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So, luckily I have a great Dealer (I never go to a dealer unless I need something special that I can't get anywhere else)
and the local senior tech mentioned that he had seen this behavior before, apparently it happens when a
non-cold weather HV battery gets installed into a car that has the cold weather package.
Still totally weird that installing a battery without battery heaters will cause the car to indefinitely charge the 12v battery to 14.4V
but that is what is happening.
Indeed, I had a warranty replacement 2017 battery with model nr 295B09RB9D in this car and swapped it with a 2011 battery with model nr 295B03NA0A. The car has cold weather package (steering wheel and seat warmers) and apparently this old battery is not the cold weather package type, so the car does wonky things. Now I need to find out how I can change it back to normal. Probably need to reprogram something in the LBC memory to make it think it has a cold weather package and everything is fine and to let the car sleep.
Hmmm, I can read and program the LBC, but where to find *what* exactly I need to write...
 
Cor said:
So, luckily I have a great Dealer (I never go to a dealer unless I need something special that I can't get anywhere else)
and the local senior tech mentioned that he had seen this behavior before, apparently it happens when a
non-cold weather HV battery gets installed into a car that has the cold weather package.
Still totally weird that installing a battery without battery heaters will cause the car to indefinitely charge the 12v battery to 14.4V
but that is what is happening.
Indeed, I had a warranty replacement 2017 battery with model nr 295B09RB9D in this car and swapped it with a 2011 battery with model nr 295B03NA0A. The car has cold weather package (steering wheel and seat warmers) and apparently this old battery is not the cold weather package type, so the car does wonky things. Now I need to find out how I can change it back to normal. Probably need to reprogram something in the LBC memory to make it think it has a cold weather package and everything is fine and to let the car sleep.
Hmmm, I can read and program the LBC, but where to find *what* exactly I need to write...

Cor;
Have you tried pulling the three (12v) fuses that feed the heaters? Have no idea if this might work, in fact likely not if their is actual differences in firmware - but so simple to try it might be worth it for a short term fix. The three fuses are located and described in ops manual Section PG pages 16-19.
 
Marktm said:
Have you tried pulling the three (12v) fuses that feed the heaters? Have no idea if this might work, in fact likely not if their is actual differences in firmware - but so simple to try it might be worth it for a short term fix. The three fuses are located and described in ops manual Section PG pages 16-19.
You mean the seat and steering wheel heaters?
Do you expect that the car auto-detects the cold weather package by the fact that it sense the presence of the heaters (current draw when turned on)? I don't think that is what the car should do - I expect that it is configured with cold weather as option,
but it can't hurt to try and see if it makes a difference.
If all else fails, I will have to install a cold-weather configured LBC into the battery pack, so the car thinks that everything is fine again - even while there are no actual battery heaters... I still expect that there is a message that the car is expecting an answer to but is not getting from the LBC, something like inquiring if the battery heaters are engaged, because the relay for the HV to the heaters is drawing 12V, so that is the reason for the car to turn the 12V DC/DC converter on (and the water pumps for cooling) giving almost 300W draw from the main pack, causing the loss of approx 1 mile of range each hour. It is a fail-safe of the car to avoid the 12V battery to die while the battery heaters are on, but the result is now a continuous drain on the main pack, indefinitely.
I will try pulling the fuses and else I will see if I have an LBC that the car agrees with. I was hoping that it could easily be reprogrammed.
Oh well, I know how to drop the pack, it is just a couple hours work.
 
