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Another PTC heater failure here. It actually went out last year but now I need to drive the car in colder weather with icing conditions so I took the thing to the dealer for repair.

2013 Leaf, 35k miles, in Colorado
No check engine light just no heat below 30 degrees. The heat pump made warm air above 40 degrees but no current draw from the PTC heater.

Dealer cost was 3000$, they managed a 10% discount to get it down to 2700$. Called Nissan customer service to start a claim. They said sorry, nothing we can do.

At least I have heat, for now. But I will never buy another Nissan.
 
After 200MM (Megameters, or 125.000 miles for the metrically impaired) my brothers 2014 Leaf with clod climate package join the PTC club by invitation of the DTCs and reduced heating capability.

B2773 0008 HVAC PTC Heater Circuit 1 HAC-75
B2774 0008 HVAC PTC Heater Circuit 2 HAC-75

Nissan quoted about $2100 to replace the PTC heater but I'm having a hard time deciding if I should believe that solves the problem. The car comfortable holds 20°C against 6°C outside for now, and the power climate control power consumption can be seen rising slowly to about 2-3kW and suddenly falling back down to settle around 0.5-1kW.

Are there other heaters in the system that can account for the power consumption and temperature?

Does the 2014 PTC have the same design fault as described on the 2013 PTC or is getting a used part a viable alternative?
 
My LEAF's heater is no longer operational. The annoying part is I took it to Nissan as it was going out of warrantee and they said it was in spec. Unfortunately I never turned on the heater to check that it worked. I didn't drive the car for two winters. When I did, it was obvious that did not work. I took it to the dealer for diagnosis and they said the DC/DC converter needed to be replaced and the PTC heater as well for the cost of $5500. I had hoped that they would help pay for part of it under "good will" but they did not.

I am now the proud owner of a Model 3. Can you guess why I did not choose to buy another LEAF?

I drive the LEAF during the summers and use the Tesla for out of town road trips and during the winter when it is too cold.

Does anyone know where I can get the LEAF repaired?
 
I bought my leaf a few years back and it was cheap at the time as it had a broken heater. I didn't realise how bad that was going to be at the time but nissan local to me in the UK quoted £5500 which was more than I paid for the car. This was, I found out later to replace two whole units which weren't the actual issue. Instead I found Indra in Malvern, at the time the used to service all the leaf taxis and were far better and cheaper for repairing leafs than Nissan. In the end I paid them £1200 and ended up with a working heater. These days they have moved away from car repair and into V2G systems with ovo a UK energy company.

Fast forward to today and this morning my heating again has failed but as has the ability to put the car in drive. I have the errors on my leaf spy

B2772 0018 HVAC PTC Heater Circuit 1 HAC-75
B2772 0018 HVAC PTC Heater Circuit 2 HAC-75
B2772 0018 HVAC PTC Heater Circuit 3 HAC-75
B2772 0018 HVAC PTC Heater Circuit 4 HAC-75

as well as
C118C 0109 ABS EV/HEV System BRC-126

C1A6E 0109 BRAKE EV/HEV System BR-146
C1A70 0109 BRAKE Brake Control System BR-160

P3176 00C0 Inverter Condenser EVC-238
P311C 00C0 High Voltage System EVC-204

This car also has a muxsan 17.6kwh range extender but I don't see any issues with that part of the system and I have a spare mitm board which I swapped in to check if it could be causing issues.

I also have another working 2013 leaf which again has a ptc heater that has never had issues and I swapped my optima yellow top from my Muxsan leaf to this and vice versa to see if it could be funnies caused by low 12v battery issues.

anyway I also have some eberspacher hydronics diesel heaters that I was planning on installing to augment the system and gain back range lost from the lossy ptc heating, however now I think it will probably be a straight replacement if indeed the second ptc heater and fuse has failed. I suspect maybe it has take the pre-charge resistor with it and I don't appear to be able to charge the car either.

We were planning on selling the newer 2013 leaf and in light of the heaters being quite obviously a poor design and the job to replace the fuses so ridiculously arduous we may do that sooner than later. This car has yesterday flown through its MOT test and in its previous ownership by a local council done very little miles or rapid charges.

