[DRIVING] VW Touran powered by Nissan Leaf [FINISHED]

[JaniK]

Congratulations for Tüv approval!

Sounds like a good road trip. I suggest you check all chargers and download all charging network apps before you go. I had a little problem in sweden when I could not buy a prepaid charge card for Bee charge network (first gas station was closed unexpectedly, second was out of prepaid cards..) We were allmost out of range with 24kWh leaf finding another charger.. if one day there would be contacless credit card payment available in all chargers it would be so much easier to travel. Sorry for the offtopic.

[mcgousha]

Congrats on the approval. It must be great to have it all official.

Enjoy the roadtrip!

[johu]

Thank you, thank you. Yes it is good to not look out for police all the time

I ordered a Shell charge card yesterday. Hope that will improve my choices.

Today I tested my new Type-2 adapter at a BMW dealer. Works a treat! I didn't bother to read the PWM signal or switch in different resistors on the CP signal. Just constant 880 Ohms. Took the charger up to 28A (11 kW) and charged 5kWh in 30 minutes indeed.

Todays let down: the precharge resistor. It must have burned out again, I very much assume. It's Nissans original 40Ohm, 40W resistor. It switches on with ignition and never switches off. Is that a problem? Also the DC/DC converter runs over it briefly, but without producing power. It draws like 50mA idle, so that should only be 40*0.05²=0.1W. Could it still be a problem?

It is the second time it burns for no apparent reason, luckily always in my driveway.

[Cookie6000]

Brilliant news johu!
That piece of paper from the Tüv should be framed after all the effort

[purplespark]

Well done on getting approval !

[quoteTodays let down: the precharge resistor. It must have burned out again, I very much assume. It's Nissans original 40Ohm, 40W resistor. It switches on with ignition and never switches off. Is that a problem? Also the DC/DC converter runs over it briefly, but without producing power. It draws like 50mA idle, so that should only be 40*0.05²=0.1W. Could it still be a problem? ][/quote]

I assume your custom vcu controls precharge and main contactors , rather than the inverter controller? I was under the impression that your code
turned off the precharge relay after the HV reached a certain point. Maybe voltage pulses at precharge and vibration have taken their toll?
Try 2 resistors in parallel ?

[johu]

No the precharge relay is not controlled at all here, it simply switches on with the ignition. VCU controls the B+ relay only.

Anyway, yesterday I added a relay on the HV side of the DC/DC converter and will see if this raises the resistor lifespan.

Today I had to rip gearbox and motor apart. I started out by investigating the increasing hum that now even started at 3000rpm. Stuck my gopro in the starter motor hole and a lamp in clutch hole and started filming. Wobble alarm

So turned out the screws holding Leaf spline and distance ring as well as distance ring and clutch had come out quite a bit! Added some Loctite, put it all back together, and - silencio

[arber333]

Nicely caught in time...
I have rubbering shakes when i drive at speed. Kind of like you would drive on tiles. But when i investigated further it seems this only happens when i have the steering wheel centered or to the right. If i am turning left the shakes vanish. Something in the brakes maybe? I need to investigate this some more... Gopro would be a good solution.

[johu]

80km drive today with mostly Autobahn. All driven in 3rd gear. Took the battery from 90% to 25%. Actually that should yield 0.65*24kWh=15.6kWh or 19.5 kWh/100km but the display only shows 14.2 kWh/100km. Either SoC calculation or display is off or battery only has 17.5kWh in it (0.65*17.5/0.8=14.2). Lets hope it's not the latter. Part of the problem could be the voltage sense of the first two cells. It reads high when compared to a multimeter. So that could throw off some calculations.

3rd gear takes the car up to 140 km/h with no sweat (upped the rev limiter to 7500 rpm). Very smooth now that the coupler is fixed

[konstantin8818]

That is really cool to make something DIY legal, especially in Germany

[johu]

Yes but I think Germany is better than its reputation in that respect. Look at France or the Netherlands for prohibitive bureaucracy

[arber333]

Yes but I think Germany is better than its reputation in that respect. Look at France or the Netherlands for prohibitive bureaucracy

And Slovenia.... I think what saves us is a touch of famous Balkan ingenuity. How to cut corners and never meet your problems...