Marktm said:
Have you tried pulling the three (12v) fuses that feed the heaters? Have no idea if this might work, in fact likely not if their is actual differences in firmware - but so simple to try it might be worth it for a short term fix. The three fuses are located and described in ops manual Section PG pages 16-19.
Hi Mark,
I went ahead and pulled the fuses anyway (fuses 8,10 and 17 on the panel in the driver door dashboard side)
and then pulled the 12V battery terminal to make sure everything would start up from scratch.
Since the car was providing 14.4V to the battery, the car continued to be powered until I started and then powered down the Leaf, so it died before it was able to re-start the battery charging.
After waiting a minute, I re-attached the battery terminal and the car booted - without starting the battery charging, Jay!
Then I started the car and powered it down again - and the battery charging re-started.....
Ah, so - the pulling of the 3 fuses does nothing to convince the car to act as if it does not have cold weather package.
I noticed one other odd thing:
When the car is fully charged and stops charging with the J1772 connector still plugged in, the charging station continues to show that the car is pulling down the pilot signal to keep providing AC power, while the blue LEDs have turned off, only the 3rd LED is blinking to indicate the car is charging the 12V battery, but nothing indicates that the car is still taking AC power from the charger, just that the pilot signal is keeping the charger "on"...
 
Cor said:
This morning, the 3rd light was still blinking and the car had lost another 12 miles of range overnight (12 hrs), so I plugged it in and will visit the dealer later today.
I noticed that when I plug it in to charge, the aux battery voltage goes to 13.10V. When I unplug, the 3rd LED starts blinking again and the aux battery voltage goes to 14.42V. Totally weird.

Interesting. For the first time on my 2016, I saw the 12 volt charging light blinking as well. don't know how long it was blinking before I saw it and had gassed it that day so the car had sat at least 36ish hours or so but when I went to check on it less than 5 mins later the it was no longer on. So I either caught the tail end of the cycle or the cycle is simply not that long.
 
DaveinOlyWA said:
Cor said:
This morning, the 3rd light was still blinking and the car had lost another 12 miles of range overnight (12 hrs), so I plugged it in and will visit the dealer later today.
I noticed that when I plug it in to charge, the aux battery voltage goes to 13.10V. When I unplug, the 3rd LED starts blinking again and the aux battery voltage goes to 14.42V. Totally weird.

Interesting. For the first time on my 2016, I saw the 12 volt charging light blinking as well. don't know how long it was blinking before I saw it and had gassed it that day so the car had sat at least 36ish hours or so but when I went to check on it less than 5 mins later the it was no longer on. So I either caught the tail end of the cycle or the cycle is simply not that long.
Dave,
Correct - the cycle is supposed to be short and the 12V Battery is supposed to only be charged when it has sat a longtime (5 days is what I have heard) or when it is cold (below -20F is what I read) as the battery heaters require all contactors to be engaged, so it draws quite a bit of power from the 12V battery, so the car also engages the DC/DC converter to recharge the 12V battery and then also has to engage the water pump to keep the DC/DC converter cooled. Battery heating only continues until the battery temp has risen from -20 to -10F and if the charge level of the HV battery gets too low, it will no longer warm the battery to preserve the charge in the battery.
Since my battery controller is not equipped for cold weather package, it apparently does not reply the correct info on the car's request, so the car goes to a fail-safe mode to keep the 12V battery charged, but does so continuously instead of intelligently.
I looked at another LBC that I had lying around and it is equipped with the contacts for the battery heater control and the transistor TR28 on the circuit board in the LBC to drive the heater relay coil. So, maybe I should install this LBC instead in my battery and then get it re-programmed again. I would still like to know what the difference is between the two LBCs, but I can't trace that out without disabling the car for another day and I would also hate to find out that it is simply a bit to be set in the configuration in the LBC memory and that is all there is to it... Rather not pay another $160 for minimum service charge to the local dealer for another attempt at registering yet another LBC, just to find out that one *also* has the wrong configuration. I rather find a confirmed good LBC from a battery with cold weather package and then take that one to the dealer to make sure it is 100% good right off the bat.
 
Cor said:
DaveinOlyWA said:
Cor said:
This morning, the 3rd light was still blinking and the car had lost another 12 miles of range overnight (12 hrs), so I plugged it in and will visit the dealer later today.
I noticed that when I plug it in to charge, the aux battery voltage goes to 13.10V. When I unplug, the 3rd LED starts blinking again and the aux battery voltage goes to 14.42V. Totally weird.

