


If you're on Windows, I find that -V (like shift-V but using the windows meta-key instead of shift) is very handy. That way, you can have that long string sprayed out quickly, and the post number (which varies all the time of course), can both be in the clip-board. I'm pretty sure that IoS and most Linux distros would have something similar these days.

If you like, I could edit up a copy of the index pages, and post it here as an ordinary post. If it works and you're happy with it, you could copy it over the existing index page, perhaps with a few tweaks, and when all is well delete that ordinary post. I could probably do each one in 15 minutes once I'm all set up and get my rhythm. Maybe I'll just do it and you can decide.

I think it is good to have somewhat of a backup site for all of this info--it would be painful to try to re-create all the circuit details.

Hmmm. You are right. We didn't see this forum software change coming; who knows what might happen if not enough people subscribe. I might continue to copy some of the most important bits, or at least the ones I use myself more often, to AEVA.

 

[alviseven]

Still rather pleased with my getting the car to work again after having the powerpack to complete pieces. Spent today sorting out this edit.

 

[kiev]

Amazing video, thank you so much for taking the time to do this and for sharing it here.

 

[alviseven]

Amazing video, thank you so much for taking the time to do this and for sharing it here.

Do click the like button on youtube - it helps so much thanks

 

[MickeyS70]

Still rather pleased with my getting the car to work again after having the powerpack to complete pieces. Spent today sorting out this edit.

Great video, just one correction, the air ducts are to cool the battery during a CHAdeMON session, there is no battery heating function.
Btw you can safely tow the car while READY, put it in D/C and it will even charge while moving…

 

[alviseven]

wow

Great video, just one correction, the air ducts are to cool the battery during a CHAdeMON session, there is no battery heating function.
Btw you can safely tow the car while READY, put it in D/C and it will even charge while moving…

it will charge in drive or C whilst being towed - would not have dreamt of trying that one. Sadly it is now out of MOT or is tomorrow so perhaps....
The local one is about 2 miles would like to get some charge in it regardless.
I was not sure when the cooling was happening but thought it was used when the chademo and the OBC was being used - mixed heating with cooling sorry

 

[kiev]

That is a very interesting lift that you were using--is it a custom built or is it a commercial brand? And the feature with the separate rails--what is that called and how does it work? It looks to be ideal for a battery swap.

 

[alviseven]

An old Bradbury MK 1 Liftmaster with wheels free bars which I use mostly for prewar cars which have chassis and would not fit on a modern two post type. Mine was a single phase ebay bargain for £209GBP in early 2010s
Spent same again painting and repairing it but always wanted one never work off floor again!

Should not use the wheels free bars really to hold the car up but in this case you use what you have. I have to use ramp bed to drop car onto tall axle stands the once I have clearance slide wheel free yellow bars under the tyres and then position car at top where the bars can lock off at any height leaving the ramp blue bed to drop pack out. The process is shown more clearly in the pack out video I've done.

Would not be without it.
Could do all my jobs without but makes life so much harder.

 

[alviseven]

Been at the OBC today and think it is good news but confusing still.
Checked the big fuse on the right hand side inside the MCU - this is a good start

Opened the lid to the OBC and still smells hot but no sign of burning other than the feed cables to the big stuff on the right hand side and the corresponding slight marks on lid.

Checked the fuse by the AC feed - ok

Removed the top board carefully including the ribbon cable. The underneath board looks no different to any of the ones I can find online and in videos with no perceived burning or obvious issue - which is a pain as its less obvious what is wrong to a numpty like me!

The only difference to the boards is that I do not have a vertical resistor PCB board where others have then dug out the dark "silicon" putty infill and replaced the capacitors - my capacitors look like their replacement just the tops showing and no apparent damage.

Now well out of my depth...certainly out of suggestions!

Enclose some images of the lower board. First one with the little blue tops showing looks OEM but is similar to the repairs that other have made online. Also checked the fuse on this layer the one in top front left hand corner underneath all the connectors and near the corner. Again fine.

 

[alviseven]

Brainwave - whilst taking the OBC apart came across a youtube vid of someone else changing OBC over and went to look at the spare donor car which was the red BMS car. However the charger has clearly been replaced as its marked 2015 and has the identical connections but no top EBI unit as this seems to be inside?

Any reason why I cannot swap the units over since although I do not know if the done OBC works it was running up to the ECU lock out and suspect this was due to the BMS going bad - which I have Czero reading to prove.

The fact that the two will bolt over from one to the other is surely a good sign?

How easy is it to drain the coolant - just empty it? What refills it - antifreeze like rad coolant or special stuff? That is what has bothered me before.

 

[kiev]

Check the ceramic resistors:
https://myimiev.com/threads/swapping-obcs-as-diagnostic-safe.5606/post-49462

Don't know about the coolant, but swapping OBC sounds like a good idea.

 

[alviseven]

Managed to crawl at 30 mph to chademo as after putting my granny charger on several times and kept cutting out when I switched it on today car had two bars and 5 mile range.
With a cover car following in case got to chademo and charged but it took three goes but now 80% full and range of 40 miles showing.
Know my obc may have issues but this cab only be a major success as it means all all the powerpack electronics must be working well
Bit surprised to get ecu fault on way home but will treat car to brand new front control battery

Back to the donor obc removal and at least I can now book an Mot and get there.

 

[MickeyS70]

With a cover car following in case got to chademo and charged but it took three goes but now 80% full and range of 40 miles showing.

Well done on the cell swap.

The car doesn’t know that you have changed the battery and therefore still uses your old capacity value, once you get your OBD sorted, look into re-calibrating of the the battery using HobDrive.

Curious, how does cell balancing look presently?

 

[alviseven]

Just come in from hooking up hob drive nearly all cells are now either 3.960 or 3.955 with just one cell 3.950 but the number of dtc codes it's thrown up its having a serious fit. Never seen so many codes yet the car works with no ecu fault showing.
Just downloading the screenshot
Czero reading also look more healthy but the charge has still been over half but it's no doubt the car is mighty confused etc
Post the shots in bit but also pleased to find my donor car has what looks like a decent unit

 

[alviseven]

DTC codes read like a shopping list!

P1A4D ECU control voltage low
P1A33 cell sensor BMU
P1A39 charge status signal error BMU
P1A2F cell error BMU
P0A0A - service plug - assume it was when this was out - been out and out several times whilst working on car
P0562 system low voltage
C1D01 not defined

I thought I had cleared these DTC and did clear them again today but they do not seem to go away so perhaps I cannot or they do not clear?
looking at these a lot of them were also there before the battery change over - it complained before about
Codes I have thrown up
P1A12 - OBC abnormal stop
P1A7E CMU09 batt cell abnormal
P1A4B - voltage of each cell abnormal
P1A3G - charging state error
P1A33 - cell voltage error BMU
P1B03 - charge time out
P1A2F - cell error BMU


Today it also complained about BMU 09 saying it was abnormal but the cell values all seem to be ok car works with no ECU orange car symbol - perhaps left over from before?

However still have worries about the front control battery so will order a new one and be done with it.

enclose the czero read out of the cells as it covered them all but nearly all cells are 3.955v on hobdrive with a few being 3.960v and even fewer being 3.950v no other values across all cells and most are the middle value. Cell pack not been charged since late march when donor car dropped out of use