Ben's Refurbished Mitsubishi Miev

[bennelson]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

...what will be the biggest hurdle to getting this car in running order?..

UNPROTECTED CIRCUIT BOARDS AND WIRING CONNECTIONS

There are sevel challenges to just fixing up the car back to stock running condition, but I think the biggest one is that there were a LOT of completely unprotected circuit-boards that got the Atlantic Ocean Treatment.

Every four lithium cells have a BMS circuit board on them. That was completely unprotected. Each BMS has a small wire connector with 8 tiny pins on it. Which means there's also a matching wire harness connector 8 tiny pins on it. All of that was soaking in saltwater for a long time.

I'm sure at some point, somebody opened the door on this car, and water literally POURED out. But it all STAYED in the battery pack! Of the two BMS boards I looked at so far the one was just corroded, but the other had a blown capacitor. Both have four each little teeny-tiny heaters built in for cell balancing. Those are going to be impossible to clean. Each BMS also has a microprocessor on it, and the number of leads going to those things means that each is SO small and close together that I think ANY corrosion recks that.

So that's tons of work, and I'm still just talking about inside the battery pack!

The EV-ECU, Battery-ECU and another important circuit-board or two are under the back-seat, which was the other area that really got nailed with the water damage. Those are in simple plastic cases with ZERO weather-proofing. The Battery-ECU had at least two blown capacitors on it. The other two boards that I pulled weren't as bad, and MAY work, but still have some corrosion on the wire harness pins going to them.

I still don't know the condition at all of the the main car ECU, or several other of the on-board computers.

LOTS of bare circuit boards and plain wire-connectors (things WITHOUT o-rings built in) on this car that got salty.

Body looks great though! I hope we get a heat wave sometime soon. If it gets above freezing again I can wash the car!

Anything "exterior-related" seems to be in good condition. For example, the car has TWO charging ports on it, a J1772 and a high-speed charging port. Both have a nice locking connector over the top that is spring-loaded and gasketed. There's no corrosion or anything at all in either of those. They look perfect.

If I part the car out, I'll keep the J1772 port for use on the Hybrid Pickup, as there are starting to be a few chargers in my area, but the ones that are are Level 2 only.

A person or two has mentioned to me that this car would make an excellent sleeper, converting it to a high-amp DC setup.

[jwr813472]

It's great you got one of the batteries to take a charge. I was thinking maybe you could parallel one or two of the dead ones with it and let them sit overnight. Maybe they would absorb enough to get the charger to recognize them. Then maybe they would take a charge.

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by bennelson

I hadn't realized that the setup could be used on any voltage battery. I'll have to bust that thing out and test how many amps it draws.

I designed mine with an old blown out power strip (dual rail) some diodes a broken extension cord (female end was gone) some battery clamps and whatever load I want. For things like you are doing, very very slow is best until you figure out what you can pump without kabloom. So a night light or something with a very very high resistance to start. Mine will put out anywhere from 0-15amps and can be run in AC output (discharge) or DC output (charge) and of coarse OFF.

A zener and resistor could tame one of these beasties down fast.

Originally Posted by bennelson

Body looks great though! I hope we get a heat wave sometime soon. If it gets above freezing again I can wash the car!

Anything "exterior-related" seems to be in good condition. For example, the car has TWO charging ports on it, a J1772 and a high-speed charging port. Both have a nice locking connector over the top that is spring-loaded and gasketed. There's no corrosion or anything at all in either of those. They look perfect.

A person or two has mentioned to me that this car would make an excellent sleeper, converting it to a high-amp DC setup.

Why not grab a $5k smashed up leaf or volt and dump the whole front end under there and make a frankenstein?

Your Mitsu Volt would be quite interesting, especially with a longer front end

Cheers
Ryan

[bennelson]

I ran my testing cell through another cycle on the fancy CellPro Powerlab6 charger.

I duplicated preset 3, a high-power lithium charge preset, and tweaked it a little. This allowed me to charge and discharge at 40 amps, with the charge to voltage set to 4.1 and the discharge voltage set to. 2.75V

Those were the settings used in the GS-Yuasa Technical Report on these cells.

With those settings, the charger reported a 40AH capacity on this cell. That's 80% capacity of the "Faceplate" 50AH. But that sounds NOT BAD for cells that have been soaking in saltwater for a couple months!

Again, this is only ONE cell that I've tested so far. Who knows what condition the rest are in! Also, this is just "bench-testing". Real-world use is never the same as lab-conditions!

[TheSGC]

I'm curious to see how many cells come back. I'm getting ready to do an EV revive project in the coming weeks, except I've got NiMH cells to bring back to some sort of useful life.

[bennelson]

Originally Posted by TheSGC

I'm curious to see how many cells come back.

Me Too!!!

[bennelson]

Here's a video showing the BMS board that I pulled off the one cell pack and cleaned up.

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

[2000neon]

I don't know anything about electric cars, but I have been enjoying this thread and your videos, they are very well done and informative! I also like the "YUCK" toothbrush.

[eco_generator]

Dude, you are helping current and future i-MiEV owners everywhere... immensely!

[Christ]

I duno whether it applies here or not, but sometimes you can even sell the BAD circuit boards as 'non functional parts'. Worst case scenario, youve got A LOT of pieces to make 'art' with.