Interesting. For the first time on my 2016, I saw the 12 volt charging light blinking as well. don't know how long it was blinking before I saw it and had gassed it that day so the car had sat at least 36ish hours or so but when I went to check on it less than 5 mins later the it was no longer on. So I either caught the tail end of the cycle or the cycle is simply not that long.
Dave,
Correct - the cycle is supposed to be short and the 12V Battery is supposed to only be charged when it has sat a longtime (5 days is what I have heard) or when it is cold (below -20F is what I read) as the battery heaters require all contactors to be engaged, so it draws quite a bit of power from the 12V battery, so the car also engages the DC/DC converter to recharge the 12V battery and then also has to engage the water pump to keep the DC/DC converter cooled. Battery heating only continues until the battery temp has risen from -20 to -10F and if the charge level of the HV battery gets too low, it will no longer warm the battery to preserve the charge in the battery.
Since my battery controller is not equipped for cold weather package, it apparently does not reply the correct info on the car's request, so the car goes to a fail-safe mode to keep the 12V battery charged, but does so continuously instead of intelligently.
I looked at another LBC that I had lying around and it is equipped with the contacts for the battery heater control and the transistor TR28 on the circuit board in the LBC to drive the heater relay coil. So, maybe I should install this LBC instead in my battery and then get it re-programmed again. I would still like to know what the difference is between the two LBCs, but I can't trace that out without disabling the car for another day and I would also hate to find out that it is simply a bit to be set in the configuration in the LBC memory and that is all there is to it... Rather not pay another $160 for minimum service charge to the local dealer for another attempt at registering yet another LBC, just to find out that one *also* has the wrong configuration. I rather find a confirmed good LBC from a battery with cold weather package and then take that one to the dealer to make sure it is 100% good right off the bat.

Well, hate to burst your bubble, but my car didn't do any of that. Maybe we have evidence Nissan has "finally" addressed this issue?
 
DaveinOlyWA said:
Well, hate to burst your bubble, but my car didn't do any of that. Maybe we have evidence Nissan has "finally" addressed this issue?
Dave,
Not sure that I am getting what you try to say.
My 2012 is failing to stay in shutdown, because it gets no or the wrong response when it inquires of the BMS (LBC) if the battery heater was turned on, so it decides that out of safety, it will start charging the 12V battery as *if* the battery heaters are on, since they need 12V to keep the HV contactors pulled in.
Anyway, I am trying to remedy the situation by swapping the LBC for a version from a battery with heaters, even though there are no heaters in this battery. But the only thing the LBC is interested in is to be able to read back the heater control signal, so I will make sure that there is a jump wire to be able to read it back.
So, this morning I bit the bullet and dropped the pack, opened the shell and removed the LBC. Tonight I will attempt to copy the memory into the LBC from a cold weather package car and hope that will resolve the problem.
Reason to copy the memory configuration is to avoid another $160 service charge at the dealer to re-program the car to recognise this LBC.
To be continued.
 
OK, it looks like the saga has concluded today, regarding my 2012 with cold weather package that I swapped in a battery without heaters and as a result, the car was constantly charging the 12V battery, due to the (old) BMS (LBC) not answering the car's inquiries about whether the heaters were on or not, resulting in the car not knowing if the heater relays were draining the 12V battery and thus it turning on the DC/DC converter permanently.

