Unable to Restart after using AC (was AC causes failure)

I'm thinking more about pro-active checks. Has anyone had problems if they were NOT using the A/C? I didn't use it all last night during pickup, and none today driving until after I got home and the kids and I were zipping around the back roads.

But not using the A/C until I get my refrigerant charged checked is my plan at this point - I'm way too busy to deal with a needless breakdown. Heck, trying to make time to come in to get carwings fixed during business hours is a major pain.

Anyone find Leaf TSBs yet?

DeaneG said:

Dumb question - will a $25 OBDII scan tool be able to reset the codes and get things moving? I didn't look to see if my Leaf has an OBDII connector - wouldn't be surprised either way.

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I believe all cars sold now are required to have the OBDII port - but the 16 standard gauges read by the scan gauge are mostly meaningless on the LEAF.

I haven't seen Turboltr around here lately. He was pulling codes off the CAN bus - it would be interesting if he could see the A/C pressures and even more interesting if he could spoof them to find out both if he could shut the car down, and if he could revive the car once it does shut down.

I picked up my Leaf on Wednesday from Fontana Nissan. Wonderful dealer to work with.
Drove it 70 miles home. Perfect trip.
Charged it overnight using the 110 cable provided. Showed full charge in the morning.
Drove it briefly for about a half mile and all seemed fine. Playing with the navigator and learning the controls.
But at 4pm I decided to take a trip. Drove 2 miles and the yellow warning and EV system warning lights went on. Car seemed to be driving fine but we returned home since the manual said to call the dealer.
Once in the garage we turned off the car. Could not restart -- showed 0 charge -- . Plugged in the 110 cable and the car would not charge - none of the 3 blue lights lit up and the charger would not go beyond Ready.
Dashboard showed "plug" symbol for 2 secs and disappeared.
Android app/web site showed that the charger failed.
So after all of this I called 877-NoGasEv the car is being picked up tomorrow and being towed to the nearest dealer.

Great disappointment. Will keep posting what I learn from the dealer.

WLC

You might try reading this thread. You could start at the beginning to get the whole story or you could start here.

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=3139&start=123

Essentially there are about 4 of us that this has happened to. Apparently the last batch of cars had their A/C systems over charged with refrigerant, and an alarm shuts down the car. Were hopeful that there will be a software fix that will only have the A/C system shut down on this alarm in the future, but for now, setting the proper refrigerant level seems to have fixed it for several of us.

edit: this was originally its own thread and I pointed the OP to this thread which is now one in the same....

This is really not good.
An entire batch of EVs riding back to the dealer on tow trucks could be quite the black-eye.

Thanks for the quick post. I will take a printout of your fix with me tomorrow to help in the diagnosis.
I am in LA and my Leaf may be part of the batch with the AC problem. The dealer should know about it.

You might try pulling the cable from the axillary battery and waiting about 10 minutes, then replace and see if it will start up. At least if it does you might be able to drive back to the dealer.

LakeLeaf said:

You might try pulling the cable from the axillary battery and waiting about 10 minutes, then replace and see if it will start up. At least if it does you might be able to drive back to the dealer.

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If it were me, and I already had the tow truck arranged, I would just leave it alone and that way the dealership can get the car and see it in the disabled condition. Now if I were in the middle of going somewhere and my car died and I had to get going again, I would certainly do that and then go to the dealer to have them take a look at it.

My car has been delayed at port for longer than expected and no actual reason. They wont add any option and claim the lack of option as a reason for hold up. Wonder if they noticed this issue and are fixing it or at least doing a check of every Leaf.

palmermd said:

LakeLeaf said:

You might try pulling the cable from the axillary battery and waiting about 10 minutes, then replace and see if it will start up. At least if it does you might be able to drive back to the dealer.

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If it were me, and I already had the tow truck arranged, I would just leave it alone and that way the dealership can get the car and see it in the disabled condition. Now if I were in the middle of going somewhere and my car died and I had to get going again, I would certainly do that and then go to the dealer to have them take a look at it.

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I guess that might be best in this situation.

I like to know if it was an emergency, is there something likely to work, so I'd probably try pulling the battery cable. Typically the fault codes are stored in NV memory so you shouldn't loose them by pulling the cable. All of the dealers I've dealt with lately go right to the computer and have it tell them what it thinks is wrong, so the method of delivery back to service hasn't seem to made any difference to the service department. I've arrived just about every way possible :lol:

LindaK said:

So BrendanDolan,

Can you tell us how/why an "overcharged" air conditioner shuts down the entire car? This doesn't happen on an ICE (at least I've never heard of it). Is it an 'overzealous' damage prevention system kicking in, or is there really some relationship between the amount of freon in the A/C system and the battery? Seems odd if there is, and I'm curious to understand more.

Thanks,
LindaK

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I'm not a mechanic, so I can only speculate from what I've heard from the service drive, and from Nissan. According to what I've heard, an overcharged AC circuit causes more current to be drawn from the compressor, and the current draw value given from the module is out of limit, so the car goes into "safe mode."

I've dealt with this in airplanes, where if a value is outside of an acceptable range programmed in, the computers think the value is erroneous and that system is shut down. I still don't have an answer from Nissan why the AC circuit can shut down the car.

From what I've seen, it seems like there is logic programmed into the car to trigger a "safe mode" event, and excessive current draw from a sub system can trigger it. Too much refrigerant (not Freon, that's not green enough anymore) would cause the compressor to work harder, increasing current draw, and triggering the safe mode.

I'm not sure removing the battery cable will get the car going, in my case it took resetting the codes for my HV issue. Seems silly the car is disabled when the issue is no longer there.

