[WIP] Gen 2 Leaf Stack AWD Gokart

[Chance125Johnson]

In 2023 I bought a salvage 2015 Gen 2 Nissan Leaf. I stripped it all apart and even opened the battery pack to check its health.
So far I purchased the car, 2 Y38 LSDs, 1 G35 VLSD, 4 2013 subaru brz axles, wheel hubs, and a driveshaft.

January of 2023, I bought and stripped the car
September-ish of 2023, I bought the drivetrain components
September of 2024, I ordered a zombieverter and posted this message and a review video of what I have on youtube



I'm planning on making the whole frame from scratch and cobbling the drivetrain together with what I have.
At one point I would like to do some motor tweaks.
Since I have a zombieverter and a gen 2 inverter I understand that I can upgrade to the gen 3 inverter without too much issue. However, I haven't seen any mention of if the gen 2 nissan leaf open inverter board can be used in combination with the zombieverter. I need the zombieverter for the pdm and possible future BMS control, but the 80 kw limit is there. I would like to use the openinverter leaf board to remove that limit if both boards can be used simultaneously. I am aware of the 24kw battery not being enough for more than 90kw but a battery swap in the future is possible.
If anyone has an answer to that, please let me know!

I'll be making a drivetrain video soon to cover how things should work for anyone that is interested.

[Chance125Johnson]

I got a lot of questions about the drivetrain of this setup, so I decided to make a video of how I originally planned it to work from a full year ago against how it will now.
Hopefully, this video will explain any questions you may have, or possibly make more questions that you can ask and I will hopefully get to answering.

[Bratitude]

]
.
Since I have a zombieverter and a gen 2 inverter I understand that I can upgrade to the gen 3 inverter without too much issue. However, I haven't seen any mention of if the gen 2 nissan leaf open inverter board can be used in combination with the zombieverter. !
.

in zombie you set inverter to OI and on the replacement board set your throttle, direction, etc to can.

that’s about it

[Chance125Johnson]

That's awesome. I'll probably go that route then! I just got the zomieverter and was ready for testing, but I haven't been able to access any of those settings yet because I'm having a "Connection problem between ESP and STM" error when everything should be fine. I put the question in the "getting started" chat if anyone is having the issue or knows the solution.

[Chance125Johnson]

If anyone needs some 3D models of the Nissan Leaf stack or some subaru drivetrain parts, I made a video of me getting them and posting them for the community.

Includes:
Gen 2 Leaf stack (with and without charger), Charger, 24kwh battery Modules (FL, FR, and Rear), G35 VLSD, Y38 LSD, BRZ Driveshaft and axles

Raw scans & Post Processed Scans:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

The post processed ones were originally only for Patreon members. But, in the spirit of open sourceness have now made them all available free.
The raw, Cleaned, and cleaned & scaled are available.

Video:

[Chance125Johnson]

I received a new Zombieverter board but ended up having a bunch of issues with the esp module. After some troubleshooting over at:viewtopic.php?t=5725

We ended up determined it was just a bad esp module. I bought another one, flashed it, plugged it in and everything is working great! Didn't really expect to have a 4 week journey testing and waiting for new parts to get the board running, but I guess I had to have a better understanding of the board for it to cooperate.

If you need some help with how to set your pc up to program and then programming one of the esp modules, would like an unboxing, or just want to see me struggle getting these boards to work then I've got the video for you!
I hope this helps anyone that may have this issue, needs ideas to troubleshoot, or is flashing one of these boards.

[Chance125Johnson]

I got around to scaling the 3d models that I previously scanned. I made a video showing the files as well as how to clean up the 3d scans yourself if you want. Additionally, if you are designing a car body from scratch, I have some steps you can take for both the drawing out steps as well as some modeling methods.

All scan files and individual steps I took are also on the GitHub: https://github.com/Mechanceism/Visceral
The direct link to the files is: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/2/fold ... snUE9H14gZ

Currently there is: Raw, Cleaned, Scaled & Cleaned
2017 Subaru Brz Axle & Hub
2017 Subaru Brz Half Driveshaft
2013 Y38 LSD Differential
2015? G35 VLSD Differential
Nissan Leaf Gen 2 Full Stack (EM57)
Nissan Leaf Gen 2 PDM (6.6kW)
Nissan Leaf Gen 2 Motor & Inverter (EM57)
Nissan Leaf Gen 2 Front Left Battery Module (24kW)
Nissan Leaf Gen 2 Front Right Battery Module (24kW)
Nissan Leaf Gen 2 Rear Battery Module (24kW)
12inch Trailer Tire

Thought in both the spirit of open source and the holidays that I'd give all the files away.
I'll keep updating the GitHub of all the new files or changes that I do.

Here is the video:

[Chance125Johnson]

Figured it was time to start doing some electrical finally after doing planning for a while.
Before doing the Zombieverter wiring, I wanted to check the health of the 24kwh leaf pack I have. I disassembled the pack into the 3 subgroups almost 1.5 years ago (I know its been awhile). So I needed to make sure of the cell voltages and how far off they are from each other, because sitting that long apart, something had to of changed.

I also noticed that the pinouts for the leaf pack from the documentation has an error.
Trust the pin layout and not the numbering. The oem plug's number on the connector and the pack are different than the documentation.
Just from looking around, this applies to the doc image used here:
https://github.com/dalathegreat/Battery ... 80%90NV200
https://github.com/dalathegreat/Nissan- ... ry-to-OBD2

The 4 methods were:
- Measure every cell with a multimeter
- Use a bluetooth OBD2 scanner and LeafSpy Pro (One I went with)
- PiCAN LEAFBMS
- Dala's Battery Emulator

What I did plus some tips I noticed along the way:

[Chance125Johnson]

After getting the battery reassembled a week ago or so and getting the esp and zombieverter to communicate, it was time to merge them together with the leaf stack. After updating the zombieverter to 2.20.A to support the Leaf current shunt, I very badly wired it with alligator clips. After having multiple errors from that, I started over and did the wiring properly on a board with terminal blocks. And who would have guessed, way less errors. Only one error actually, precharge fail. Looked around for a while and realized that the black grounds for the contactors actually were labeled to go the positive 12v lane because the zombieverter is a switched ground for contactor control. But,that fixed it and it spins up and runs! Now to get to the pdm and get that working. Either that or doing a side quest with a big electric motor.

Documentation errors to note:
- Leaf battery connector has the pins in the correct locations as the pattern in the docs, but the docs have the pin number order backwards.
- Leaf inverter connector diagram has 7 vertical pins and the real one has 8.
- (More just missing) For using the leaf battery contactors the labeled color wires go to the zombie to not confuse which is which, and the 3 ground wires go to the positive rail and not ground.

Here is a video of updating, quick wiring, explaining the doc issues, and showing the motor run!