Messing with the I-MiEV

[jlhiowa]

+1 to what Don said!

siai47, it's really cool that you are doing this, and even better because you're sharing all of this with us You're very talented!!

 

[siai47]

It's a good thing I am retired so I can take my time messing with this car. I have switched the traction battery cover from the new car to the pack out of the wreck. The wreck had the premium package so it had the internal cooling ducts and the QC contactors in the tray. The battery pack cover was damaged but I salvaged the fan and the duct connectors from it and transferred them to the cover from the other car. This is the pack I am going to put in the new car. I took out the inverter, charger and traction motor out of the wreck. The reduction gear is the only thing left other then the axles. I was suprised how light the components are. With the exception of the traction motor, everything could be removed by hand. Removing the main wiring harness was a real pain. At the front of the car I had to drop the A/C compressor to get to the final connector on the harness. Fortunately the rubber hoses from the compressor to the rest of the system allow it to be moved enough without discharging the system. Not so important on the wreck but I would hate to have to recharge the new car. Tomorrow I am going to to pull the QC port and wiring to get it ready to transfer to the new car. Computer wise I found out that the BMU from my non "premium" car will not drive the battery fan. I am using my leesed I-MiEV as a guinea pig to run tests on which computers will work and which won't. So far the main EV-ECU is the only one with the same part number between the cars. The leesed car doesn't seem to care what computer is in it as long as it's from the one with the premium package. So the plan is to hang the wrecked car harness in the new car and see if I can get a "ready" light and not too many warning lamps. If all goes well, I will wrap up this part of the job by the end of the week. The most difficult thing to do now is to put a 3" hole in the floor of the new car for the cooling ducts. Locating the hole is going to be a little hard because there are no good reference points near it in the floorpan. This is going to be a measure 10 times, cut once. I am taking pictures and will post them when I get them downloaded. Once all this is done, I can rip out the dash to install the Nav radio. That should be harder then what I am doing now. It's amazing how many small differences there are between the cars with the premium package and the standard SE.

 

[JoeS]

siai47, really enjoying following your progress and the reasoning behind each step you're taking. Looking forward to the photos. Thank you for sharing and good luck!

 

[Don]

It's amazing how many small differences there are between the cars with the premium package and the standard SE.

I'm not surprised
We had a thread here awhile back were some folks were going to buy the components necessary to install the QC connector in their cars which didn't come so equipped. I think those few parts were going to run several hundred dollars. Not wanting to throw a wet blanket on their plans, I questioned whether it could really be that simple. I doubted it was . . . . and you confirmed it

Don

 

[siai47]

Success! At least the first part is done. I got the pack from the wrecked car installed in the new car---turned the key and everything worked with no warning lights. The battery fan cycled for the first time. Runs and drives fine---got to find a QC station to try out the QC. To comfirm what Don said, you would have at least three thousand dollars or more in parts alone to just add the QC components--probably much more. The short list would be battery fan, harness and mount; two heater floor ducts and pack connector; two high voltage contactors with associated harnesses and buss bar; main motor wiring harness (that alone is just over a thousand dollars per the dealer); Chademo connector and associated harness; release handle and cable for the QC port door; new (or recalibrated) BMU; various low voltage relays, connectors and brackets. In addition the carpet needs to be modified to clear the floor duct and you have to have a desire to cut a 3" hole in the floor of your new car and hope you got it in the right place. Finally you need to add the labor costs to do all this. Fortunately a bored retired dude didn't charge himself for that! Unless there is a donor car available this won't work.

The next thing to start on is the Nav radio installation. Believe it or not this is going to be just as hard (if not harder) to do then the QC installation. The entire dash has to come out along with the steering column to get to all the harnesses involved. In additon the headliner needs to be removed to get the harnesses for the microphone and backup camera routed. The endgate harnesses need to be changed along with cutting holes for the camera installation. It just takes time.

I finally pulled the reduction gear from the wrecked I-MiEV. One of the half shafts had been pulled out of the gearcase in the accident breaking off part of the spline shaft in the process. I took the gearbox apart to find the broken piece caught in a magnet (just as designed). That gearbox is really a nice, overdesigned piece. Oversized helical gears all running on ball bearings. Even the shaft for the "shifter" runs on roller bearings. I looks like you could run 500 HP through it without breaking anything. Just one of the quality parts in the car not designed by the guy who came up with the bamboo fabric seats.

I wonder if the dealer will notice the changes if the car ever has to go in for a another recall?

 

[siai47]

Got the factory NAV radio up and running with just a change of a short wiring harness in the IP. To get everything to function I have to pull every harness out of the inside of the car and swap the one from the wreck into the new car. I don't have steering wheel controls, handsfree phone or backup camera. I could be satisfied like it is but I have the harnesses so----I started removing the entire interior from both cars. I just have to unclip the harness from the wreck--everything else is already stripped out. I have already built up the dash to swap it to the new car. Changing the IP really isn't all that bad on the I-MiEV, however there are a lot of maintenance things that you might need to do down the road that will require it's removal. The steering wheel on the wreck was bent and the new car didn't have radio controls. Fortunately after removing the cover on the two wheels both had the mounting points for the contols. In addition the clock spring (which connects the wires from the wheel to the stationary part of the column) had a plug with enough connections to connect up the steering wheel so no change had to made to the column. This stuff will get me steering wheel controls but I still have to remove the headliner to get to the area to install the handsfree microphone and also connect the rear harness to the endgate harness removed from the wreck to get the backup camera functional. I haven't broken anything yet but I am not done either. Keeping my fingers crossed.

