Simon's new Xantia V6 and Leaf blog

[white exec]

Just looking at that second set of EWDs, pin 55 on the ECU is shown not to previous F4, but now to engine bay F2 (25A), and listed as "Injection ES9J4 and XU10J2TE". Maybe pullable? Intact?
Looks only to be feeding pin 55, and nothing else.

[Mandrake]

I tried removing F17 shown in the second diagram but it only killed the car alarm so I think that confirms for my car the older first set of diagrams which is correct, (the same one xantia_v6 posted) and this is consistent with the RPO number. Which makes the F4 mystery all the more interesting! It has a fuse in it now anyway regardless of whether it does anything...

[Mandrake]

That's the Ion's onboard charger fully reassembled and back in the car. Just waiting for the fuse now before I can fire it up and see whether I have success or smoke.

I got an email to say the delivery had arrived in the UK at 9am and was going through customs in Coventry so maybe tomorrow ?

The Xantia's gear position selector switch has been dispatched with an estimated delivery of Wednesday or Thursday.

[NewcastleFalcon]

Hope it goes well Simon, interesting reading.

Have you rejected Zoe's as a next possible electric car?

I have just put up on this thread a Renault Zoe 65 reg 31600 miles which is at Arnold Clark at Irvine and from the description its an i-dynamique which if my interpretation is right is a battery owned vehicle.

It would slip into my own tab packet calculations as per my Leaf, as the financing costs being pretty much paid for by the fuel savings over 4 years when the residual value kicks in at year 4.

REgards Neil

[Mandrake]

Hi Neil,

Yes I've ruled out the Zoe for a few reasons. Here are some of them:

1) The 22kWh model (as that one is) doesn't have a range much more than what I have now, maybe 75 miles in summer, whereas the 30kWh Leaf will do a bit over 100. So I don't feel the range increase is enough over the 63 miles the Ion originally did when I got it to be worth the cost and hassle of swapping. The 40kWh Zoe has a range of around 140-150 miles however is much more expensive pushing up near £20k as it is still a very new model.

2) The 22kWh and 40kWh Zoe use AC rapid charging, originally at 43kW but more recent models are 22kW. No other EV on the market uses AC rapid charging at these speeds and it is considered to be oddball and obsolete now, with all other EV's using DC for rapid charging. Many new networks such as Instavolt do not support AC rapid charging at all (Chademo and CCS only) and while you can plug into a normal Type 2 "Fast" charger with a Zoe, most of those are not 22kW they are only 7kW. Being able to rapid charge a Zoe in the future is going to become problematic.

3) There are numerous reliability problems reported with the Zoe - it's a French car remember... And unlike a Citroen you get French unreliability but without the French quirkiness that we love. The AC onboard charger has to work all the way from 3kW to 43kW and there are many design compromises in its design to do this.

It is extremely inefficient at anything less than 7kW, it has a tendency to trip RCD's in charge points and houses, it is extremely fussy about testing the Earth connection and will refuse to charge if the earth connection is higher than 100 ohms from memory, whereas other cars are much more lenient, so there are a lot of reports of charges failing which Renault are not able to solve.

The onboard charger and high voltage system seems to suffer from a worrying number of failures, also the aircon compressor is a known weak point often needing regassing in only two years or failing outright, and as it uses the A/C compressor to cool the battery this can cause problems with rapid charging.

There were reports of rapid battery degradation which caused Renault to issue a firmware update to the Battery management system to "fix" this problem, however I'm a little cynical that they have just modified the reporting algorithm to make the battery seem better without actually unlocking any more capacity. To be fair Nissan released a similar firmware update for the early 30kWh Leaf's to address what initially appeared to be rapid degradation.

4) The rear seat is not split - which is a bit of a dealbreaker for us with a child seat in the rear but the need to squeeze in as much stuff as we can sometimes. (We use the split rear seat in the Xantia a lot let alone the Ion - trips to Ikea etc)

5) Interior build quality is noticably tacky and cheap with lots of hard plastics etc - very much like the Ion which has a very bare bones interior. The Leaf has much better interior build quality that is more comparable to the Xantia Exclusive.