I found an LBC from a late 2011 or 2012 which has the battery heater control integrated into the LBC and a relay in the pack (early 2011 and some 2013 have a 3rd plug on the exterior of the battery case, so the car can turn the heaters on, but this is unnecessary complex to route the power from outside back into the battery for the heaters, as the battery already has this power internally, so why not avoid the 3rd plug and simply have a small relay inside the battery case?)
Anyway, I tried to load the memory configuration of the old LBC (which was programmed to the car) into the new LBC, but apparently with adding the code for the heater control, the memory configuration has changed, so the car still did not accept this LBC. I tried a few times with different areas copied over the original cold-weather LBC configuration, but since each iteration meant a lot of work, including hoisting the pack up to the car to plug it in under the car, I soon gave up, put the original cold weather LBC configuration back into it, bolted the battery case shut and installed it again in the car, put the covers on and this morning I drove at a leisurely 25 MPH to the dealer to once more register the battery to this car, but now with the correct LBC type.
After a couple minutes on the Consult computer the car registered the battery and everything was OK.
The tech asked me how I made sure that this was a cold weather package LBC, so I explained that I had opened the LBC, verified that it had the correct circuits (compared to the non-cold-weather LBC which used the same circuit board, but which did not have the components placed for the heater relay control and sensing.
I also added a jumper to feed back the control output to the sensing input, as I saw on the schematic of the cold weather battery and I added a small resistor between the pins where the relay coil would connect, so that even without the relay present, the LBC would still "see" something connected.
And indeed, the car is now happy as a clam, no more error messages, no more 12V battery charging, sucking down the HV battery. Only thing that still needs to self-adjust is the range indication, since this LBC is from a newish battery or its statistics have been erased, so that it is now considering that it has a new battery and needs to re-learn the capacity of the actual battery.
It is great timing, as I just picked up a battery today that needs to go into the next Leaf. I think I will stick with swapping module stacks this time just to be on the safe side...
 
2015 Leaf S 12k mi just acquired less than a month ago from coming off lease in Alabama, January 8 2018 "FAILURE FROM AUX BATTERY"

I do not know how long it had "sat" before they shipped it to Chattanooga but I picked it up from Dealer and they said "charged" and ready to go !!!

7 days later I went and visited a friend on Dayton Mountain when a cold spell blew in and the temperature dipped to single digit 2*, Due to it being the first time to pull the mountain I left home with a full charge. I had traveled 14 miles and used 1/2 the main battery. I had brought my main trickle charger and also a motorcycle battery tender I use on my BMW gel battery due to reading such an issue might arise with the Leaf auxiliary battery.

I went to leave and the car had a dead battery symbol and no response other than dash lights came on Tuesday night January 16th 2018. I plugged the chargers in and the next morning had green symbols on the chargers but still a dead auxiliary battery symbol. It was the all day with the temperature in a single digit. The car has now been on showing full charge status from the chargers for 48 hrs and the ambient temperature of the cab finally rose to 32* on thursday January 18th in full sun about 11 am when the battery symbol went off and the Leaf operated as it should.

Nissan does not prepare you for failure in cold temperatures other than state that it will lose range. They do not express any value of the auxiliary battery with this one being a Lit-ion dieing in the cold....they do not with all there gauges give you any status of this battery other than its dead...and guess what ....the car doesn't work.....I did see the manual state a boost but this widow had no car to boost from and the Mtn has no cell or phone service...I do mean country appalachia.

I took it back to the dealer on the 22nd and they kept it for a day returning it to me saying that all checked fine and if it happened again to HAVE IT TOWED IN..........THOUSANDS IN A ALMOST NEW...LOW MILE CAR....TO HAVE TOWED IN.

when asked about the print out about the test....such as an impedance test of the battery after being in a freezer(to replicate the event) They mention they could not do it because Nissan had to approve all testing equipment.....a refrigerator freezer will shed a lot of light but no they pass it back to you.....How can a consumer get anecdote info with the dealer passing the "BUCK"?

Thanks for this thread, got a lot of good info....hopes this helps document the corporate "SLACKING" leading to us "walking" needlessly !!!!
 
Welcome to the LEAF forum, country5369!

I'm sorry to hear about your issues with the 12V battery. Frankly, I cannot imagine having any car towed for a 12V battery issue. Even if someone else is footing the bill, towing often results in some sort of damage to the car.
country5369 said:
I went to leave and the car had a dead battery symbol and no response other than dash lights came on Tuesday night January 16th 2018. I plugged the chargers in and the next morning had green symbols on the chargers but still a dead auxiliary battery symbol. It was the all day with the temperature in a single digit. The car has now been on showing full charge status from the chargers for 48 hrs and the ambient temperature of the cab finally rose to 32* on thursday January 18th in full sun about 11 am when the battery symbol went off and the Leaf operated as it should.
Just one note about this: When I want to charge the 12V battery in our MY2011 LEAF, I DO NOT plug in the EVSE to the car. Why? Because when it is charging, the LEAF's electronics draw more current than the trickle charger can deliver. The result is that the CAR, not the trickle charger, controls the charging voltage. Unfortunately, the car doesn't always do a good job keeping the 12V battery charged. (Based on your post, this is apparently true even in the MY2015 in spite of assurances to the contrary by other members of this forum.)

