2011 black front clip - anybody interested?

My Nissan Leaf Forum

Help Support My Nissan Leaf Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Cor

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 30, 2013
Messages
162
I can buy a black 2011 with interior fire damage, most of the front clip is good, except the hood was forced open by the Fire Dept. to disconnect the 12V battery. The complete drivetrain is fine, the brake system is likely also OK. Headlights and front bumper are fine. The left (Driver) side fender appears OK, but the right (passenger) side fender has some damage near the (molten) door, also the side blinker is partially molten on that side. Front wheel attachments, shocks and so on appear undamaged. I have not inspected the steering rack yet.
The CHAdeMO appears undamaged, so anyone interested in putting the drivetrain in a car or light truck, this might be your chance to get it cheap and even include the CHAdeMO fast charging with it.
Note that no computers from the interior of the car survived, so if you want to use the complete Leaf setup, you need to pull the computers from another car.
Note that there is damage to the front (A) pillars, so it is not a full front clip but may still be interesting to someone repairing damage to a front hit vehicle. Let me know.
 
I was at the yard where this vehicle is stored and the front bumper, radiators and lights are gone to fix a front end crashed vehicle.
The motor and inverter are still available, as well as suspension and everything else up to the firewall.
I also found out why the car had an interior fire:
It had an after-market secondary battery pack added in the trunk, probably by a hobbyist or someone building a prototype.
There was a 97 wire loom coming out of the Leaf battery pack that fed into the auxiliary pack in the trunk, plus two high voltage/high current wires for the power.
The auxiliary pack consisted of 18650 style cells in a wooden box.
My strong suspicion is that the failure occurred due to the Leaf BMS not being capable to balance the difference in self-discharge between the 18650 cells, because good quality cells have low discharge, but cheap/faulty cells might have high self-discharge and a large variation from cell to cell. The result of imbalance is that cells get over-charged or -discharged although the Leaf BMS should protect from that, but other causes of failure may be a cell shorting, causing the Leaf's module to dump all its energy into that failure, or an auxiliary charger that was not under control of the Leaf's BMS, so it could continue to charge until the car caught on fire....
 
The tow yard was going to send the vehicle to the junk yard this week, but he offered me to wait this week to let me pick it clean before it is sent off, so if you need any of the available parts then let me know soon.
BTW, I have more clarity on the interior fire in the car: it was caused because the Leaf's battery box flooded due to insufficient water proofing of the 3" hole that was cut in the side for the 97-wire loom to install an auxiliary pack in the trunk.
The hole was next to the rear wheel, so water splashed against the Leaf's battery box, pooled inside and shorted out the BMS (as well as allowing everything to corrode severely). Either the dying BMS allowed cells to over-charge or to under-discharge, or the owner needed the
vehicle while it no longer charged, so he connected an external charger and the result was a fire due to imbalanced cells.
 
Appreciate the posting... Don't need parts, but....

I am curious, what region is the burned LEAF carcass located? I seem to recall a you tube video of some kind of similar set up (where I thought that's not a good idea) but can't find it... Seems a bit eccentric even if it was working and not post mortem.

Perhaps some of us can relate to trying something new, but not adhering to best practices... ?

Any more thoughts?
 
Hi Jim,
Are you referring to the Leaf Xpack channel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcGoSO_uRXs
Because that guy did not open the battery to run 97 wires from each cell to an auxiliary pack,
instead he only spliced the high voltage cable and made his external pack self-sustaining,
so the weather-proofing of the battery box was not compromised.
He did use 18650 type cells though, which were also used in the burned Leaf.
But he converted a 2014 Leaf while the one I am looking at is a 2011, located in Silicon Valley.

Another extended range pack was done with a second Leaf pack installed in the trunk by a business
offering this for sale, the name is Hybrid Industries (Patrick Hossein)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9agY5Vbv8U
They opted to keep the two packs independent, you need to turn the car off, switch over to the other battery and then boot the car to access the second pack (or that is how I understand the video) so I presume that charging is also done one pack at a time with a manual switching in between.

If you ever find info on this 2011 Leaf with compromised pack then I am interested to hear the story.
 
Watched both vids... Not the same one I saw, and I suspect the one I viewed from before has been pulled down...

Off topic, but as indicated on switching the separate battery pack approach, not sure I'd want a high mass object (battery pack) in the rear trunk with out a very well devised mechanical connection...

As my LEAF ages out, used parts will likely be the way to go to keep things running... So far, fingers crossed...

Thanks.
 
Back
Top