[Driving] Freelander EV With Gen1 Leaf electrics and EVBMW VCU

[JaniK]

Oh dear not looking forward to my wiring mayhem, but this looks time consuming as can be.

[Alibro]

Oh dear not looking forward to my wiring mayhem, but this looks time consuming as can be.

Yes mate, takes ages but not something you can rush. I just finished the connections on the front 6 modules.

Since taking the photo these have been taped and tied neatly.

[Alibro]

[JaniK]

Good to see your progress. Taking some notes too. And not stressing so much because I see it can be done like this and this and this too. Thanks for sharing.

[Alibro]

Good to see your progress. Taking some notes too. And not stressing so much because I see it can be done like this and this and this too. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks mate
Where I live we say "There's more than one way to skin a cat" I've no idea what the origin of the saying is but you get the point.
I have had to make many compromises to keep on the right side of the authorities here and most of the time they had nothing to do with safety. In fact I could have made the conversion stronger and safer by welding to the chassis and cutting out the floor of the boot but that is not allowed so we have the current setup. If you have a better system where you live then you might avoid a lot of the wasted work I've had to go through.
If I had decided to do without the BMS I would be driving by now but I figured knowing the voltage of each cell would be important. I don't think the BMS is capable of balancing the pack but at least if I know there is an issue I can step in and do something about it. If you can ensure your cells are perfectly balanced then maybe a BMS is unnecessary and could save you weeks of work.

[Alibro]

New Video

[Alibro]

Now the scary part.

Connecting it all up.

[rstevens81]

Personally I would hook up the kerosene heater (at least on a switch) so that when its really cold you range doesn't plumit, a few grams of kerosine when its really cold istnt really going to make a massive difference at least compared to the boiler in the house (unless you are luck enough for a well insulated house and a ground source heat pump). you could fit some pc radiators with fans hooked into the kersosine heater loop to blow warm air over your batteries. The most effective ways for the slightly less cold days is to put a space heater in the footwell on an extension cord connected to a timer that way you have a defrosted car ready for the drive to walk and to keep you comfy (and not turn on the car heater) fit heated seats as they will use alot less energy than heating an entire volume of air in the car

i would of found the bms wiring the scary part

[Alibro]

Personally I would hook up the kerosene heater (at least on a switch) so that when its really cold you range doesn't plumit, a few grams of kerosine when its really cold istnt really going to make a massive difference at least compared to the boiler in the house (unless you are luck enough for a well insulated house and a ground source heat pump). you could fit some pc radiators with fans hooked into the kersosine heater loop to blow warm air over your batteries. The most effective ways for the slightly less cold days is to put a space heater in the footwell on an extension cord connected to a timer that way you have a defrosted car ready for the drive to walk and to keep you comfy (and not turn on the car heater) fit heated seats as they will use alot less energy than heating an entire volume of air in the car

i would of found the bms wiring the scary part

Thanks mate, These are all options to think about once the car is going but for now I just want to get it on the road.

The BMS wiring has not yet been completed so the voltages are still relatively low. The fear I have of the HV connection is more to do with blowing things up than the danger.

[Alibro]

So the weekend started well with some great progress.
Before it died giving me the walk and push of shame.

After several days struggling to get the inverter and VCU to talk nicely together I finally cracked it and saw spinning wheels.
I even went as far as to start tidying up the wiring hoping most of it it would be staying put.

I know I still have a lot of stuff to install and connect up but couldn't resist putting the lids on to see what it would look like, then bolted on the wheels lowered it off the axle stands and drove it out of the garage. .

Sadly it only got 10 feet before cutting out and wouldn't go again.

I'm not sure what the problem is as I've only pushed it back into the garage and stepped away to lick my wounds for a bit. I'll report back later what I think it was.

[Alibro]

So after another few hours at it last night testing and jiggling wires I'm thinking it might be interference rather than a bad connection.
In the test mule I had the vcu in the passenger footwell but now it's under the bonnet stuck to the top of the inverter. Maybe that was a bad idea so I'll lengthen the cables and move it back into the car and see what happens.

