Stoaty
Well-known member
Hey, I resemble that remark.Cor said:OK, it looks like the low mileage 2015 battery that I will get next week will be installed in a Leaf in Los Angeles and the take-out modules will also stay there
Hey, I resemble that remark.Cor said:OK, it looks like the low mileage 2015 battery that I will get next week will be installed in a Leaf in Los Angeles and the take-out modules will also stay there
No need to be surprised - I am not hiding anythingStoaty said:Hey, I resemble that remark.Cor said:OK, it looks like the low mileage 2015 battery that I will get next week will be installed in a Leaf in Los Angeles and the take-out modules will also stay there
Nor am I. With this post I am outing myself as the Los Angeles Leafer who will be getting an almost new battery (fingers crossed).Cor said:No need to be surprised - I am not hiding anything
Stoaty said:Nor am I. With this post I am outing myself as the Los Angeles Leafer who will be getting an almost new battery (fingers crossed).Cor said:No need to be surprised - I am not hiding anything
That is why I was winking ;-)Stoaty said:Nor am I. With this post I am outing myself as the Los Angeles Leafer who will be getting an almost new battery (fingers crossed).Cor said:No need to be surprised - I am not hiding anything
I thought that the car was at the dismantler - apparently the car was shipped but the car carrier broke down and could not unload,Cor said:The 2015 has arrived at the dismantler so I hope to get more info about it tomorrow.
Yeah, sorry about that, normally the dismantler is pretty good at communicating, but I had to call him since he did not respond to my emailStoaty said:Still waiting to hear what happened to the car that was supposed to be delivered to the dismantler 10 days ago.
I finally heard what really happened - it was not that the car carrier broke down (or maybe it was, but that was not the biggest problem) as it appeared that the 2015 Leaf that they were delivering had a battery that had already been opened and parts were missing!Cor said:normally the dismantler is pretty good at communicating, but I had to call him since he did not respond to my email
and I heard from his colleague that he himself traveled to where the car is coming from (apparently somewhere near LA, oh irony) to see
what he can arrange to have it shipped.
Stoaty said:Still waiting to hear what happened to the car that was supposed to be delivered to the dismantler 10 days ago.
See post before yours. Bottom line: parts had already been removed from battery pack when dismantler got it. Waiting for an intact pack from a different Leaf when one becomes available.lorenfb said:When will the DIY battery replacement install begin?
Hi Loren,lorenfb said:Can't help with a Consult III diagnostic tool, but I'm sure you have access to one to re-flash the battery ECU and register the replacement battery, right?
Cor said:Hi Loren,lorenfb said:Can't help with a Consult III diagnostic tool, but I'm sure you have access to one to re-flash the battery ECU and register the replacement battery, right?
Stoaty will keep his original BMS as nobody outside of Nissan has access to their tools and even then, without paperwork from Nissan, including a special key string for the new battery, it probably can't be registered anyway (that is how I understand the procedure as explained by the Nissan Dealer).
So, the only option is to actually open the battery shell, remove the worn modules and place fresh modules back.
Since the BMS wiring on newer batteries is different from the old (2011/2012), the only way to use the old BMS that is coded to the car and not blow it, is to also swap the BMS wiring from the old modules onto the new modules. Not a difficult job, but a bit tedious as this involves unbolting about 200 screws and after swapping the wiring, securely fastening each one again.
Another bit of extra work is that the other stuff in the battery shell (service disconnect, high voltage relay module and even a torque bar that straddles the modules is in the way of easy unbolting the modules, so in essence everything has to come out, down to a bare battery shell and then it needs to be re-built with the new modules, old wiring and the original disconnect, relay module and strengthening bar, the temperature sensors need to be plugged into the modules again. The wiring support brackets that are not in the right place for the bolts on the new modules need to be moved to support the wiring from flopping around, chafing through and short circuiting the battery - a lot of details to get right and then to close the box and making sure it is water-proof again or it might cause a fatal problem like the Leaf that I helped strip of the few still usable parts after the battery caught fire due to rain water immersion inside. (Yep, fire caused by water).
Oh and don't forget the Security Torx bolts in the Emergency Disconnect.
Luckily during the process we don't need to deal with the fact that the 2013+ shells are glued shut, because I will deal with that in advance when the new battery arrives at my place, so I can gut that shell and load the modules in my Prius for the drive to LA.
Hope this gives an idea of what is involved.
BTW, if it was just the swap of the complete battery then no high voltage gloves are needed. There is no high voltage anywhere as long as you unplug the control connector first, because the relay coils are powered via the control connector. Unplug that and the high voltage cable is perfectly safe - only inside the battery shell are the modules "always on".
Yes, I "know" that $3,000 is less than $7,000 and Cor's replacement battery will provide me enough extra life in my Leaf until Leaf 2.0 or Tesla... while minimizing financial risk should my Leaf be totaled.lorenfb said:Thanks for the insight. My post was not aimed at what you do, but more of a tongue-and-cheek at your
potential "knowledgeable" customer.
