Valdemar
Well-known member
I missed out on the free battery bingo and now weighing my options on breathing a new life in my Leaf a couple years down the road that doesn't involve a transfer of my hard earned cash to Nissan Co. As we now know our friendly manufacturer made every effort to ensure everyone taking this route will suffer at least some amount of pain because you cannot just take a healthy used pack and drop it in your car. Based on what I understand you need to keep your original controller and transplant individual modules from a donor pack to the old housing, or move your battery controller to the donor pack. Easy enough if both packs are using the same type of modules, but who wants a 2011/12 battery with its history of problems in warm places. So here I am, contemplating finding a 2015 or later pack from a wrecked Leaf and putting modules from it into my 2011 pack. Mechanical incompatibilities aside, what can possibly go wrong? First and foremost is of course safety, is it possible that the old BMS will charge the new modules above safe levels increasing the risk of fire? Is the low SOC protection, i.e. opening battery contactor, will happen before it is too late? Anything else? Getting the new 30kWh pack modules working in 2011 would be super sweet, but let's not jump too far ahead