[JaniK]

As Celeron55 has stated:

'Use proper CAN wiring and termination - the inverter makes a considerable amount of electrical noise."

So the vcu might indeed be to close to source of that noise.
You have twisted pair cables on CAN wires in this car too?

[Alibro]

As Celeron55 has stated:

'Use proper CAN wiring and termination - the inverter makes a considerable amount of electrical noise."

So the vcu might indeed be to close to source of that noise.
You have twisted pair cables on CAN wires in this car too?

Yes mate all CAN wires are twisted with termination, I realised recently CAN networks are very simple but often done wrong. The thing I find odd is the inverter doesn't have a terminating resistor so is a branch off the main CAN line. I find it odd because the OEM connection to it is around 45cm long which I thought was a bit longer than recommended for a CAN branch. With that in mind I put a 120R resistor beside the CAN connection to the inverter.

I didn't get much time at it today but started the process of extending the VCU wires into the passenger footwell.

[Alibro]

I managed to get another look at this today and moved the VCU inside the car but I'm still having issues. The VCU display page is showing an issue with the motor as both the motor temp and rpm are off the scale. It has been doing this off and on since I rebuilt everything and sometimes I can get one or the other to reset but not today.
As far as I can tell going by the Nissan Leaf service manual the readings from the motor at the inverter connector are OK as both temp and rpm connections are measuring within the resistance range listed.
So either I still have messed up the wiring somewhere or I've damaged the Inverter.
I'll go back out after dinner for another look but I'm getting concerned.

This is what I'm getting.

[Alibro]

So it's starting to look like I've killed the inverter.

I found a short between one of the resolver connections and ground and with it cleared I now have normal temps from the motor but still getting full scale on the rpm. I've double and triple checked the other connections but no joy.

I found another fault!

There was a bad connection between the Nissan Leaf cable and the inverter so I guess they don't like being plugged in and out too often.

As soon as I jumpered the dodgy joint the rpm dropped and we had motor spin.
It means that I can't trust the connector anymore and will have to bypass it which is a pain but if it works then so be it.

[Alibro]

Grey connector bypassed but Nissan inverter loom still intact. It is a little odd that so many of the connections in this are not used but I guess it is an off the shelf part.

I found a spare white connector and used it so I can keep the original Nissan loom, just in case I ever want to put the inverter back to stock.
Tomorrow I'll recheck my connections and have another test.

[Alibro]

Looks like we're suckin diesel again boys.

[Alibro]

New Vid

[Alibro]

Since the last debacle I had another issue. This is a copy of a post in General.

I've been tidying up the wiring in the HV junction box for a couple of weeks (among other things) and would test startup and motor spin every time I changed something so that if I made a mistake it would be simple to backtrack. However last night after not really changing anything I turned on the ignition and there was a loud bang followed by no HV! After some investigation I found a blown 400A fuse and the negative contactor was fused closed.
After the usual headless chicken routine I powered everything off then back on with the inverter disconnected looking for a smoking gun but I couldn't find anything. There are no shorts in the HV system so the positive contactor must have triggered before precharge had happened.
As I was tired I decided to sleep on it and as often happens woke this morning at 5am with a theory.

I have a Gen 1 Nissan Leaf VCU from Damien which has outputs to mitigate against this happening and I believe I have it connected correctly as the precharge is controlled by output 1, the main positive contactor by output 2 and the inverter by output 3. The VCU is not supposed to enable output 2 until after the inverter reports seeing pack voltage over 330V.

During all the testing I had done trying to get a reliable startup sequence I ended up connecting all of the timer relays to the ignition Pos 2 so they all powered on together, the Negative contactor triggers every time with the ignition Pos 1. I also had turned all the timers to 0 seconds as I was trusting the VCU to control precharge. I'm only using them as relays to drive the contactors.
After the issue while testing with the inverter disconnected, output 1 triggered but output 2 did not which is correct as the inverter could not see HV.

So if the VCU is operating correctly then how could the main positive contactor come on before the precharge has finished?
This is my theory and I'm hoping someone can advise if it is plausible.

