DaveinOlyWA
Well-known member
BrockWI said:Yesterday we had a dead leaf again, this is getting annoying.
Friday night I topped up the 12v battery, took less than an hour to hit the green. The car ran fine Saturday, was at 65% so we didn't charge it Sunday morning. Sunday afternoon we went to run one of the kids and got the dreaded dash blinking and all kinds of warnings. Turned it off and went to another car. I threw the 1.25 amp deltran charger on it right away and checked the 12v battery, not surprisingly it was at 10.1v An hour later I check the voltage to find it still low at 10.2v. I put a clamp on meter on the leads and sure enough there was a about a 1.1 amp load leaving he battery with 1.2 going in to the battery from the charger. I disconnected the car and then put a larger 4 stage 5 amp charger on the 12v battery overnight. The 12v battery was full this morning, I reconnected the car, checked and the 1.1 amp load was gone, just the usual, .1 amp load, started the car and all is fine with the traction battery at 64%.
So there is something significant staying on, maybe a pump? I don't know what it is, but once in a while something stays on. Its not the headlights (they shut them selves off), not leaving in acc mode (again it shuts itself off), but something that fails to switch off when the car shuts off.
My only thought is to check the load on the battery every time to see what if it is staying on. I believe it is a random thing that sometimes it stays on and sometimes not and power cycling the car to drive mode would likely fix it. Its not a bad 12v battery, it wouldn't have taken more than 4 hours at 5 amps to top it back up if that were the case. I used to think it was the car undercharging the 12v battery, but 95% of the time when I put the chargers on it is "full" in 20 minutes and the fact it took over 30 amps to "fill" the battery back up. I am familiar with dying and dead 12v lead acid batterys and this isn't behaving like them.
something is wrong with your programming. Tyrel is also having the same issues with his 2013 (dead battery 3X) but mine is fine after 16,000 miles. I have one of the last 2013's off the line so wondering if they did some last minute program changes that might be hidden in the recall programming (which I have not yet done)
Try this;
I fully charged my LEAF last night. I went out measured voltage; 12.35 not good imm.
I plugged in LEAF, measured voltage, it started at 14.40 volts and eventually dropped to 13.00ish which is what it always measures when the charging lights are on unless its actively charging then it will be at 14.40 volts. Apparently this time, my LEAF decided the 12 volt battery did not need a boost and that is why it settled to 13 volts (generally happens within 45-60 seconds) Other times, the voltage remained at 14.40 volts for an unspecified period. twice it did this and both times I forgot to check back although I can verify it lasted at least 30 minutes one time (was checking in 10 min intervals but....life intervened)
if your LEAF is not acting EXACTLY like this, then you have a problem or you need a programming update. FYI; I have not heard or do not remember any mention of a specific update to address this issue.