BrendanDolan said:

LindaK said:

So BrendanDolan,

Can you tell us how/why an "overcharged" air conditioner shuts down the entire car? This doesn't happen on an ICE (at least I've never heard of it). Is it an 'overzealous' damage prevention system kicking in, or is there really some relationship between the amount of freon in the A/C system and the battery? Seems odd if there is, and I'm curious to understand more.

Thanks,
LindaK

Click to expand...

I'm not a mechanic, so I can only speculate from what I've heard from the service drive, and from Nissan. According to what I've heard, an overcharged AC circuit causes more current to be drawn from the compressor, and the current draw value given from the module is out of limit, so the car goes into "safe mode."

I've dealt with this in airplanes, where if a value is outside of an acceptable range programmed in, the computers think the value is erroneous and that system is shut down. I still don't have an answer from Nissan why the AC circuit can shut down the car.

From what I've seen, it seems like there is logic programmed into the car to trigger a "safe mode" event, and excessive current draw from a sub system can trigger it. Too much refrigerant (not Freon, that's not green enough anymore) would cause the compressor to work harder, increasing current draw, and triggering the safe mode.

Click to expand...

I've also dealt with this in airplanes, BrendanDolan; but I've never had my airplane engine go into "failsafe" mode and shut down. That might be a little dicey if you're in flight.

Do you mean that the safe mode event could be triggered also when the car is in motion ?!?
How "safe" would that mode be if you are going 75mph ?
We need some answers from Nissan, and soon before this blows up like Apple's "antennagate" or Toyota's accelerations.

BrendanDolan said:

I'm not a mechanic, so I can only speculate from what I've heard from the service drive, and from Nissan. According to what I've heard, an overcharged AC circuit causes more current to be drawn from the compressor, and the current draw value given from the module is out of limit, so the car goes into "safe mode."

I've dealt with this in airplanes, where if a value is outside of an acceptable range programmed in, the computers think the value is erroneous and that system is shut down. I still don't have an answer from Nissan why the AC circuit can shut down the car.

From what I've seen, it seems like there is logic programmed into the car to trigger a "safe mode" event, and excessive current draw from a sub system can trigger it. Too much refrigerant (not Freon, that's not green enough anymore) would cause the compressor to work harder, increasing current draw, and triggering the safe mode.

Click to expand...

Fabio said:

Do you mean that the safe mode event could be triggered also when the car is in motion ?!?
How "safe" would that mode be if you are going 75mph ?
We need some answers from Nissan, and soon before this blows up like Apple's "antennagate" or Toyota's accelerations.

Click to expand...

I've been following this thread, and I don't think anyone said their cars shut down while in motion. A few have registered safe mode events while underway, but the cars didn't lock up until they were power-cycled by the driver.

Correct in my case, Sprokitman,

And unless someone advises otherwise....if you get "the little yellow car with the exclamation point" warning showing up while driving after turning on your A/C, I recommend NOT stopping right away. Instead, turn off your A/C, and drive it to the Nissan dealership before shutting down, so they can fix what needs fixing.

BrendanDolan said:

LindaK said:

So BrendanDolan,

Can you tell us how/why an "overcharged" air conditioner shuts down the entire car? This doesn't happen on an ICE (at least I've never heard of it). Is it an 'overzealous' damage prevention system kicking in, or is there really some relationship between the amount of freon in the A/C system and the battery? Seems odd if there is, and I'm curious to understand more.

Thanks,
LindaK

Click to expand...

I'm not a mechanic, so I can only speculate from what I've heard from the service drive, and from Nissan. According to what I've heard, an overcharged AC circuit causes more current to be drawn from the compressor, and the current draw value given from the module is out of limit, so the car goes into "safe mode."

I've dealt with this in airplanes, where if a value is outside of an acceptable range programmed in, the computers think the value is erroneous and that system is shut down. I still don't have an answer from Nissan why the AC circuit can shut down the car.

From what I've seen, it seems like there is logic programmed into the car to trigger a "safe mode" event, and excessive current draw from a sub system can trigger it. Too much refrigerant (not Freon, that's not green enough anymore) would cause the compressor to work harder, increasing current draw, and triggering the safe mode.

Click to expand...

Thanks Brendan

This failure has happened to me twice in 300 miles of Nissan Leaf ownership.

The first time this happened, after 4 days of ownership, an engineer from Nissan in Tennessee flew out to the local dealer (Santa Barbara Nissan in Santa Barbara, California). After this event I was assured that the issue was a software problem that had been fixed.

Now it has happened a second time. As has happened to others, the precipitating event was turning on the air conditioner while the car was in motion.

This issue is a fatal flaw. I am seriously considering returning the car to the dealer, pressing on with our other car (a 2003 Prius), and waiting for the plug-in Prius hybrid to appear in 2012.

Sincerely,
Roger Freedman

PS: At the risk of appearing pedantic, I offer a gentle spelling reminder: The devices that bring an automobile to a halt are "brakes," not "breaks."

So, is there exact repro steps? I'd like to try that at the dealership before I take delivery of the Leaf.

IBELEAF said:

So, is there exact repro steps? I'd like to try that at the dealership before I take delivery of the Leaf.

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(1) Just make doubly-sure that they check the refrigerant levels against the latest recommended value for your region. Insist on talking to the tech who prepped your car if necessary and tell them about this thread. I would even have them call Nissan engineering for the recommended levels if they tell you they haven't seen a service bulletin on it and didn't test voltages while running the AC.
(2) Turn on the AC for at least 15 minutes while not moving, then try to go somewhere. This seems to trigger the issue fairly consistently.