Vehicle history & Leafspy

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sciencegirl

Member
Joined
Apr 16, 2017
Messages
14
Thanks to some of your who posted advice on my other queries. As of now I'm still shopping around for a used Leaf and came and across this situation:

Guy with a 2013 leaf (produced in 11/13), says the previous owner had a new battery installed within the past year. Nothing on the Carfax shows a new battery was installed, just a lot of"vehicle serviced" and "body computer/module reprogrammed", and electrical system checked. l He's "looking" to contact the previous owner to get some info that will allow me to verify this to established remaining warrenty of the battery .....I should immediately sense shadiness, but he's a bit of an odd duck so i am entertaining a response from him, if it ever comes....

In the meantime, I'm sleuthing... I can clearly see the dealer that serviced this vehicle. Could I just call them, provide the VIN and ask about specifics of "service" provided on the vehicle.
Or..
I finally got my ODBII/leafspy stuff. Would I be able to use Leafspy to determine the validity of us new battery claim?
 
The better answer is you do not care, you care about capacity.
So test with LEAFspy, and go for a long drive.

You *have* LEAFspy by now, right ?
 
Yes!- I have Leafspy and 2 dongles (in case I have connectivity issues with one).

Regarding a newer battery -shouldn't I care? Assuming Leafspy shows a nice healthy battery of course, detemining the time/mileage left on a newer battery would give me more value in terms time left on the warrenty, right?
 
sciencegirl said:
detemining the time/mileage left on a newer battery would give me more value in terms time left on the warrenty, right?
That would be nice, but no
 
In other battery threads, it's been posted that a replacement battery has a 12 month warranty, so if it was done last year, that warranty would be close to expiring already. The CAR has its original warranty, so if that extends beyond 12 months after the date of battery replacement, you would still get a second new battery under warranty if the replacement battery failed during the period of the car's original warranty, but that is unlikely unless the new battery has a bad cell, which is rare, or if you live in the hottest place on Earth. The replacement 24 kWh batteries just don't cook that quickly. (The 2016 cars have a longer warranty on their 30 kWh batteries (which are proving to be rather fragile in heat, like the pre-April 2013 cars) and it looks like some of them *will* qualify for multiple replacements in places like Phoenix.)

The big worry to me would be that the "battery replacement" claim could be used to cover up a BMS reset, which is a software trick to make the State of Health (SOH) read out on LeafSpy as 100% or nearly so. It takes a while for the car to return to calculating a more correct value for SOH. Months, I think I've read. So, you should DEFINITELY care about that possible pitfall. I mean, we know car dealers are all fine, honest people who would never do anything unscrupulous, but still... ;)

You could detect a big loss of capacity by doing a long test drive (over ten miles) and calculating the battery capacity from the original % charge, the ending % charge, and the amount of energy actually consumed as reported by LS. I'm a little suspicious that those calculations are totally trustworthy (my first attempt at doing this calculation gave a value that seemed a bit optimistic) but if you did it and calculated a value that was well under what a new battery should have, that would seem to indicate that someone had monkeyed with the computer, not replaced the battery. If you did two independent calculations for two drives (which just requires noting down the values for the first drive, then turning the car off and on again to reset the trip values) you could compare the two results as a sanity check.

I'm a bit of a noob, so if I'm off-base here, no doubt someone will be along to correct me soon enough...
 
You would get nothing on this battery... If it was already replaced under warrantee, then you cant expect to double dip and get a SECOND battery replacement.

The first one was a nicety.... Don't be greedy....
 
sciencegirl said:
I can clearly see the dealer that serviced this vehicle. Could I just call them, provide the VIN and ask about specifics of "service" provided on the vehicle.

I have a reputable dealer near me that helped greatly when looking at a used Leaf. I gave them the VIN and they looked up the entire service record - all that had been done. They had never seen the vehicle - I believe any dealer could/should do that for you. A new battery will definitely show up. It might work better if you actually visit the dealer. BTW, I bought this one.

Another used Leaf that I considered seemed to have a new battery (a 2011 that had 12 bars and over 62 ahrs on LeafSpy). I actually took the "emergency disconnect" cover off and verified that the disconnect itself was the newer type on the more recent (Lizard?) battery. The same dealer verified that the battery was replaced. I did not buy this one - should have!. :cry:
 
How many miles on this car? A car built at the end of 2013 would still be under the original warranty unless they went over the 60,000 mile limit, wouldn't it? Any other reason the battery would be replaced at owner expense?
 
I promise you that unless the pack had a bad cell, all that was replaced was the 12 volt battery. This often shows up as "battery replaced" in service records. A late build 2013 hasn't lost 4 bars that fast.
 
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