dzimmerm56
New member
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2021
- Messages
- 1
My Wife reported our 2016 Nissan Leaf would not start. It was reporting battery extremely low and asked if I wanted to find a charger. Since I was at home and have a level 2 charger in the back driveway the problem was how to get the car to the back driveway from the front yard where it was currently parked, AND, what happened, as the leaf had about 67% charge when we left it in the front the day before.
I had read that the 12 volt battery can sometimes cause problems so I checked it. To all appearances the battery was ok, reading about 12.5 volts. I decided to try hooking up a 12 volt battery charger to the 12 volt battery to see if the car would allow movement. That did not seem to help much. I then hooked up the level 1 trickle charger that came with our leaf.
The car acted oddly, with the charge indicator lights. The passenger side charge light did blink, very weakly, and the driver side charge light blinked quite a bit. A little owners manual research indicated the passenger side light was indicating main battery charging and the drivers side light indicated 12 volt battery charging. This convinced me the 12 volt battery was not working correctly. I purchased a replacement at Sam's Club, a Type 51R battery. Replacement was fairly simple with removal of the hold down and then removing the negative lead and then the positive lead. The hold downs and the lead clamps were all 10mm nuts .
I had previously cleaned the terminals after finding a small amount of corrosion on the positive terminal. That did not change the symptoms but did mean I did not need to clean the lead again while installing the new battery.
I let the trickle charger run for about an hour, after which is still showed the battery completely flat, BUT, it did allow me to put the car in drive. I carefully put everything in order and then drove the car around to the back of my house and hooked it up to the 3.3KW Level 2 charger I have installed in the back. After charging for about an hour and a half I went back and checked and the battery was now showing 29% charged. I breathed a sigh of relief.
As far as I know, the battery I removed was an original equipment battery so was at least 5 years old. I decided to keep the battery, rather than returning the core, as it may be useful in other uses once I rejuvenate it.
I thought my experience might prove helpful to others who have Leafs with 5 year old 12 volt batteries.
My Wife and I really love our Leaf and this was the first time it has caused an issue where it did not get up where we needed to go.
I had read that the 12 volt battery can sometimes cause problems so I checked it. To all appearances the battery was ok, reading about 12.5 volts. I decided to try hooking up a 12 volt battery charger to the 12 volt battery to see if the car would allow movement. That did not seem to help much. I then hooked up the level 1 trickle charger that came with our leaf.
The car acted oddly, with the charge indicator lights. The passenger side charge light did blink, very weakly, and the driver side charge light blinked quite a bit. A little owners manual research indicated the passenger side light was indicating main battery charging and the drivers side light indicated 12 volt battery charging. This convinced me the 12 volt battery was not working correctly. I purchased a replacement at Sam's Club, a Type 51R battery. Replacement was fairly simple with removal of the hold down and then removing the negative lead and then the positive lead. The hold downs and the lead clamps were all 10mm nuts .
I had previously cleaned the terminals after finding a small amount of corrosion on the positive terminal. That did not change the symptoms but did mean I did not need to clean the lead again while installing the new battery.
I let the trickle charger run for about an hour, after which is still showed the battery completely flat, BUT, it did allow me to put the car in drive. I carefully put everything in order and then drove the car around to the back of my house and hooked it up to the 3.3KW Level 2 charger I have installed in the back. After charging for about an hour and a half I went back and checked and the battery was now showing 29% charged. I breathed a sigh of relief.
As far as I know, the battery I removed was an original equipment battery so was at least 5 years old. I decided to keep the battery, rather than returning the core, as it may be useful in other uses once I rejuvenate it.
I thought my experience might prove helpful to others who have Leafs with 5 year old 12 volt batteries.
My Wife and I really love our Leaf and this was the first time it has caused an issue where it did not get up where we needed to go.