[konstantin8818]

And Slovenia.... I think what saves us is a touch of famous Balkan ingenuity. How to cut corners and never meet your problems...

Belarus not far from Slovenia in this topic You either obey the law and suffer from those who doesn't or disobey and live with fear of those who serve the law...

[damian.lo]

Hi,

Now, if my car is also driveable I will look for power consumption. I hope here in Poland will be similar like in Germany. Now I'm collecting all data for assembled parts, electrical measurings (insulation, grounding continuity, etc.) so wish me a luck and not so exact inspector
Regards.
d.lo

[johu]

Successfully drove to south west today 380km, 4 fast charging sessions. All worked a treat. 16.8 kWh/100km. Video coming.

[JaniK]

Successfully drove to south west today 380km, 4 fast charging sessions. All worked a treat. 16.8 kWh/100km. Video coming.

Very nice!

[RetroZero]

Great job, and glad you managed to catch that coupler before it flew away.

[johu]

Just returned from an 1100km road trip in Touran. Both driving and fast charging worked really well, gotta say the German fast charging network is not so bad.

Efficiency is really up there, you can cruise at 100kph and consume 150 Wh/km. Rises to 180 Wh/km when cruising at 120kph. For a car of that size I think it is quite respectable. So nothing too wrong with my FOC implementation, it seems.

And the top speed is: spoiler Video rendering, Patrons will see it first.

[RetroZero]

Ahh, nice to hear you're having some fun! That's a confidence booster for sure completing 1000kms! Awesome for openinverter and you.

[johu]

[celeron55]

Did you charge at any Veefil chargers? Those slim, round, plastic looking ones. I've attached the best photo I could find from my collection, but just search the name on the 'net for a better one.

I've never been able to make one of those reliably charge for me. I've tried tens if not hundreds of times and maybe succeeded randomly once and I have no idea why. The charger's non-existent error messages and barely existing user interface doesn't help.

I'd like to know if this has been a problem for your DIY CHAdeMO system.

[johu]

Never seen one of these in Germany only know them from Teslabjörn videos. Would be an interesting challenge. Did you have a chance to record the CAN messages? Or any other debugging tools?
I spent many hours in front of the ABB charger literally changing the software between attempts and dumping out values. That finally got it working. I think I used 3 brands on my trip, no problems so far.

[celeron55]

I can get an ABB to work no problem. It's an easy charger. 8)

I have ny controller's logs which don't include raw CANbus messages.

However every time i look at them I just get depressed. There are no clues there, and it logs every value there is in the protocol. If I recall correctly, when charging is supposed to start, the charger instead stops with no fault status.

I've been suspecting interference from the HV side to be the problem, but working around that is easier said than done.

Anyway, please go test one of those chargers yourself when you can. I think it's an Australian manufacturer so those could be anywhere. We have lots of them in Finland.

[JaniK]

I have ny controller's logs which don't include raw CANbus messages.

Would you be interested to test/canbus log the veefil/tritium charger with my leaf? Does it help?

[celeron55]

Would you be interested to test/canbus log the veefil/tritium charger with my leaf? Does it help?

I'm pretty sure the Veefil chargers work very reliably with Leafs so a canbus capture would be interesting. Capturing some of the 0V/12V signals would be useful also.

The chademo signal harness has to be cut open to capture the signals or a man-in-the-middle extension to the signal connector could be used. The chademo signal harness goes through a 10 pin connector (or something like that) some 20-40cm away to the left or right from the charging port if I recall correctly.

[JaniK]

Yes they work fine, only one time in Norway it didn't work because the emergency stop was pressed by someone, called customer service and asked if there is any issues and they told all is good and I can pull it back on. Worked fine. They do often have some audible coil whine etc. sound.

Let's continue this offtopic testing in email.

Here is how low a leaf can go.