Unfortunately, your 12V battery may be badly sulfated at this point. My experience is that my desulfating charger takes a long time to break up lead sulfate, but it really doesn't do much in cold weather. IOW, it seems to be much more successful desulfating in warm weather.

Good luck getting your issue resolved quickly and cheaply.
 
I find that while charging the 12 volt battery doesn't happen fast when the car is also charging, it does happen. I've had no issues with doing both at once.
 
LeftieBiker said:
I find that while charging the 12 volt battery doesn't happen fast when the car is also charging, it does happen. I've had no issues with doing both at once.
But that depends entirely on whether the car WANTS to charge the car. If it chooses to float the battery at 13.1V (which it normally does), then no real charging will occur. It's easy enough to tell by simply measuring the battery voltage.

And, BTW, slower charging is better unless you are in a big hurry.
 
Trickle chargers come in different sizes. The real cheap small brick type can be <500ma(1/2 amp) and may not be enough to do much good to a discharged battery in the extreme cold. A better choice is one that will float and also has a maximum charge rate of at least 1000ma(1a).
Note for on the fly jumping I've gotten into the habit of carrying around a small Li jump starter(~$20-$40 on sale). I doubt it would have enough juice to jump-start an ICE(although that's what it's advertised for) but I can attest it works to jump-start a Leaf in the cold with a weak battery.
My '12(original battery) wouldn't start during the first cold snap early this winter. I put it on a regular 12v charger and it was fine about an hour later and I left. I used the car for a couple days after that with no trouble. By day 3 I parked the car outside a store and came out 30 minutes later and it wouldn't start. As I was nowhere near a 120v outlet I pulled out my little Li jump starter, hooked it up to the battery with it's battery clips and 30 seconds later turned my Leaf ON and wala! it started right up.
The next day I visited a local Batteries + and purchased an Optima Yellow Top 51R battery and it's started ever since, even in double digits below 0F. IMO if you have a Leaf with an older 12v battery I'd really think about purchasing a small jump starter and checking it's charge every couple months or so. IMO you don't really need a big jump starter, just something to hold Leaf battery to 12v until it starts and then the big traction battery will take over 12v charging for the remainder of your trip.
 
country5369 said:
2015 Leaf S 12k mi just acquired less than a month ago from coming off lease in Alabama, January 8 2018 "FAILURE FROM AUX BATTERY"

I do not know how long it had "sat" before they shipped it to Chattanooga but I picked it up from Dealer and they said "charged" and ready to go !!!

7 days later I went and visited a friend on Dayton Mountain when a cold spell blew in and the temperature dipped to single digit 2*, Due to it being the first time to pull the mountain I left home with a full charge. I had traveled 14 miles and used 1/2 the main battery. I had brought my main trickle charger and also a motorcycle battery tender I use on my BMW gel battery due to reading such an issue might arise with the Leaf auxiliary battery.

I went to leave and the car had a dead battery symbol and no response other than dash lights came on Tuesday night January 16th 2018. I plugged the chargers in and the next morning had green symbols on the chargers but still a dead auxiliary battery symbol. It was the all day with the temperature in a single digit. The car has now been on showing full charge status from the chargers for 48 hrs and the ambient temperature of the cab finally rose to 32* on thursday January 18th in full sun about 11 am when the battery symbol went off and the Leaf operated as it should.

Nissan does not prepare you for failure in cold temperatures other than state that it will lose range. They do not express any value of the auxiliary battery with this one being a Lit-ion dieing in the cold....they do not with all there gauges give you any status of this battery other than its dead...and guess what ....the car doesn't work.....I did see the manual state a boost but this widow had no car to boost from and the Mtn has no cell or phone service...I do mean country appalachia.

