This is 1000V but extremely low amperage. Like if you walked through the carpet in your socks and got in your car, you are not likely to damage your electronics.
Hmm, that's not really equivalent.
The amperage doesn't matter, in terms of whether you punctured the insulation or not. Think of the insulation like a rubber plate filled with water, and then you punch "only" a pinhole through it. You now have a hole in it. It's not a fist-sized hole, but it's still a hole that wasn't there before. The purpose of the insulation is to prevent a certain voltage from being able to jump that gap. Any amount of hole in it is like a break in a dam. Or, think of "only" poking a balloon with a pin, not a bullet.
The reason you're not likely to damage your car from static is because you're not touching any of the parts that are sensitive to static. Their enclosures are either isolated, or grounded, to avoid damage. Otherwise yeah, you'd fry just about anything you touched. That's why you wear a grounding strap when handling unshielded electronics.
In your case, you were not certain how or where voltage was getting into places it shouldn't be, so you were not aware of whether anything sensitive was properly isolated or grounded. In fact, your symptoms show that this was particularly an issue, you were getting voltage in places you were not supposed to. Shoving 1000v at that (versus 400v or however much your pack is), to me, would be the worst thing you could do to those electronics.
That's kind of like using a hammer to find out what types of glasses are breakable.
This is also done with the 12V system disconnected so it is just testing the high voltage to the chassis.
Yes, and that would be the key to only testing the thing you wanted to test. However, you were already getting erratic behavior in your electronics. The unknown unknowns. So you already had some kind of path between your HV and your electronics that you
didn't know where it was connected.
And all my high voltage wires are rated to over 1000V.
Yes, that's fine. That's like a bridge being rated for 100 tons and then driving 100 tons across it. It better survive, and if it doesn't, it'll probably be obvious where, and you need to rebuild the part that failed. That's how the megger is supposed to be used. It tests the insulating ability of the thing you're testing, below or at its maximum rating. So you did that, and you found a weakpoint in the insulation, then you fixed it, that's good so far.
What I'm concerned about is that you didn't know how voltage was getting into the delicate parts of your electronics, and I don't think you removed them from the vehicle. You only disconnected them from the places they were supposed to be connected. You then tested it for leaks by applying 1000v shocks to everything. And then listened for where you could hear it puncturing through and conducting where it shouldn't be. How many other places was this happening that didn't make a noise?
If I were blasting new holes through insulation the meter and data would definitely confirm that.
Yes and no. Maybe. You know that voltage was getting to places it shouldn't have been before already, and interfering with your electronics. That's why you're troubleshooting. So, if it was already getting through there, then you give it 1000v, that's definitely enough to punch through that same area, harder. Maybe it arced and then the arcing created oxidized buildup or fried something, which then insulated it. This can happen almost instantly and imperceptibly. That's fairly normal, which leads to inconsistent behavior in the future.
Considering the nature of your glitching, I don't think I would've felt safe using a megger without removing all the sensitive electronics first (which, I don't even know is possible in your case without gutting it entirely).
What I learned from John, is it is not so much a "leak" as a loss of isolation. This loss of isolation was due to the battery module cooling elements.
Hmm. How are you defining a "loss of isolation"?
If something isn't isolated, then voltage (of whatever relevant level) will cause current to flow.
I agree that you did a thing, and it discovered a thing, and then you fixed a thing. That's all good. That was worth doing for its own sake.
But, you know you didn't have current flowing. And you knew you were still getting static buildup, and that seemed to be the best guess for the symptoms you were having. However voltage was interfering with your electronics, that's still an issue, no? Like, they're still not isolated or grounded properly, in addition to what you've discovered about the battery trays.
I hope that what you did fixed things, seems to be only half the solution though.
shrugs