Nissan Leaf Drivetrain 2nd Gen

46390 Views 41 Replies 16 Participants Last post by scottherrington, Mar 1, 2021

keep

Discussion Starter · May 20, 2018 (Edited)

Hi,

my name is Alex and I'm from Germany. After being a reader only for quite some time now, I want to show my Nissan Leaf Inverter mod for the second gen drivetrain. I'm doing this to build my own electric Mini.

At first I developed a plug-and-play PCB to put into the inverter. It has my own FOC integrated and it really works well. Here is a pictures of my prototype board integrated in the Leaf's inverter:

After doing this I was interested in controlling the original inverter via CAN- Bus and managed to reverse engineer the messages for my 2013 inverter and now I'm able to demand the torque and get all the necessary information from the inverter. After all I'm currently developing a small PCB that will turn the signals of my pedals into the necessary CAN- Bus messages so I can run my Mini with the original inverter and motor.

Thats actually all there is to say at the moment ;-)

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21 - 40 of 42 Posts

zippy500

· #21 · Jan 1, 2019

CanadaLT28 said:
I just bought one of Pauls controllers for the Leaf but I'm still not sure what it controls and what it does not control. I don't know if this is more comprehensive or not.

which board did you buy the drop in ?

CanadaLT28

· #22 · Jan 1, 2019

zippy500 said:
which board did you buy the drop in ?

Yes, the $329 one. Bit sparce on info.

zippy500

· #23 · Jan 1, 2019

i currently have one, got it working briefly, cant get it to run again, hoping Paul can help.

CanadaLT28

· #24 · Jan 1, 2019

zippy500 said:
i currently have one, got it working briefly, cant get it to run again, hoping Paul can help.

Did you do anything questionable, LOL. I'm sure I will although I hope not

zippy500

· #25 · Jan 1, 2019

its only setting numbers, you have to get the correct offset angle, which im having probs with.

I did buy one off thunderstruck units it didn't work for me, it doesn't control charger or dc/dc it just 2 wire can bus control to invertor.

In a effort to do something on a budget its costing a small fortune now. in hindsight,wish i just saved for the netgain hyper 9 now

CanadaLT28

· #26 · Jan 1, 2019

zippy500 said:
its only setting numbers, you have to get the correct offset angle, which im having probs with.

Is this something that Paul can do before he sends one to me or does it have to be done whilst in the car? I know you are in the UK so it's kind of hard for you to send it back and forth to get fixed.

zippy500

· #27 · Jan 2, 2019

CanadaLT28 said:
Is this something that Paul can do before he sends one to me or does it have to be done whilst in the car?

Its something that you have to do after you have fitted the card and powered up

supersonett

· #28 · Feb 17, 2019

Zippy 500 , did you try the Thunder struck Can box and never got it to work or did you choose to not use it since it only control the inverter ?

zippy500

· #29 · Feb 17, 2019

supersonett said:
Zippy 500 , did you try the Thunder struck Can box and never got it to work or did you choose to not use it since it only control the inverter ?

I could not get it too run, I have since found out that my inverter was faulty, the IGBTs on the OEM board where physically broken.

The guys at Thunderstruck where very helpful, they even suggested that the inverter was faulty, I was not prepared to spend anther 500 $ on a inverter that may or may not work

Very easy to connect and a good simple interface to adjust commands,

I really hoped it worked for me good solution.

Your next best option is to get one of Pauls affordable drop in boards.

I bought one on Pauls orginal AC control boards a while ago, I have only just finised it and got the motor running now.

check my video link

https://youtu.be/MZWjKcrGcgo

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supersonett

· #30 · Feb 17, 2019

zippy500 said:
I could not get it too run, I have since found out that my inverter was faulty, the IGBTs on the OEM board where physically broken.

The guys at Thunderstruck where very helpful, they even suggested that the inverter was faulty, I was not prepared to spend anther 500 $ on a inverter that may or may not work

Very easy to connect and a good simple interface to adjust commands,

I really hoped it worked for me good solution.

Your next best option is to get one of Pauls affordable drop in boards.

I bought one on Pauls orginal AC control boards a while ago, I have only just finised it and got the motor running now.

check my video link

https://youtu.be/MZWjKcrGcgo

Hi , i will definitely try to use the original Inverter , mostly for saving time . The main reason i asked is that my next decision will be --> home made aurdino or the thunder box. ( even more time saving i hope )

Still have not really found that many that got this running yet ( google based) , maybe to new

supersonett

· #31 · Feb 17, 2019

zippy500 said:
I could not get it too run, I have since found out that my inverter was faulty, the IGBTs on the OEM board where physically broken.

The guys at Thunderstruck where very helpful, they even suggested that the inverter was faulty, I was not prepared to spend anther 500 $ on a inverter that may or may not work

Very easy to connect and a good simple interface to adjust commands,

I really hoped it worked for me good solution.