 

[siai47]

I took the plunge and swapped the main body wiring harness out of the wreck and into the new car to pick up wiring for the steering wheel controls and backup camera. Along the way I managed to loose the A/C compressor operation! Looks like I will be off to the dealer to correct this. When I swapped out parts, at first the battery fan wouldn't do the operational check when you plugged in the EVSE. I swapped the BMU controller from the wreck and it came to life. A/C was fine until I swapped the A/C controller--so I put the new car's original controller back in. After swapping the harness, neither controller would provide A/C compressor operation. I think what's going on is the QC equipped cars allow the operation of the A/C system during QC. The BMU requests A/C operation which is different in other cars where the A/C is allways controlled by the driver. There is a minor change in the wiring harness pinout to the A/C controller between the cars. Because the EV controller is embedded with the VIN # of the car, installing the controller from the wreck into the new car causes a EV error and a failure to go to "ready". Two choices here both involving the dealer or someone with a M.U.T. III. The easiest is to recode the vin in the EV controller to match the main (ETACS) controller. That should give me the proper program in the EV controller to get A/C operation back. The other option is to install the main controller from the wreck into the new car. However, this would also require replacing any other controllers with parts from the wreck along with the steering column to get everything talking to one another. If the car was scanned down the road, the VIN # would show up for the wrong car. Also, the controllers for the wreck are in HV lockout which needs to be cleared by a M.U.T. III anyway and the car would not be able to be driven until the code is cleared. So we will see what the dealer says---he will probabaly freak out. At least I have steering wheel controls on the radio so I can turn up the volume with the windows down :lol:

 

[aarond12]

Wonderful write-ups! Do you have pictures of any parts of this process?

 

[siai47]

Yes, I have pictures---nobody would do anything this crazy without trying to document it. Also, Pictures are cheap and a great way to see how everything was assembled before you took it apart. A real help when you are putting things back together and you can't quite remember what went where. I have to download them out of the camera to the computer and then upload them to a photo service. Some are not for the faint of heart.

 

[MLucas]

Good luck with the dealer. Hopefully you are on a good relation with them. Most of my past experience with dealerships is that they can't be bothered with stuff like this. I think a MUT III might be your answer here - just a guess.

 

[siai47]

The dealer was interesting to say the least. First, he told me I voided my warranty by the modifications I made to the car----Duh. Then he didn't want to work on it because I had modified it. Told him if he didn't want to work on it (and be paid for it) I might just modify where I shop and go down the street for my next car. Finally put it on the MUT III and found 30 stored codes in the EV controller. We cleared the codes but some wouldn't clear. For example, the airbag controller had sent the collision detection code and put the EV controller in high voltage shutdown. That is the primary problem. The airbag (SRS) controller also reported a airbag deployment which hadn't occrred. Mitsubishi requires the controller be replaced after a deployment and they are really proud of that part! It also had codes like tire pressure, wheel speed sensor, etc. If he had seen the car he would have realized that when you flatten the rim and the tire and then shear off the rear axle, you might see these kind of codes. To make a long story short, I would be too costly to get the car up and running completely on the wrecked car's computers. I tried replacing every component in the new car with parts from the wreck but always had a master warning on the EV system (triangle with explanation mark). So the choice was give up the steering wheel controls or the air-conditioning. That was a no brainer so last night I changed the main body harness back in the car and will cut the sections out of the wrecked car's harness to get steering wheel contols and a mike for the handsfree phone. One suprising thing was the odometer mileage. There was a stored code for lost odometer data in the wrecked car's controller however, even after changing every computer I could find and the dash panel, the odometer mileage was always correct on new car---even if it was running off the computers from the wreck. I have no idea where that is coming from. BTW--I would like very much to own a MUT III. It's just really hard to find one and be sure it's the good, stable model or the un-stable bad clones. They all seem to be coming from China (nobody here will sell you one) and I am not sure what software is provided. If I keep going down the dark side with this car, the MUT III is a must have.

 

[alohart]

You might try contacting EVMOTO although he doesn't seem to have visited this forum since February. He apparently has bought a MUT-III from a Chinese source and seems to think it works well.

 

[MLucas]

Fortunately they bent the rules for you. You must have a strong power of persuasion. I've been round and round with dealerships on this stuff. Showing them a whitepaper is like showing a bull a red cape. Don't get me started on BMW and how they screwed up my F650-CS because they refused to read a whitepaper I found that clearly described my problem. After a week of ripping my bike apart they finally relented and followed the instructions in the whitepaper and wah-la my bike was fixed. Ugh! I don't touch BMW products of any kind because of this experience.