Anyway when I work out what the issues really are now, I will think about whether some of the 12v solutions here are worth pursuing instead of the obviously flawed oem solution
 
Anyway when I work out what the issues really are now, I will think about whether some of the 12v solutions here are worth pursuing instead of the obviously flawed oem solution

If all you need is a tolerable cabin temp, then the inverter-personal heater route should work - especially if you need heat in the driver's area only. If you need a similar level of heat to OEM, then probably not.
 
@LeftieBiker Well I have put in heated seats in the front but I have 2 and 4 year old boys so I need the cabin temp to be close to oem. The eberspachers I have are 3kw rated and I have two so maybe in parallel they could do better than the original. I think for now I will only put one in or do the 12v ptc heater, my worry with that solutions is putting too much extra duty on the DCDC converter causing that to have a harder life and potentially be the next victim to the heat problem.
 
You can avoid the car's 12 volt system and use a storage battery in the back. Or use the storage battery and have the car recharge it, so it acts as a buffer.
 
I purchased a 2015 Tekna Leaf (in the UK) in early Dec (2020) and have just managed to replace a faulty PTC heater (27th Dec 2020) and, for now, I have heat! I say "for now" as I do not know if the failure was to do with the PTC module itself or the climate control software telling it to run too hot in a certain scenario and therefore destroying it. The original unit in my car was dated Oct 2014 and I have replaced it with a Jan 2016 PTC heater module (dates are on the PTC heater stickers). So far it is working, but if it does fail in the near future, I will be back to update in the forum.

Car was purchased with a known PTC heater issue. No heat, no kW consumption increase in climate control dial on energy use screen, error B2777 on LeafSpy which persisted even when attempts were made to clear the error code.

uc


Prev owner found the car was out of warranty and cost for repair was high - I suspect quotes around £2.5-3k from Nissan.

I did some research and found little in the way of DIY replacements for RHD cars. The various factory service manual chapters (https://www.nicoclub.com/nissan-service-manuals) prepared me for a dash out job and that is what I embarked on. Please note that I followed the suggested precautions in the manual (decent Class 0 gloves when working near high voltage fittings and also removing the 12V battery and the traction battery fuse. I take no responsibility for any work you might do based on this. Please follow the instructions in the manual at the link shared above).

Prior to taking the dash apart, I followed a couple of test processes in the manual (pages HAC104 and 105) to check that the connectors and cables were okay between the aircon controller and the PTC heater. Additionally, I also sprayed contact cleaner on the connector plugs and fitted/removed them a few times hoping that it was going to fix the issue. The B2777 error code mentions an issue with LIN comms and so I was hoping that this was the fix. Unfortunately it didn’t make a difference.

I then plugged just the comms wiring from the car into the replacement PTC heater I purchased used off eBay. I was happy to see the error code change to B2772 which is to do with PTC heater voltage. At this stage I had not disconnected the batteries, I just used the class 0 gloves when taking off the data connector but did not tamper with any HV items.

uc


uc


This meant that the comms part of the original PTC heater must have stopped working and the replacement one was atleast communicating with the car! I was worried as there was a chance the used eBay unit wouldn’t work or that it would not be compatible with the older aircon control unit my car had.

With the car made safe and still wearing class 0 gloves when near HV items I proceeded to do the below:

I looked at how to get the PTC unit out without taking the dash off completely. I followed steps in the manual (Section IP) to take off the center console and the lower panel by the pedals. Then took other bits off and opened up a couple of holes shown in number 3 in the pic below to gain access to some screws that would otherwise only be accessible with the dash apart.

uc


uc


uc


uc


I didnt have the car raised and on stands so it made the removal of the HV connection to the heater a bit of a pain. without damaging anything, I managed somehow to release the little tab so that I could press the release tab of the plug and it did come off. The above pic shows the tab release in detail. Also there was a cable tie attached to the heater cable near the battery area that needed to be released. Again that would have been a lot easier with access under the car.

With these steps taken, I was able to finally take off the two screws attaching the PTC heater to the aircon unit and as I expected it was not able to come out completely due to the parking brake pedal.

uc


There are some other steps I took to loosen the parking brake cable, remove the parking brake pedal base off the bulkhead and maneuver the assembly while also pressing/depressing the pedal to allow the PTC heater to clear the lot. This was a bit tedious but just takes patience.

