Billabob1234
Member
Hello,
I posted in another troubleshooting thread about the braking failures I experienced with my 2015 Leaf. Basically upon power up the leaf entered a brake failure state, with "brake" and "warning" lights lit. In this state, the car will still go into drive/reverse, but when you press the brake pedal, it goes about 75% to the floor without applying any brakes, and then the ABS kicks in and the car will come to a grinding halt. Here is the thread I posted in before: https://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=25858&p=606899#p606899
The problem is intermittent. It happened to me twice in four months, and the second time was with a new 12v battery. The problem fixed itself both times. Needless to say, my wife and I didn't trust the car anymore and didn't feel good driving anywhere with our kids...
This problem is documented by a couple of people on the forum, and if you go to the NHTSA website, I saw 51 complaints for brakes for the 2015 Leaf alone, and most of them were similar to this failure. There is also a very thorough investigation into the issue on the FlipTheFleet website out of New Zealand.
The dealer quoted $3,000 parts & labor to replace the intelligent brake unit, which I was not keen on paying because I feel this is a serious safety issue that Nissan should cover despite my car being out of warranty.
I talked with Nissan Customer Service and they were not very helpful. They basically said that my car was out of warranty so there was nothing they could do. I am shocked and concerned that they were not more interested in diagnosing and resolving a serious safety issue. But after a few phonecalls and emails I could see they were not budging.
-------
Long story short, I needed to start using the Leaf again, so I bought an intelligent brake unit from a 2017 Leaf on ebay and installed it. On initial powerup there were some codes I had to clear, but everything seems to be working flawlessly. Time will tell if the brake failure comes back, but I am hopeful it will not based on info on this forum and other websites that the brake software was updated sometime in the 2016 model year and that supposedly fixed the issue.
A question I wanted to pose to you guys - the last step in the service manual procedure for replacing this unit says that I need to teach the stroke sensor zero point with Consult.
Thank you....
Bill
I posted in another troubleshooting thread about the braking failures I experienced with my 2015 Leaf. Basically upon power up the leaf entered a brake failure state, with "brake" and "warning" lights lit. In this state, the car will still go into drive/reverse, but when you press the brake pedal, it goes about 75% to the floor without applying any brakes, and then the ABS kicks in and the car will come to a grinding halt. Here is the thread I posted in before: https://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=25858&p=606899#p606899
The problem is intermittent. It happened to me twice in four months, and the second time was with a new 12v battery. The problem fixed itself both times. Needless to say, my wife and I didn't trust the car anymore and didn't feel good driving anywhere with our kids...
This problem is documented by a couple of people on the forum, and if you go to the NHTSA website, I saw 51 complaints for brakes for the 2015 Leaf alone, and most of them were similar to this failure. There is also a very thorough investigation into the issue on the FlipTheFleet website out of New Zealand.
The dealer quoted $3,000 parts & labor to replace the intelligent brake unit, which I was not keen on paying because I feel this is a serious safety issue that Nissan should cover despite my car being out of warranty.
I talked with Nissan Customer Service and they were not very helpful. They basically said that my car was out of warranty so there was nothing they could do. I am shocked and concerned that they were not more interested in diagnosing and resolving a serious safety issue. But after a few phonecalls and emails I could see they were not budging.
-------
Long story short, I needed to start using the Leaf again, so I bought an intelligent brake unit from a 2017 Leaf on ebay and installed it. On initial powerup there were some codes I had to clear, but everything seems to be working flawlessly. Time will tell if the brake failure comes back, but I am hopeful it will not based on info on this forum and other websites that the brake software was updated sometime in the 2016 model year and that supposedly fixed the issue.
A question I wanted to pose to you guys - the last step in the service manual procedure for replacing this unit says that I need to teach the stroke sensor zero point with Consult.
I was planning to take the car to the dealer to have this performed after the install, but it seems that everything is working okay and I may not need to. Does anyone know what this zero point setting does and if it is needed if the car seems to brake and perform normally?"Perform stroke sensor 0 point learning when electrically-driven
intelligent brake unit is removed and installed, or replaced. Refer to
BR-53, "Work Procedure".
Thank you....
Bill