Recent content by Swifty

The drain was sufficient that I'd have to connect a 12V charger every night. When I put a multimeter across the terminals of a fully charged 12V battery, the voltage was dropping 0.01V every two seconds or so. I didn't have range anxiety, I was worrying about what might happen if the 12V battery...

The local Nissan agent has finally got to the root of this problem. After fitting a new battery, the voltage continued to drop. So further tests were run. It was found that the ABS unit had a steady drain on the battery, even with everything turned off. The cost of the repair is £1850.10 And...

Thanks for the replies. I don't have the time to try buying a replacement key as one of my tyres is borderline legal. Getting replacement nuts is cheaper than getting caught... I don't fancy the DIY approach, as I've struggled to remove ordinary nuts in the past. So I'll just leave it to the...

I bought my Leaf used, in March 2014 and I've just discovered that we don't have the key to the locking wheel nuts. Our local Nissan dealer has offered to replace the nuts/key for around £40 with 30 minutes to an hour labour. Is it possible to get just a replacement key? Does Nissan (UK) keep...

I've recently done a mix of driving at 12mph, 20mph and 30mph. 12mph is impractical almost anywhere on the public highway. 20 mph is relaxing where circumstances permit. I drove through a 40mph zone at 30mph, meeting no other vehicles, and that was fine. In my tests I came across something...

12mph, eh? I'll spend more time in the 20mph zone in our local town then. It would be an interesting experiment driving around the UK's crowded roads at 12mph. We're having an Electric Vehicle day at a nearby airfield in a few weeks time, when the public will be invited to try out our vehicles...

Thanks for all the information and pointers. I'm content with the information I get from my 2011 Leaf. I couldn't base journeys on an accurate measure of charge or range when the charging point I'm aiming for might be offline when I get there. So, I'll always try to charge at the first charging...

> Huh, far too complicated for the average driver? It's just a table. Are we assuming that the average driver can't read a simple table? I have an honours degree in High Energy Nuclear Physics. I also have 64 years on my "ageometer". This probably makes me slightly below par. I struggled to...

Is there any data on how the range is affected by speed? I've noticed that creeping along a level road in a traffic jam often uses more power (as judged by the Instant Energy Economy in the Vehicle Information Display) - around 0.2-0.3 KWh per mile. Yet the efficiency is much higher when you...

Just for closure, the issue was caused by a problem in the driver's door lock. It had been fitted incorrectly, or had worked loose. The lock contains a pin which notifies the system whether the door is locked or unlocked. For some reason this caused the lock mechanism to fail when locking the...

You piqued my curiosity, so (at 06:35) I went out to my garage and checked. I knew there was a row of two lights and a third "something else". Turned out that the "something else" is the fault indicator. Luckily, that's never come on, which is why I didn't know what it is. Apart from that...

I have a charger installed in my garage, and the Leaf charges automatically almost every night (on the cheap overnight electricity tarriff, about £0.06 per kWH). Wouldn't this keep the 12V battery charged?

The Nissan dealer confirmed that the 12V battery was weak, so I requested a replacement. I've just collected the car, and it's clearly back to it's original capabilities. We'd recently noticed that the range was falling off, but that also seems to have improved again. It was only a short run...

More terms that I'm unfamiliar with... :-) My handbook documents four power switch states: OFF, ACC, ON/READY and LOCK I presume that "AUX" and "ACC" are interchangeable terms. I can't see any difference between ON and READY, or any way to change between them. Is this because my Leaf is a...

I'm not familiar with the abbreviation "AGM", is it "Absorbed Glass Mat"? It occurs to me that I didn't leave my Leaf on charge last night (unusual) so if I'd left anything on, that would have flattened the 12V battery. I suspect that the local Nissan dealer will find no fault, but still...