To avoid taking the rest of the dash apart, I decided to cut a black wire that is attached to the PTC heater unit. Technically I could remove this at the PTC heater end (there is a screw but it has a blue filling on the screw so that it cannot be tampered with). I decided not to mess around with the PTC itself and opted to solder and seal up this cable that is a connection to ground.

uc


Finally the replacement PTC heater is in place.

uc


I had to put everything back in place prior to testing. Once all was put back together and the fuse back in plus the 12V battery hooked up, I checked out what LeafSpy had to say.

uc


No Errors!! I went for a test drive to check that everything was working. The PTC heater works and I can actually feel warm air coming through the vents. The energy consumption shown for the climate control also climbed up which it didn't do previously. Not sure how long this will last, but for now I lowered the preheat temp to 16 degrees C as that would be enough to clear the windscreen. I would love to know what kills these PTC heaters in the first place.

This took me just over half a day. I had budgeted a lot more time as I expected to have to take the whole dash apart. Lot of fiddly bits and I have a lot of muscle pains from having to push and pull at funny angles. Maybe taking the front seat off would have made things a lot easier! :)
 
Nice detailed post, thanks for taking the time to document it!
Niro said:
I would love to know what kills these PTC heaters in the first place.
random long shot; try contacting bigclivedotcom for a post-mortem?
 
After a lot of procrastination I went under the car and measured the resistance of the PTC heater, 478k ohm. (guessing temperature was around -10C). Found two references to the resistance in this thread, 500k and 5M but wasn't clear to me which was the normal value?

(Leafspy does show B2773 and B2774, and errors return after being cleared)
 
bearer said:
After a lot of procrastination I went under the car and measured the resistance of the PTC heater, 478k ohm. (guessing temperature was around -10C). Found two references to the resistance in this thread, 500k and 5M but wasn't clear to me which was the normal value?

(Leafspy does show B2773 and B2774, and errors return after being cleared)

Bearer, my failed heater was about 500 kOhms, and the working salvage heater I got was about 5 MegOhms resistance across the Hv input terminals. My salvage heater is still working fine.

I think the resistance we're measuring this way is the resistance across the transistors or mosfets or whatever that pass high voltage through to the actual PTC element when the controls say to, not the actual PTC element resistance. I guess the cause is something in that high voltage control or the LIN bus controller that communicates with the rest of the HVAC system. I took my failed one apart to see if something looked burned in there, but nothing obvious, and then I plugged it back into the car which killed my precharge resistor.
 
Ah thanks for the feedback! I guess my experiment of seeing if the resistance changes when I bring it up to 20C is kinda moot if there are smarts in the element.
(Edit: Just as a curiosity the measured resistance does indeed change with temperature, closer to 300k at around 20C)


Found a salvage part 271433NF1B from a 2018 Leaf and hoping that will fit when it arrives next week, if not I guess I'm hoping for more snow.. :)
 
271433NF1B from the salvage also measured around 500k (438k at around 0°C to be exact).

However after installing it fault codes cleared and heater works. 4000 NOK part instead of the 20000 NOK qoute from the Nissan dealer.
 
:( Doa! Apparently failed again. No heat and showing B2772 code. I only noticed because of the code set.

Winter is coming. Is this the excuse I need to buy a recent whole salvage car just for the ptc heater?!?!
 
:D Phew, the heat does still work! I just drove at night needing defrost and tried the heat thinking it was hopeless. It still heats!!

It was some sort of communication issue and finishing charging to full with can bridge stopping the charge. This car has a battery replacement and can bridge with some extra features.

So if you see only B2772 set, just try clearing codes and keeping fingers crossed.
 
Daklein said:
:D Phew, the heat does still work! I just drove at night needing defrost and tried the heat thinking it was hopeless. It still heats!!

It was some sort of communication issue and finishing charging to full with can bridge stopping the charge. This car has a battery replacement and can bridge with some extra features.

So if you see only B2772 set, just try clearing codes and keeping fingers crossed.

I have had the b2772 0009 code for a while now. It goes and comes back randomly. Hoping the heater works in winter. I have a 16 sv with a 40kwh battery that was recently replaced by nissan. The code has been there before the new battery.
 
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