Over the last few weeks I have seen the VCU hang at various times. I had put it down to being the laptop USB connection plugged in but wasn't sure as it seemed to happen randomly. Last night I had plugged in the laptop to see what voltage the inverter was reporting so this is definitely possible. Thinking back there were clues to what might happen that I didn't pick up at the time but on reflection it gives me a possible cause for the fuse blowing.

The first couple of times the VCU hung with the ignition on while I was testing. On these occasions I realised the motor had stopped spinning, turned the ignition off and on again and although the contactors all triggered as normal (I thought) I still didn't get motor spin until I reset the VCU.
A couple of times after this the VCU hung with the ignition off and I got no contactors turning on when I turned on the ignition. Resetting the VCU put everything back to normal. Mmmmmm

So it is possible the VCU was freezing with the outputs locked either on or off, depending on the state it was in when it froze and in this state when I turned the ignition off and on again all the timer relays would either trigger at the same moment or not at all. This would have the following results.

If it froze:-
1. With the ignition on, when I turned it off and on again reasonably quickly nothing bad would happen because the inverter would still be charged.
2. With the ignition off nothing would happen because the timer relays did not trigger.
3. With the ignition on when I turned the ignition off left it for 30 mins or so then back on all the timer relays triggered together and blew the fuse.

I haven't reconnected the inverter yet so don't know if more harm was done but now I have a plausible theory as to what happened will give it a try later today. Wish me luck.

So what are the take aways here?
1. It's good to have fuses
2. Do not have a single point of failure, nothing is fool proof. Had I turned up the timer for the Positive contactor even just a couple of seconds it would have been OK.
3. When something unusual happens investigate a bit more thoroughly than I did.
4. When Damien did his best to make his VCU idiot proof the world just went out and created a better idiot.

Any thoughts from others?
Is it unusual for connecting a laptop to mess up the VCU? Does it make a difference if the laptop is plugged in.

Since posting this I have replaced both contactors and changed the layout of the HV Junction box several times and it's working again reliably so thankfully it looks like no harm done.
Here is a recent photo but since I took this I've replaced the relay module with an eight way one and screwed all the modules down.

[Alibro]

This is starting to feel very real now guys.
MOT booked for Sunday.

[nkiernan]

This is starting to feel very real now guys.
MOT booked for Sunday.

Good stuff, good luck

[Alibro]

Good stuff, good luck

Thanks mate, It will be insured from midnight tonight so I plan to take it out for a spin tomorrow. Since I bought the car almost two years ago the furthest I've driven it is 300m up a lane at 15mph max.

[Alibro]

So as promised I had my first test drive a few minutes ago, only 5 miles but can confirm all good and I didn't break down.
It was around the back roads where I live but on one straight I was able to get up to 60mph and the car feels very similar to a TD4 as far as acceleration is concerned.
Here are a few findings.
1. It will pull away in third gear but is happier from 2nd.
2. I will use 4th if over 30mph and probably will change up the gears as normal as the transmission becomes a bit noisy at high rpm.
3. Changing gears is very easy as I don't have regen yet. I just lift off the throttle as normal and the gears slip in nicely.
4. I need to tweak the brake boost as it is a little under boosted. This is easily done by an update to the Arduino that controls it, I had deliberately turned it down a lot after the previous problems and may have gone too far.
5. The motor temp rose to 25C at one point so that's something I need to keep an eye on, I know 25C is not hot but it started at 11 or 12C. Maybe I should turn up the coolant pump a little as it is running around half speed atm. Tweaking the software on the same Arduino should fix this however I was driving slowly in high gears much of the time so maybe it is OK as it is. I'll try driving on main roads for a few miles and see what happens at higher speed.
6. The alternator motor driving the power steering is a little noisy. This is mostly due to the ebike controller running in square wave mode as I don't have hall effect sensors on the motor. This is something I knew about and should be able to resolve but that's a project in itself.
I took some video footage and will put up a link here just for Openinverterers.

[Alibro]

First drive on the road.
Kinda

[Alibro]

MOT passed.