Cor said:BTW, while I was putting my pack back together with the 2015 BMS, I could not resist looking at the BMS a little closer.
Others have done an in depth about the 24 ASICs that measure the voltages from every of the 96 cell pairs and also balance them.
I happen to notice that there is a 25th ASIC sitting to the side, not sure what exactly is the function of that one,
one part that I did want to discover is how the BMS stores its historic data and likely also its pairing information.
Besides the processor 70F3236 and the ASICS there are not many chips on board, just one CAN interface PCA82C250; several voltage regulators and one 8-pin chip that puzzled me why it had only 3 of the 8 pins connected and 2 of those are ground. As I suspected, this is a fancy type of "Zener" diode, a low power high precision (0.05%) voltage reference LT1634 that only requires 10uA so it can be powered
continuously without strain on the battery, while giving a precise reference to the processor.
Well the last chip I checked, what do you know, IC9 is a S93C86 which is a serial bus EEPROM of 16kbits.
So, it should be trivial to remove this from the board (or lift 4 legs for power, clock in, data in and out) and read the entire chip
or simply drop it into a programmer, read and copy it and if necessary add a small ZIF socket to the BMS board to easily modify and
drop it back in - or have a small break-out board with jumpers whether the memory should be in circuit or accessible from external.
NOTE that the board deals with 400 Volts so be careful when it is wired up to the pack,
but the first step of reverse engineering if the BMS can be paired to a different car is to study the contents of several dumps of different days,
so it is clear where the historic info is stored and what is fixed info....
Valdemar said:I posted this in another thread, someone on a foreign Leaf forum claimed he hacked the 2011 BMS, he even posted a screenshot of a hex editor (EEPROM image?) and pointed to locations that keep the AHr and the capacity bars. He said he could store whatever values he wanted at those locations effectively restoring the capacity gauge to 12 bars (temporarily of course). Or he could "pair" a 2011 BMS to a 2011 Leaf without Consult III (not clear if battery disassembly was required). Same person said he couldn't hack the 2013+ BMS, or at least not yet, so even with his knowledge your job wouldn't have been easier.
I have a theory that 2013+ cars have a slightly different BMS than that which comes with new replacement packs intended for installation into 2011/12 cars, for one new Leafs have 3 temperature sensors but 2015 replacement packs in older Leafs still show 4 in LeafSpy. As such, it may never be possible to swap the battery as a unit from a 2013+ Leaf to 2011/12, and moving modules will remain to be the only available option.
NiallDarwin said:Valdemar said:I posted this in another thread, someone on a foreign Leaf forum claimed he hacked the 2011 BMS, he even posted a screenshot of a hex editor (EEPROM image?) and pointed to locations that keep the AHr and the capacity bars. He said he could store whatever values he wanted at those locations effectively restoring the capacity gauge to 12 bars (temporarily of course). Or he could "pair" a 2011 BMS to a 2011 Leaf without Consult III (not clear if battery disassembly was required). Same person said he couldn't hack the 2013+ BMS, or at least not yet, so even with his knowledge your job wouldn't have been easier.
I have a theory that 2013+ cars have a slightly different BMS than that which comes with new replacement packs intended for installation into 2011/12 cars, for one new Leafs have 3 temperature sensors but 2015 replacement packs in older Leafs still show 4 in LeafSpy. As such, it may never be possible to swap the battery as a unit from a 2013+ Leaf to 2011/12, and moving modules will remain to be the only available option.
I haven’t been able to find this. Can you point me to it?
...
Valdemar said:NiallDarwin said:Valdemar said:I posted this in another thread, someone on a foreign Leaf forum claimed he hacked the 2011 BMS, he even posted a screenshot of a hex editor (EEPROM image?) and pointed to locations that keep the AHr and the capacity bars. He said he could store whatever values he wanted at those locations effectively restoring the capacity gauge to 12 bars (temporarily of course). Or he could "pair" a 2011 BMS to a 2011 Leaf without Consult III (not clear if battery disassembly was required). Same person said he couldn't hack the 2013+ BMS, or at least not yet, so even with his knowledge your job wouldn't have been easier.
I have a theory that 2013+ cars have a slightly different BMS than that which comes with new replacement packs intended for installation into 2011/12 cars, for one new Leafs have 3 temperature sensors but 2015 replacement packs in older Leafs still show 4 in LeafSpy. As such, it may never be possible to swap the battery as a unit from a 2013+ Leaf to 2011/12, and moving modules will remain to be the only available option.
I haven’t been able to find this. Can you point me to it?
...
It's been a while back on a Russian speaking forum with not much details revealed apart from what I mentioned above. Well, may be this can be of interest to some (yellow is for capacity bars):
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