Your next best option is to get one of Pauls affordable drop in boards.

I bought one on Pauls orginal AC control boards a while ago, I have only just finised it and got the motor running now.

check my video link

https://youtu.be/MZWjKcrGcgo

Hi, i will definitely run the original inverter , mostly because i think i save time ? ? but maybe step two would be a board for more options

Have there been any numbers of cars built yet with this kit, google do not find that much.

Nice movie

Nuts&Volts

· #32 · Mar 5, 2019

Wasn’t sure where else to ask this, but anyone know what the connector is for the resolver plug on the motor? I sold the harness that came with my motor and need to try to get something that mates up

It’s in the bottom of this picture

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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Tremelune

· #33 · Mar 10, 2019

I'm very interested in converting a classic Mini, but it looked like it would be too hard for me to do until I found your example. Great work, prost!

How is this Mini Leaf to drive in the real world?

How much did you have to modify the original chassis?

Do you have specs or measurements for the custom motor mount / subframe and axles?

What's the final battery configuration?

Any other challenges/surprises you encountered?

Any more info would be greatly appreciated!

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brian_

· #34 · Mar 10, 2019

Tremelune said:
How much did you have to modify the original chassis?

It obviously has a nicely built fully custom subframe (all the unpainted steel fabrication in the photos), which makes sense to me, but it also appears to have custom lower control arms... I'm curious about the reason for this.

CanadaLT28

· #35 · Mar 11, 2019

supersonett said:
Hi, i will definitely run the original inverter , mostly because i think i save time ? ? but maybe step two would be a board for more options

Have there been any numbers of cars built yet with this kit, google do not find that much.

Nice movie

I am doing a double leaf motor/inverter truck build. It is using Pauls boards, Volt packs (yes more than one) and as yet, I haven't found a way to monitor and charge the batteries. DC-DC is not difficult.

Tremelune

· #36 · Oct 11, 2019

I managed to get in touch with this builder (ESDI EV Technologies). I've been following them on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/esdi_ev_technologies/

The subframe is from KJB Technologies in the UK which has been modified to attach the Leaf motor.

I'm told the car will do 110kph (70mph) with a range of around 100km (60mi) with good torque. The photos here indicate 17 Leaf modules, which would be ~128V nominal.

brian_

· #37 · Oct 11, 2019

Tremelune said:
I managed to get in touch with this builder (ESDI EV Technologies). I've been following them on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/esdi_ev_technologies/

The subframe is from KJB Technologies in the UK which has been modified to attach the Leaf motor.

Interesting, because one of their photos including the subframe tags allspeedengineering, which would be All Speed Engineering Ltd, which makes subframes. In fine Instagram tradition, the posts are full of irrelevant tags, including for instance "teslabattery", but in an attempt to find the photo with that tag again I found one with this comment:

esdi_ev_technologies
First try to fit the #Nissan #Leaf drivetrain into the front frame from #allspeedengineering

I didn't find KJB Technologies in a web search, but I didn't look for long.

Anyway, clearly the easiest way to get a Leaf or other similar EV drive unit into a classic Mini is to buy the conversion subframe which fits it most closely, and modify that. There appear to be multiple subframe suppliers.

Tremelune said:
The photos here indicate 17 Leaf modules, which would be ~128V nominal.

I ran out of patience for scrolling through random photos; however, the Instagram photos show a long stack in the trunk labelled as the "battery compartment", but also frames for Leaf modules to be stacked on the interior floor in place of the rear seat. The photos in this thread show only the long (17 module) stack across the trunk. Do we know if only the trunk stack was used?

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Tremelune

· #38 · Oct 11, 2019 (Edited)

Interesting! Maybe there are more batteries than I'm accounting for? I'm just piecing things together in a similar way. It's hard to get much information from private messages on Instagram...

Edit: Yep, it seems they're running 29 modules for around 220V, limited to 70% torque (either by batteries or the custom controller, I don't know).

keep

Discussion Starter · #39 · Oct 12, 2019

Hi there!

Sorry guys I haven’t been following this forum post for the last couple of months.

Just to answer some questions:

Yes, we are running 29 Nissan Leaf battery modules. 17 in the back and another 12 under the back seats.

The torque was limited at that time because we are afraid of killing the driveshafts and then other projects needed to be done and so we didn’t do final testing with max torque at that time. But we are working on the Mini now and installing our new Nissan Leaf ECU kit. I can give you updates next week or the week after whne the Mini is running again. ;-)

We have also done some other changes to the Mini hardware wise and I will post some pictures if anybody is interested.

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Tremelune

· #40 · Oct 13, 2019

I think it's safe to say we're very interested! I'm about to start fitting batteries in my car and getting the subframe sorted.

How's the weight distribution with all those batteries in the back? From what I've read, Minis don't like to be heavier in the rear than the front.

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