Ben's Refurbished Mitsubishi Miev

[mechman600]

Watching you pour the water out of the air compressor you found under the seat is sort of scary, hey?

Once everything is clean(ish), I wonder if you could borrow the battery pack from the Electro-Metro to give it a small amount of voltage at a time. First 12V, then 24V, etc. It would give things that want to sizzle a little bit a chance to, possibly without damaging them as much as giving it the full beans with its own HV battery pack right off the bat.

[bennelson]

Yes, pouring water out of the air compressor did not bode well!

Another quick video for you, just a little overview.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pVHHK4x7Fo

I cleaned the other side of the garage out yesterday, so we can both park my wife's Hymotion Prius in there AND put the Mitsubishi in there.

Although my driveway is uphill, I can move the Mitsubishi around with my Electrak E10 lawn tractor. It's kinda like the tugs pushing around the planes at the airport.

[jackbauer]

Ben I have worked on the imiev and will help if required. I would suggest that you pull up the passenger seat , remove the carpet cover and pull out the traction battery disconnect before doing much else. The inverter /dcdc and charger are all very well made and quite hermetic so i'd say you have a good chance of making it run. Best of luck!

[2007 ion2]

ben, I would definitely suggest flushing everything with the isopropanol suggested by others. it will take care of any remnants of corrosive agents left behind by the water, and make any initial attempt at starting the car up successful. simply drying out the water will do nothing to extend the lifespan of this car, and is more likely to leave traces of conductive material behind.

[user removed]

Originally Posted by jackbauer

Ben I have worked on the imiev and will help if required. I would suggest that you pull up the passenger seat , remove the carpet cover and pull out the traction battery disconnect before doing much else. The inverter /dcdc and charger are all very well made and quite hermetic so i'd say you have a good chance of making it run. Best of luck!

Best advice yet. Get the main battery out of the circuit and see if it can be charged or has any charge.

You need to strip the car down to the point where you have disconnected every component that got wet.

Take any circuit boards out of the cans, using a small camel hair type brush and alcohol, flush and brush the dircuit boards, then rinse with water and blow dry them immediately. Fan might be OK but compressed air is much better.

I would avoid applying power to any circuit that has not been completely treated first.

Wiring harness connections need to be disconnected. I used tarn-x to dip them and then a spray of electrical contact solvent and compressed air to clean them up. Some of the connections had actually corroded to the point where there was some material missing form the connectors themselves. Even with that state of damage I got every connection working and they kept working for another ten years.

If you want to power up circuits, start by pulling alll of the fuses and work with individual circuits to avoid cross currents that could damage components that were not designed to have that much power through them.

I'm not sure how much yoiu want to put into this car to get it back in shape, but the time involved will be considerable. The alternative would be to use it for parts to fix a collision damaged car, or buy another one that was rolled over and totalled through sheet metal damage, which would have most if not all of the electrical compoenents you might neeed.

Regardless, the absolute first step is to determine the condition of the traction battery and get all power sources out of the circuit before you fire jiuce through anything which could mess upo a lot of stuff. There is no instruction manual for whaere you are going with this car and I also noticed you did not say how much you paid for the car. Regardless of the success or failure of you endeavor you have engouh sheel metal to rebuild up to 4 more of the same model car. Generally speaking fron clips go for $2500, rears about the same, and the two sides (doors and center post) probably go for another $2500 combined.

That's just the sheet metal. If you can save the traction battery that is probably worth as much as the front or rear clips (previously mentioned). The issue with parting the car out is how long it will take to sell all of the parts, which could be years.

I have built 4 totals with one water damaged car. Just thinking out loud. Not trying to be negative but I think you now see why the bidding was as low as it was. Salvage dealers love water damaged cars becasue they make most of their money on the sheet metal, but when there is no demand for that sheet metal they will be leery of a purchase. Sandy water damaged cars are being shipped all over the planet becasue they have a lot of valuable parts. I almost deleted this post.

regards
Mech

[bennelson]

Originally Posted by jackbauer

pull up the passenger seat , remove the carpet cover and pull out the traction battery disconnect

Yep, I've pulled the big old orange battery pack disconnect!

It's under the DRIVER's seat, which I thought was a really stupid place for it, considering that in the event of a crash, an emergency worker would want to pull that plug, and wouldn't be able to with the driver trapped in the front seat!

It took me a while to figure out that MOST of these cars are right-hand drive, so the left seat IS the passenger seat! In the States, the left seat is the driver's side!

[RedDevil]

That air compressor looks frightfully similar to the one that came with my Insight, just slightly more damp
Never mind the compressor, it leaks air when you try to screw it on the tire and again when you unscrew it so you never know exactly how high the pressure is in the tire you've just inflated. Especially when you set the pressure to levels some ecomodders would use

Good luck. Happy to subscribe to this thread, sorry for the blah.

PS The Insight is just a flattened and streched Fit. Mine came with no spare but a boot floor that can be lowered and a big block of plastic foam that can be removed to enlarge the boot to van size proportions. So bad someone filled that bay halfway with some battery stuff <hiding for impact/>

[RedDevil]

The water you poured from the air compressor, was that salty?
You can't taste that of course, but leave some on a plate to dry out and look at the residu, that may tell you what you're dealing with.

EDIT: Seen the vid, so it WAS salty... Ugh.
All the best. Gee. Well it is in your garage now, so hope you get that going again.

[bennelson]

More video for you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7CJIzAjyug

[NeilBlanchard]

Ben, you obviously got the hatch open - I missed your solution if you posted it. How did you get it to release?