Heater repaired, and shout out to jray3!

[TobyGadd]

The heater in my wife's 2016 i-MiEVs failed, and I struggled for a couple of months to find a way to get it fixed affordably. It wasn't looking good at all, until @jray3 announced on this forum that he had a car that he was parting out--and that he still had the heater. He mailed it to me several months ago, but I waited until cooler weather started to seem imminent before installing it.

It wasn't a terribly difficult job, although a proper lift would have made it a LOT easier. Who knew that crawling around under a jacked-up i-MiEV would be such a good workout!?

One of the reasons that I bought my original i-MiEV was discovering this forum when I was shopping. Contributors like Jay make these cars more fun--and longer lasting. Thanks again, Jay, for everything that you do here--and for helping me keep wife's car toasty!

 

[jray3]

Thx a lot Toby! I'm glad to help because a little repair like this will make the difference between keeping a car on the road or just letting it grow mold! I'm working on a big parts request from another member right now, and as these will be the final parts from stripping that car, I'll begin surveillance for what would be my third parts i-MiEV! These doodlebugs are surprisingly easy to repair, so let's keep 'em going. I've actually delayed my battery swap from the wreck, because the cars are actually still quite useful down to about 30 miles of range EVen in my rural location, so I'm trying to squeeze maximum life out of them. MR BEAN has accumulated 36,000 miles on his seond pack and is going strong, but the BlackAdder is at under 45 miles range with 67k on the clock, though that car lived a hard life, first in UBER service and then winter hill-climbing in Colorado before it retired to leisurely high-school commuter duty (in which it has predictably added the most scars). Edit: we got it at under 50k, but it just passed 67k, so nEVer underestimate the ability of a sociable 16 year-old to rack up miles!

I've yet to find a simple solution to using an intact i-MiEV pack for stationary storage applications, as Dala's just cracked that equation on a LEAF and JoeS discovered that the CHAdeMO inverter from Setec Power is not compatible with the i-MiEV and indeed only works with a few model years of the LEAF...

 

[TobyGadd]

Thx a lot Toby! I'm glad to help because a little repair like this will make the difference between keeping a car on the road or just letting it grow mold! I'm working on a big parts request from another member right now, and as these will be the final parts from stripping that car, I'll begin surveillance for what would be my third parts i-MiEV! These doodlebugs are surprisingly easy to repair, so let's keep 'em going.

Spot on, Jay. Had I not been able to repair the heater for a reasonable cost, we would have gotten rid of the car. While we could pre-heat it in the mornings with a space heater, we needed real heat for snowy days to keep the window from icing up. Thanks to you, the little beast is alive and well. We love our little cars!

 

[porciniman]

The only way I found to heat the car once the heater goes, use a Bluettii solar generator and plug in a good space heater. The downside is the Bluetti battery weight!

 

[jray3]

The only way I found to heat the car once the heater goes, use a Bluettii solar generator and plug in a good space heater. The downside is the Bluetti battery weight!

My dad did just that with a DeltaMax battery running space heaters in the car, and the extra snow traction from that battery weight was more appreciated than sandbags. I ran the numbers a decade ago, and a pound of 180 degree water (82 C) was worth more BTU than a pound of i-MiEV battery, but is of course a lot harder to use, unless you're leaving the car not plugged in while running errands. I ran some trials with a steel 5 gallon tank full of hot water, but without a proper blower, making use of that heat was difficult. A hot water bottle in your lap is more practical...