Leaf 2012 charging interrupts

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Leafkb

Member
Joined
Sep 14, 2021
Messages
6
Hi,
my LEAF 2012 showed the orange car with flash symbol after charging, so I read the DTC codes using leaf spy.


The car is still charching om 230V Wallbox 3,6A or Nissan "brick" 2,3A, but charching takes very long.
I Monitored the Loading via Leaf Spy and I saw, that charching was "interrupted" often, as you can see in the diagram.

10A charging



16A Charging:


The 12V battery was replaced some months ago.
Dies anyone have an idea what could be the reason?
 
Many of those DTCs are due to a weak 12V battery. Try giving it a good external charge that will hold it at 14.4 for sufficient time to de-sulfate the plates, then try again and see what DTCs remain.

i've bought 4 "new" 12V batteries off the shelf in the past year, and they were all stale and drained from sitting so long. The leaf won't charge at 14.4 for long enough time to do any good.
 
I disconnected the 12V for 1h, Charged it, reconnected. Then erased the DTCs Using Leaf spy, then tried to load.
Nothing happens Now, no Beep, no blue lights, just dead.
No more new dtcs.
I‘ll charge the 12v over night now, i measured 13.04v
 
Today I jump-started the Leaf and the battery showed 14.3 volts with the other car connected.
After a short time, the Leaf started charging without interruptions.

Thanks for the suggestions. I've had the original 12V battery in for 6 years now and haven't had these problems, even though the old battery was so bad.

So I didn't consider the (new) battery as a possible source of trouble.

When AC charging, the Leaf battery now has 13.1 volts.

I will "cook" the battery, i.e. charge/hold at 14.4 volts for a longer time.
 
It took me several days to charge each of the "new" 12V that i bought this year, i use a Yuasa 1Amp smart charger that will get it up to 14.4 and hold until it detects completion, then will drop down to a maintenance level. i move it from car to car to try to keep them all topped up. If you don't drive a car everyday the 12V battery voltage decays fairly quickly over time in my experience.

Glad you got it fixed and all is working okay.
 
Leafkb said:
I will "cook" the battery, i.e. charge/hold at 14.4 volts for a longer time.
Are you familiar with the trick to get the Leaf to do that when running? As others have posted when the WW motor is on the charge voltage goes up to >14v. No need to leave them on constantly as the slowest intermittent setting is just fine as even one stroke of the motor will keep that higher charging active for up to a minute. Otherwise, just occasionally hook up the 12v battery to a good 12v plug-in charger every week or two to keep it topped off.
 
Hi,
No, I don‘t know this trick yet. I just noticed in leafspy, that the voltage rises to 14.x V on the bottom left corner in the app, but that is just for a very short period.
 
Yes but it is too short a period to do any good, so over time the battery is not maintained properly.
 
Leafkb said:
Hi,
No, I don‘t know this trick yet. I just noticed in leafspy, that the voltage rises to 14.x V on the bottom left corner in the app, but that is just for a very short period.

I don't have leafspy currently hooked up but it was my understanding that after a cycle of the WW motor it would keep that higher 14v charging for close to a minute so even an intermittent setting of the WW motor would be good enough to keep the higher charging voltage on as long as you had the intermittent setting on, is this not the case? If not you could just leave the WW on and not use intermittent but just for 10 min or so to fully charge the battery. If you were worried about the WW blades you could do as I did for my brothers Leaf but looks a little odd and that is lift the arms away from the windshield during this charging period.
 
Hi,
Unfortunately the problem still persists, sometimes charging starts, when I plug the ac loader, but most of the time, it does not.
When I plug the plug in, there is no beep, no blue lights on the dashboard.
When I start the car, it shows the green plug and tells me, that I have to unplug it.
I waited some minutes in this plugged state, then suddenly the green plug indicator disappeared for a second, then it appeared again, this repeats a few times.
I could not force this behavior by ‚shaking‘ the car or touching the plug.
It does not matter which evse is used, Wallbox or brick.
I assume a loose contact, may be in the car plug.
Or are there any other ideas?
 
That does sound like an intermittent connection such as from debris in the plug socket, or a loose, cut or pinched wire in a harness, etc. It is not difficult, but tedious, to demate, inspect, clean any connectors in the path, and verify that the wires are intact with ring-out testing from end to end of the wire path. Either you can do this or find and pay an auto mechanic who knows about electrical wiring.

Has there been any work on the car that might have disturbed any wiring or connections? Is it parked where rodents could gain access and chew on the wiring?

What DTCs show up now?
 
There's a chance that an o-ring from a recent charge ended up on one of the posts of your charging port. Have a good look in there with a flashlight.
 
Here is an update:
I dismantled and disassembled the charging socket, cleaned the contacts. There are 2 cables going to the contact of the 'Procimity', which still have interruptions in the cable harness with heat shrink tubes. I don't know if it's just connections or if there are still electronics in there.


After I put everything back together and connected it, there was no 4.5 volts at the pin from the Procimity.
There were also DTCs again.


I'll try to get a DC charging connector from the scrap.
And I ordererd a new 12V battery
 
That looks like an OEM heat shrink but i don't know for sure--maybe there is a diode under the heatshrink, so use the diode check function of your meter, the resistance or continuity beeper would not give any useful information in that case. Could be a resistor also, which if blown would prevent charging also.

400px-J1772_signaling_circuit.gif
 
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