6) There are a lot of reports of problems with the heating system in the Zoe ranging from the heater failing altogether (usually due to the A/C compressor failing as it is a heat pump system) to control system problems that cause it to put old cold air when it should be putting out hot air, while the heating system in the Leaf is well regarded and reliable with almost no reports of failures.

7) It's a bigger car than the Ion for sure, but it's smaller than a Leaf. You can probably tell better than me since you drive one, but a Leaf is roughly a Xantia sized interior and a true 5 seater while the Zoe is a similar size to a Renault Clio.

The 50kWh Zoe does address some of the issues above - it uses CCS charging and it has a greatly improved interior and interior build quality from what I've seen, has a split rear seat, as well as a nice bump in range (something like 180 miles) but they're brand new and still very expensive as a result, and I still worry greatly about the reliability of the high voltage system as it's still French...

On the plus side all Zoe's have active battery thermal management so should see less battery degradation than the Leaf.

I'm sure the Zoe works well for some people and it is a step up from the Ion, but it has enough quirks and concerns that it's a no go for me certainly in 22kWh guise.

[NewcastleFalcon]

Thats useful info Simon, could do with porting over to the "Used Renault Zoe-can a case be made to buy one?" thread. Would that be OK?

REgards Neil

[Mandrake]

£18.60 customs clearance fee from Parcelforce (on a package that cost £31 including shipping) and another days delay in receiving my fuse....which I won't receive until tomorrow now even though it arrived in country on Monday. Even though it arrived at the Glasgow depot early this morning they won't deliver it today after the fee payment - disgraceful.

I don't understand why I'm being charged a customs fee in the first place with the small value of the item. I've ordered things like a £70 OBD-II diagnostic dongle from the US before without any customs charges...

[myglaren]

It is fairly random. Most vendors are wise to it and will put a value lower than £15 on the customs label.
I bought a CD from Japan (Chinese musician) that cost £50. I paid just over £100 including handling charge, import duty and VAT.

[RichardW]

VAT due on all goods over £15, including postage. So your £31 parcel attracts VAT of £6.20, and then Parcel force are charging £12 for the privilege of handling it, which makes £18.20, dunno where the other 40p came from!!

That's a bloody expensive fuse - could you not have made something up to fit??

[Mandrake]

That's a bloody expensive fuse - could you not have made something up to fit??

Unfortunately no, it's a special high voltage DC arc suppression type which is filled with something like sand:

With high voltage high current DC if the fuse blows and an arc forms the air can sustain an arc that is longer than the entire length of the fuse body even from 360 volts... So a regular fuse would blow and then just continue conducting with a high current arc, and short term the battery could easily supply in excess of 600 amps. (although there is a 250 amp fuse in the battery pack enclosure - itself a sand filled arc resistant type) This is different to AC where the current stops 50 times a second which allows the arc to extinguish. So the fuse is full of an insulating sand like material which physically moves into the gap of the melted wire to snuff out the arc. There are also screw lugs on the end of the fuse which is unusual.

Sure I could have put a piece of wire in place of the fuse as a stop gap and crossed my fingers - however if there is still another fault and I oversized that wire it could cause severe damage, and if I undersized it and it blew in normal use it would probably initiate the same over voltage and capacitor damage fault I've just repaired, since one of the theories is that it's the fuse that fails first from mechanical fatigue and then causes the other damage. Not worth the risk.

I actually ordered two fuses - I didn't want to wait another 10 days to get a second one if the first one blew because I'd missed something. Ironically that might have pushed it over £15 value.

[RichardW]

I see.... it not blowing is a bit more fireworks than you would want to see!!

[Zelandeth]

Ah, customs charges...the fact that they charge the VAT on the shipping cost as well as the item value still grinds my gears. I had a $300 box of costume parts which wound up being £300 and change by the time I actually got hold of it. I was very much not amused by that! Especially as like here I wasn't ordering from abroad out of choice.

Shame it was so hard to find a HRC fuse, you'd think there would be plenty of industrial applications where things with ratings like this would be used, CPC/Farnell used to have a substantial selection of similar items available...though having said that, that was in 2004...so the catalogue has probably shrunk by about 75% these days.

