Car Now Charging! (was Car Not Charging)

[ed5000]

I guess it's my turn for the charger to not work.

When I plug the evse in, I do not get the battery fan cycling on like I normally get and I have a yellow error light on the dash of a little car and exclamation sign. Then I tried my OB2 scanner and that doesn't work. The scanner tries to link and after a while I get a "not linking" error on my scanner.

I checked the 12 aux battery and it seems fine. It was 12.6 volts at rest with the car being off for a while although I'm thinking of going out and getting a new one since this one is about 4 years old.

Any ideas?

 

[kiev]

20A fuse blown in the Motor Control Unit;
snubber caps blown in the On-Board Chargger.

i have the same problem, trying to come up with a easy solder solution for the caps.

 

[ed5000]

20A fuse blown in the Motor Control Unit;
snubber caps blown in the On-Board Chargger.

i have the same problem, trying to come up with a easy solder solution for the caps.

I was just reading about the 20 amp fuse. Ok I'll check that and look into the snubber caps.

Btw: I found a 151R battery at Walmart for $119. Was surprised they even had it.

 

[Phximiev]

Inasmuch as the blown board may be due to past sudden disconnects or power outages at the plug, would putting in a UPS for the charger make sense?

On a similar note, I went to the May Phoenix Electric Auto meeting held at Gruber Repair in Phoenix. They repair Teslas of all kinds including the Roadster, S an X.

See: https://www.facebook.com/events/gruber-power-services/may-phx-elec-auto-meeting/427421777824689/

And: https://www.gruberpower.com/tesla-ev

It was just excellent. Mr. Gruber discussed their extensive efforts in repairing Tesla boards of all kinds. As part of the discussion, he summarized their observations as to Tesla ”caps”, which he stated would not last more than seven years.

Since we seem to be seeing similar ”cap” failures, I wondered if there was published anywhere a max lifetime for the ”caps” used in our cars?

Any thoughts?

 

[ed5000]

Thanks, Kiev. That was it! A blown 20 amp fuse in the MCU.

Now I have to look into the snubbers

 

[kiev]

Since we seem to be seeing similar ”cap” failures, I wondered if there was published anywhere a max lifetime for the ”caps” used in our cars?

Any thoughts?

i found a Vishay datasheet for some high voltage ceramic disk caps, HVCC series, such as used for snubber caps in our OBC. It listed a performance test for life time of 1000 hrs at 1.5 times rated DC voltage with max current of 50 mA. They are rated for much higher voltage 10-15kV vs our 2kV.

Electrolytic storage capacitors seem to have limited age, i suspect them to be leaky after 7 to 10 years based upon my experience repairing TVs in the old days...

 

[coulomb]

This datasheet seems to indicate that the 50 mA maximum is only for various tests, e.g. dielectric test and lifetime test. Since they mention X-ray and other high pulse power uses, I assume that they are fully capable of taking many amperes, perhaps hundreds, from short pulses, since that is presumably what we want them for.

Edit: sigh. Re-reading what you wrote, the figure is indeed about a lifetime test. Hopefully they will last a lot longer than 1000 hours at 360 V; I certainly expect so.

 

[ed5000]

Charger Working!

It was the right snubber capacitor and the 20 amp fuse exactly as kiev mentioned. My dad helped me out by soldering in a new one.

Thanks to everyone who posted on this subject. It was a big help!

There was a youtube video that was helpful too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63ZWosSyq7Q

Edit: Part 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynFKclou-LI

 

[jray3]

Congratulations and very impressive! I'm sure glad I kept a failed OBC on hand, to attempt the now 'cheap and simple' repair documented in that video. This community has reduced the repair cost from over $4000 at a dealer to $400 from a junkyard, and now down to $20 worth of parts.

 

[ed5000]

Congratulations and very impressive! I'm sure glad I kept a failed OBC on hand, to attempt the now 'cheap and simple' repair documented in that video. This community has reduced the repair cost from over $4000 at a dealer to $400 from a junkyard, and now down to $20 worth of parts.

Thanks, Jray3

I was trying to go the junkyard route at too but there are not too many out there now. The first junkyard was trying to sell me an MCU and calling it a charger. The second junkyard tried to sell me a charger that looked like the eddy current bolt was removed plus there were clear signs the lid was opened and the car was a non collision car meaning the car may have been brought in because a lack of a charger? Then there was one on ebay for $900. I think the whole junkyard industry is onto our little problem now and is trying to cash in.

 

[Donaldas]

Hello,

have two Mitsubishi Imev 2011 repaired inverters, changed fuse 20A and still no charge from regular charger.

OK on the fast charge.

Any thoughts?

 

[kiev]

Howdy Donaldas and welcome to the forum,
Would you happen to know what repairs were made? And these are the On-board Charrger (OBC) units on the left side in the rear compartment?

Typically these units have failures either in the High Voltage DC Output section (snubber capacitors, 20A MCU fuse), or in the AC Input section (AC filter capacitors, ceramic resistors, AC mains relay). You can use the search feature on the OBC Troubleshooting and Repair thread to find information on almost every failed component in the OBC.

The HV DC quick charge, aka fast charge Chademo, has a separate charge port and is done independently of the AC OBC.

The 20A fuse in the Motor Control Unit (MCU), aka motor drive inverter, typically blows along with the snubber capacitors failure. The DC-to-DC Converter located in the bottom plenum of the OBC creates 12V to recharge the aux starter battery, and it gets powered from the HV battery pack thru that fuse. Was your fuse blown and replaced? If so then i would suspect that the snubber caps have failed in the OBC.