The Wilted Leaf - Battery Musings... 07/09/2024

[320touring]

As a "last of the big spenders" move, I've ordered new wipers and a cabin filter for this tub...

[320touring]

That's yer leaf had it's pre winter checks - 3 new wipers (each a different size FFS). For reference 

 

Drivers front - 26"

Passenger front -16"

Rear -14"

 

Then the rear lights were pulled and cleaned,

There was a fair old whack of gunk in there, and the car being parked under a tree doesn't help..

 

2x 10mm are that all that needs removing to get the unit out - useful to know if I need to replace any bulbs!

Mawkit

Next up, the cabin filter was removed (awaiting the replacement  to arrive in the post)

It was pretty straight forward- 8 screws to remove the glovebox

The white clip to the right of the ECU/control box is what we seek.

It clips in at the bottom then pushes to latch at the top.

With it removed you can see your quarry.

Pull it out and wonder how the car ever got any air in..

It's supposed to be white?!

I also took the opportunity to stop the glovebox rattling by applying my magic rubber dots..

Much better!

 

I also touched in some paint chips on the roof and side. BMW alpine white is a perfect* match

and it's had a hoover, wash and wax. 

Burstit after it with this cold but it was a nice day and I wanted out the hoose. It's improved.

 

[Dick Longbridge]

Nice. They look alright in appliance white. Were the steelies originally covered by hubcaps or did you source them from a Nissan brother? 

[hairnet]

will any touring knackered hapes make it to chumly?

[320touring]

15 minutes ago, Dick Longbridge said:

Nice. They look alright in appliance white. Were the steelies originally covered by hubcaps or did you source them from a Nissan brother? 

I imagine they'd have had genuine Nissan hubcaps to start with - this Visia model was the super miserable base that they only made for about 6 months before dropping it.

The plan I think is to tidy them up and get them painted to look passable 

10 minutes ago, hairnet said:

will any touring knackered hapes make it to chumly?

Alas naw, we are both busy on the day unfortunately 

[320touring]

The new filter arrived :

Installation was easy enough - I just had to grip it thusly to get it to go in the access hole.

In first shot, clip on and the glovebox back in.

 

Result?

Significantly better airflow😁

[320touring]

Went out today to head to @jaypee's.

Started off with 48% battery and a predicted range of 70 miles on the screen.

After 29 miles, these were the scores on the doors 

So I've lost 45miles on the guessometer, and only travelled 29 miles. What is going on?

 

The answer? Well, it's a couple of things, some related to the hard life of a taxi, and others to corporate scardycattery:

Firstly, my Leaf's battery has quite a significant sag in voltage when the pack gets lower in charge.

When it's fully charged, all the cells are within about 32-35mV of each other.

Even this is a fairly large gap - a brilliant pack will be a 10mV variation.

After being run down a fair bit (nearly 100 miles) my pack has a BIG variation.

This is still ok and the car drives fine. However, what happens is this:

Nissan are bloody keen to avoid you running out of charge.

Therefore they're pretty pessimistic in reporting battery percentage at lower stage of charge! The software is also a bit optimistic at the top end.

It says 100% on the dash, yet is reporting 94% in Leafspy

Then 99 miles later, the dash says 16%, but leafspy says 33.8%

I reckon I could do another 20 miles before getting close to being out of charge.

 

For context, the 11.2kwh that was left in the battery would be approx 50% of charge on a healthy older 24kwh Leaf - something that may only have a practical range of 60-70miles.

 

Part of me is tempted to do a range test with the car. Charge it fully on a 7kw to get maximum charge level (I've seen 32/32.5kwh).

Then take it for a mixed driving route - maybe over a loop of known length ensuring I have reasonable proximity to a number of chargers.

It shouldn't be difficult to do with availability here..

Now I just need the time and motivation...