Valdemar said:
Hopefully this is something your dealer can help with. I spoke to mine some time ago and they said swapping packs between 2 2011 cars is something they can easily do. I didn't follow up so take it with a grain of salt as dealers are known to be not very knowledgeable about Leafs. If the first dealer refuses try another.
Additional thoughts on pack surgery,
1. You will have to be creative with mounting 2015 modules in the 2011 housing as the mechanical design has changed. I heard it's doable but not exactly bolt-on
2. Read somewhere that newer modules charge to higher voltage, so while some capacity might be inaccessible when using 2015 modules + 2011 BMS it should be safe, the reverse can be unsafe, I suggest you research it more before starting using 2011 modules with 2015 BMS, if that is what you plan to do anyway.
3. It'll take some time for the BMS to learn the new modules, so the GOM will be off. You may want to see a dealer after anyway to perform BMS reset.
Edit:
4. Hopefully the restricted power mode is not sticky, that is once you put the original BMS everything will be back to normal.
Hi Valdemar,
I am happy to report that after putting the original (2011) BMS from my neighbor's car with the Lizard cells into the old 2011 shell (the 2015 shell gets destroyed when you open it, since it is glued shut, good that I had another complete 2011 pack in shell sitting around) that the power restriction was gone, no errors were reported and the car responded normally again. Obviously the old BMS still reported the old Ah capacity, it has to re-learn the new capacity. Interestingly it immediately showed 10 bars whereas the old pack was down to 9 bars...
The neighbors were overjoyed when I gave them their 2011 back, knowing that they will soon again see 12 bars and 66 Ah capacity!
The mounting of the cells (brackets) is identical between 2011 and 2015, the same bolt holes for the brackets. What is *not* identical is the wiring or the wiring routing. Even the bus bars are routed slightly different on the horizontal stacks - instead of going left to right across the 4-high stack 4 times, the bus bars follow the module stacks and only jump across on the top and the bottom. The result is that the mounting of the connections is at slightly different locations, also the contactors have a different layout, the wiring is routed in a more logical way around the battery box and there have been several other component and weight saving changes.
So, in order to play it safe, I removed the 2015 wiring completely from the Lizard pack,
moved the lizard pack into the 2011 shell as bare modules, then added the original 2011 wiring, service disconnect, contactors and front plugs and finally the original 2011 BMS. The only thing I had to modify were the power connections on the 24 vertical modules, since the relayouted mechanics interfered with the positioning of the contacts from the 2011 pack, so I used the 2015 contacts and I will have to be
creative to use the 2011 power contacts with the 2015 wiring in my own Leaf, so that I can re-use the 2015 BMS that is paired to my car.
But that is a concern for another day, I am happy that I was able to put the lizard modules into a 2011 shell and swap wiring without
any problems.
I will have to be careful to charge only to 80% when I used the 2015 BMS on the 2011 pack in my own Leaf.
To complicate things (but make logistics much simpler) this was not a simple swap between 2 Leafs, but a 3-way exchange,
I had already bought a Leaf pack from Washington state (cool, so it still has decent capacity) which I mounted in my own Leaf
after I dropped its 2015 pack, so that my Leaf could move and not sit disabled in the garage, otherwise I would not have place to put the neighbor's Leaf in there also *and* work on 2 battery packs, since I have a 2-car garage. With my own Leaf out of the garage, the neighbor's Leaf and 2 battery packs were manageable.
Since the neighbor's pack was down to 75% (48Ah) I removed those cells from the shell (they expanded quite a bit when releasing the compression bolts - it would not be possible to simply bolt it together again, I would need clamps to compress those cells again, so much internal pressure was present in those cells) and I re-used the empty shell to put the Lizard modules in after destroying the 2015 shell.
Good thing is that I now also have my BMS back, so I can make my Leaf happy by putting the BMS + wiring onto the Washington state pack.
Main reason I did the swap myself (which cost me 2 full days of slaving on cutting the 2015 pack open, undoing all bolts from every module and every part, also undoing every bolt in the old 2011 pack, moving those modules, putting the 2015 modules into that shell, re-thinking the wiring options, removing the sensing wiring from the 24-module stack and swapping it with the old bus bars, redoing every single bolt in the pack, double-checking all voltages in the pack and finally plugging in the original BMS - the main reason for this was that the dealer said that he was not sure if they could re-program a used battery, they had only requested keys for new packs from Nissan, never for an existing pack that was swapped. Only Dealers can do this BTW, I asked two independent shops and it requires access to official Nissan (corporate?) servers, which nobody has except the dealers.
Also the dealer wanted $700 for the pack mounting and $300 for the (attempt) to reprogram the BMS.
Since I knew I could guarantee that it would work by swapping BMS, I took that route and saved money (just spent time).
BTW, anyone considering opening a battery pack: be aware that inside the shell you find 400 Volts of lethal potential, so if you do not know how to operate a Volt Meter and have no experience working on high voltage and are very aware of how to work safely on High Voltage, please do not open the pack.
As long as the pack is closed and the CAN plug not connected, there is no chance to get any power outside so you can safely work on the car and handle the battery shell. But know what you are doing when you open the shell!
And high voltage gloves alone do not make you safe, since it is easy to hurt yourself when accidentally shorting the pack or cause other accidents. Or when you are safe, but someone else comes by and touches high voltage.
In fact, I do not have high voltage gloves, I work on the pack with bare hands and steel tools. But I do know exactly what I am doing and I use a digital voltmeter almost every day.