I am just over one month away from my car's seventh birthday and the pack is still kicking butt!
But...the rest of the car? Not so much.
I was literally waltzing along with error free operation that included a couple dozen DC charges after the recall came out until...The Event
A celebration of Life held at Squaxin Park bordering the southern apex of Puget Sound was my car's undoing. The car was loaded with stuff for the event and we spent a leisurely 10ish minutes unloading and...
5 hours later after several accesses to the car, we got in to go and...
The car didn't go. She lit up like a Christmas tree and complained of low E... (low electrons)
The 12 Volt Saga
I have posted many blogs concerning Nissan's weak 12 volt management. Essentially the system boosts the 12 volt on a timer. There are some events that sometimes trigger a boost but nothing consistent.
What I did notice was driving and charging every day went a long way towards keeping the 12 volt charged enough to boot the car. Since we aren't cranking pistons, there isn't a lot of power needed. Eventually it was realized that the windshield wipers boosted the 12 volt system into charge mode territory or over 14 volts. This translated to another easy way to maintain the 12 volt but as you can guess; its not effective in summer or places that don't get regular precipitation. But in rainy Western Washington, it was a very effective method 7-8 months a year.
The Seven Year Itch
12 volt batteries are designed to fail. In good weather, they go 5 years, in bad? 1-3 years so mine being just a few months from its 7th birthday meant my windshield wiping, mattered. I swapped out my tires at 5 years, 60 months, 60,000 miles. Tires do expire and the general consensus is they should be swapped out no matter what after 5 years. I probably had 5,000 miles or more of tread life yet but it was October and with the rainy season so figured it was better to do it with new rubber.
So when the battery had its first hiccup the last weekend of May, I started carrying the jump box around with me. For the first 2-3 weeks, I didn't need it. Then it started with 1-2 times a week eventually escalating to 4-5 times a week where I am now. Because of soooo many jumps, code clearing, etc. it was hard to not notice that I could easily predict when the car wouldn't start.
Drain Strain
One would think that when performing critical maintenance, system checks and readiness that they would be taken care of better. It became rather apparent that connecting the traction battery to the car was one of many functions the 12 volt was responsible for. So we have outlined what you can expect when the 12 volt is feeling less than capable.
Brake Pedal
The 12 volt precharges the braking system BEFORE you start the car. The pedal will have minimal resistance and will sink to the floor. Instant giveaway. In all the jump events, I never thought about not starting and just hooking up the jump box but...habits! Hard to break...
Dash Lights
The dash has all kinds of warnings and essentially Orange or Yellow is an FYI or something you should take a look at.
Red is dead. Car ain't moving. Won't shift to any drive gear. So you put the jumper on, start it and...still looks the same. Reason; it went dead enough to throw fault codes. "Sometimes" it won't start but a jump is enough for it to start and run. In this instance? Got to clear codes.
Two ways to clear codes;
Disconnect the 12 volt for a minute. The hook it back up. More likely than not, you will need to reconnect jump box.
Or you can reset with LEAF Spy Pro. Def easier than disconnecting battery (especially since the first time, I didn't have any tools)
After you clear codes, the screen will look like this but you will now be able to shift to drive modes. Press ok and go!
After you press OK, the screen will look like this. The rest of the alerts will slowly disappear.