[Mandrake]

Shame it was so hard to find a HRC fuse, you'd think there would be plenty of industrial applications where things with ratings like this would be used, CPC/Farnell used to have a substantial selection of similar items available...though having said that, that was in 2004...so the catalogue has probably shrunk by about 75% these days.

I'm sure someone somewhere makes a compatible fuse, the problem is finding it as nobody has reverse engineered what the original OEM manufacturer and part number is hidden behind the Mitsubishi part number...the fuse itself has a Mitsubishi brand and number stamped on it although you can be sure they didn't actually make it themselves.

A few people with this charger issue have tried to locate a compatible replacement from other sources but so far nobody has found one that fits without bodging. I ordered mine from Amayama which is the only known source outside of Mitsubishi themselves however as far as I know they just get them wholesale from Mitsubishi so are the same part as going direct to Mitsubishi.

Ah well.... the wait will be over soon. And all going well it will fix the problem and then not long from now I can sell the car and move onto something a bit better and then it becomes someone else's problem if it ever blows again! Given the nature of the fault I think it's very unlikely the same failure will ever happen to the same car once repaired properly as I've used much beefier capacitors. So it should in theory be more reliable now than one that hasn't had to be repaired yet...

[Mandrake]

Success!

The fuse arrived at work yesterday morning so I bailed and took a half day as the weather was "good" and following days were not! The ending was a bit anti-climatic, I fitted the new fuse, put the safety cover on, reconnected the safety link plug on the traction battery, reconnected the 12v battery, plugged it into the wall half expecting to hear a bang or pop but no, it just charged. I also confirmed the 12v battery was reading 14.4 volts while charging as the fault had been preventing the 12v battery from charging as well.

I then just had to refit the passenger seat, motor housing cover and boot liner, reconnect the airbag and clear all the fault codes including the airbag fault I'd induced by having it unplugged and that was it, it's back on the road and charging and driving just fine, and I drove to work in it today.

I almost swapped the front discs and pads (which have been waiting for a week since arrival) but it was getting a bit late and starting to spit with rain so I thought if I started that and got rained out and effectively took the car off the road again I might be dealt with harshly by SWMBO. So instead I decided to tackle the Xantia gearbox switch problem and then do the brake discs another day after the Citroen was fixed and available as emergency backup.

That didn't go quite as smoothly. I replaced the switch easily enough but it didn't fix the problem!! However I've confirmed 98% that there is a broken connection between the switch connector and the gearbox ECU connector, and at least I know know for sure the fault isn't in the switch or the section of cable belonging to the switch. It's not a particularly long run of cable as the ECU lives under the battery tray right beside where the switch is.

This is the plug, which is a kind that has rubber sealant where the wires go in:

So it's not something where you can re-solder the wire in the connector, nor can you easily poke a meter probe down to make contact with the wire. I've dealt with these kind of enclosed wires before though and you can "back probe" them using a regular household pin by pushing the pin carefully down right beside the wire until it reaches the bottom.

I've had a look at that part of the circuit and decided the break must be in the wire going to Pin 4:

All of the gears that work properly are those where the right hand switch contacts are open circuit - Park, Neutral, Drive and 1st gear. So if you move quickly between those particular positions it works 100% reliably. If you go to certain other positions however the gearbox ECU gets confused because the right switch being open circuit in some combinations of position of the other switches is an invalid combination - if you leave it sitting there more than a couple of seconds the gear position changes to a question mark and then refuses to work any further until power cycled.

By bending the wires in the vicinity I have been able to make it read Reverse sometimes so there is definitely a break, however the ECU reporting is too slow at updating to be of any use. So I think the only way to confirm 100% which wire is broken AND find exactly where along the wire it is broken is by lifting out the battery and gearbox ECU so I can do continuity checks from the ECU connector back to the switch connector. If I can find where it's broken I can replace that section of wire with another with solder and heatshrink joints. It's possible there may even be two intermittent wires.

A bit of a pain but I should be able to sort it. I don't think the connector itself is faulty, (and it has already had a good douse of contact cleaner) I think the break is a bit further upstream probably where the wires bend at a sharp angle a few inches beyond the connector.

[lexi]

Nice one!