Back story (See "too long; didn't read" below for summary): About 6 months ago I bought a 2013 Leaf. It was showing just one bar missing so I thought the battery was decent. I had purchased the Konnwei OBDII that was the only one recommended by LeafSpy. I plugged it in during the test drive and received iKey errors and failure to pair. It was useless, but I bought the car anyway. About 10 days later, it lost a second bar, and four months after that it lost another (so it's down to 9 bars). I was upset with the rapid degradation and ended up getting the BAFX 34t5 OBDII from here: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B005NLQAHS/_encoding=UTF8?coliid=I3EY08GZEQ358Y&colid=1E803RI4QZNDV
It worked immediately and I was able to see that the battery is at 70%. Anyway, I had read that it was generally okay to leave these plugged in to log data with LeafSpy. So I left it plugged in, but ended up not driving the car for a couple days. The 12V battery died, so I disconnected it and hooked it up to my 12V battery charger. When it was finished, I hooked it back up and started the car. Both the yellow and red warning lights were on as were the Brake, ABS, and VDC lights. I started backing out and as soon as I pressed the brakes, strange noises came from the front of the car and the brakes only worked when pressed almost all the way down.
Luckily the regen braking was working so I drove in B mode to slow the car down faster. I noticed when first pressing the brakes there were sounds that made me think of laser guns, then about half way down horrible grinding sounds were made (even when in Park mode; not moving), and finally when the pedal was almost all the way to the floor, braking softly kicked in.
A few days later I spent over $120 for a diagnosis from the dealer. They had the car for around 7 hours and this is what they came up with:
So I took it home and did some research. I pulled the fuses for the VDC, ABS, and TCS as shown in http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=38&p=508531#p508531 All the warning lights were still on, but the horrible noises were gone. I put the larger VDC fuse back in and the awful noises returned. So I pulled it out and put the other two fuses back in. The noises are gone, but the brakes are still very soft and warning lights are still on. Sometimes when opening the driver door, different strange sounds can be heard.
TL;DR: 12V Battery died with OBDII plugged in, now the brakes suck. The dealer wrote, "Brake unit internal shorted due to suspected surge" as the diagnosis.
My questions:
- What did I do to my car?
- Am I really going to have to fork out $2,817 to get it (maybe) fixed? (the "further testing may be needed" worries me)
- Did leaving the OBDII device plugged in ruin some electronics in my car?
- Any thoughts from the Leaf community about this?
- Is my car hosed?
I don't have anywhere near $2,817 to spend for this repair and will keep driving it in B mode with soft but functional brakes.
Thanks for any input!
It worked immediately and I was able to see that the battery is at 70%. Anyway, I had read that it was generally okay to leave these plugged in to log data with LeafSpy. So I left it plugged in, but ended up not driving the car for a couple days. The 12V battery died, so I disconnected it and hooked it up to my 12V battery charger. When it was finished, I hooked it back up and started the car. Both the yellow and red warning lights were on as were the Brake, ABS, and VDC lights. I started backing out and as soon as I pressed the brakes, strange noises came from the front of the car and the brakes only worked when pressed almost all the way down.
Luckily the regen braking was working so I drove in B mode to slow the car down faster. I noticed when first pressing the brakes there were sounds that made me think of laser guns, then about half way down horrible grinding sounds were made (even when in Park mode; not moving), and finally when the pedal was almost all the way to the floor, braking softly kicked in.
A few days later I spent over $120 for a diagnosis from the dealer. They had the car for around 7 hours and this is what they came up with:
So I took it home and did some research. I pulled the fuses for the VDC, ABS, and TCS as shown in http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=38&p=508531#p508531 All the warning lights were still on, but the horrible noises were gone. I put the larger VDC fuse back in and the awful noises returned. So I pulled it out and put the other two fuses back in. The noises are gone, but the brakes are still very soft and warning lights are still on. Sometimes when opening the driver door, different strange sounds can be heard.
TL;DR: 12V Battery died with OBDII plugged in, now the brakes suck. The dealer wrote, "Brake unit internal shorted due to suspected surge" as the diagnosis.
My questions:
- What did I do to my car?
- Am I really going to have to fork out $2,817 to get it (maybe) fixed? (the "further testing may be needed" worries me)
- Did leaving the OBDII device plugged in ruin some electronics in my car?
- Any thoughts from the Leaf community about this?
- Is my car hosed?
I don't have anywhere near $2,817 to spend for this repair and will keep driving it in B mode with soft but functional brakes.
Thanks for any input!