I took it back to the dealer on the 22nd and they kept it for a day returning it to me saying that all checked fine and if it happened again to HAVE IT TOWED IN..........THOUSANDS IN A ALMOST NEW...LOW MILE CAR....TO HAVE TOWED IN.

when asked about the print out about the test....such as an impedance test of the battery after being in a freezer(to replicate the event) They mention they could not do it because Nissan had to approve all testing equipment.....a refrigerator freezer will shed a lot of light but no they pass it back to you.....How can a consumer get anecdote info with the dealer passing the "BUCK"?

Thanks for this thread, got a lot of good info....hopes this helps document the corporate "SLACKING" leading to us "walking" needlessly !!!!

I am sorry for your inconvenience, but welcome to the forum. The warranty on the 12-volt battery is 3 years or 36,000 miles so the dealer will charge a high price for a replacement battery that is not a high quality unit. I recommend that you just replace the battery with a high-quality aftermarket unit rather than fighting with the dealer. I replaced the original batteries in my 2011 and 2015 with Yellow top Optima 51R batteries at my expense even though the originals both failed at less than 3 years so I could have obtained warranty replacements by scheduling visits to the dealer (the failures both happened on weekends). The Optima has much more capacity to handle residual load of the car's electronics while parked and should last a lot longer than the original.

The car charges the 12-volt battery when the traction battery is actually charging, but there is residual load drawn from the 12-volt battery when the charging cable remains connected after charging is complete. Your old 12-volt battery could not handle that residual load. The 2015 Leaf will turn on the system to charge the 12-volt battery from the traction battery when it senses that it is getting low, but the voltage of a weak 12-volt battery collapses too quickly so the system cannot activate. That is what happened in your case so a new 12-volt battery will solve your problem. I also recommend a lithium ion jumper pack (as Jeff mentioned) to carry in any vehicle. The pack I have has started motorcycles, Leafs, and V8 SUVs.
 
69800 said:
I personally am doing a lot of testing with a data logger and will be putting the info and results here for all to see

Could you update the images? The old photobucket image linking does not work any more.
 
I have been watching this thread for a long time. I was wondering how long the factory original might last. My battery is the original (manufacture date of 3/2011). It has always been between 12.0V and 12.5V at the end of a day just before charging. I normally charge my car daily using L1. I have never used a trickle charger on the 12V battery. I am finally getting a little anxious and will likely get a replacement battery rather than pushing my luck anymore.

Has anyone used the Costco Interstate replacement battery, 850251, size 51R?
Does anyone have current recommendations?
 
Has anybody disconnected current sensor plug? It should bypass 13V charging mode.
Which will charge 12V battery to a much higher state.

It literally takes 20 seconds :)
 
arnis said:
Has anybody disconnected current sensor plug? It should bypass 13V charging mode.
Which will charge 12V battery to a much higher state.

It literally takes 20 seconds :)

I have never tried it because I have no issues with the charging algorithm in my climate (but I agree that it should work and cause the charging voltage to be in excess of 14 volts).

Regarding previous post, an Interstate battery from Costco in size 51R should work OK, but I prefer deep cycle AGM batteries because their characteristics match the deep cycling of the LEAF's 12-volt battery.
 
I got "46B24L 12V 46Ah 650CCA Lithium Iron Phosphate Battery LiFePO4 for Automotive Car" from ebay and I like it a lot. In addition to the main 46AH battery, it contains emergency 10AH battery you can activate in case of main battery was discharged fully with small switch on the battery. This feature makes carrying lithium battery booster redundant and the weight is only ~9lbs. Exact fit for 51R size battery. Before the change the morning voltage would be 12.3V on OEM battery, on this LiFePO4 - I get 13.35V on first morning and second morning if car is not used and 13.45V right after trip. I have a few battery testers and they show OEM battery is good, but the real life performance suggests otherwise. I doubt it will make it till charger kicks in 5 days, if left unused. I never had 12V battery failure though. The sellers also sell 46B24R, but it has terminals reversed. It fits, but terminals would be a bit off (negative will be at angle) when mounted.
 
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