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Originally Posted by MPaulHolmes
I'm heading up to washington/oregon for work until the 3rd, so I won't be horribly useful until then, but I might be able to do some stuff.
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I won't be that far along for a while
... and I'll be bugging you for pointers while I hook things up.
I am planning to video what I am doing, in case it is interesting for anyone. No editing since that takes more time than actually DOING the work, but the video will be available for me to work on later. I think manuals are great and are needed, but a bit of video helps you to see EXACTLY where things go and how they hook up.
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Oh! We just got a wrecked Nissan Leaf that was only $2900 at an auction (hurray for the line of credit haha).
It turns out that basically it was just the side panel that was damaged, and a cheap blinker. So, they totalled it out, and it is costing us around $200 to totally repair it to almost like new. Crazy insurance people!
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Great catch! I would love to get a couple of wrecks and play with the CANbus codes, figure out which connectors are required, etc. The Leaf is not popular where I am (Saskatoon, Canada) .. no wrecks. I would need to drive 8 hours away to look at a used one!
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I would like to stick the controller in there, but it's a veritable nanny state. I don't want to brick the car with error codes. Even the steering wheel is electronic. Does anybody know if I could just take the stock controller out, and stick mine in, and then disable some stuff, and drive around, or will that mess up other systems like the steering?
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I don't have any first hand experience. I have read that the motor controller .. or perhaps it is some supervisory ECU? .. checks the BMS before enabling (don't drive away with the car plugged in).
EVTV has done a lot of work reverse engineering the Tesla power train.
I'd like to do the same with the Leaf ... but first I need to source a Leaf.
EVTV built some tools - a CANbus interface that can log the codes, some PC software (linux, mac, or windows) that will decode the data, export to csv files, play back certain codes or a file of them so see what they do to the car.
It seems like a great puzzle to sort through. Jack Rickard, at EVTV, believes that home-built EV's are going to be using parts of EV wrecks for years to come. They are cheap and plentiful. Many times, they are just fine when the car has been written off. I agree .. but first we have to figure out what codes to send to them, and how often, to make them do their thing.
Are you interested in investigating this type of stuff? I think it would involve:
- lots of CANbus captures. Do one simple thing, log the data, then shut everything down, start a new capture, and do one other simple thing.
- lots of CANbus tinkering. Disconnect the ECU, play back the CANbus files, and remove the message types until something stops working.
The CANbus logging for the Tesla was done with the EVTV GEVCU since it was such high badndwidth. Not sure if a less expensive CANbus shield could be used to capture and play back data on the Leaf.
As usual ... I wrote a book!