[jgilly69]

I recently bought at auction a 2012 Smith Electric D75 ex FedEx step van. I am desperately looking for an owner’s/shop manual for it. None seems to exist! It would also be great to find someone close enough to come by and check it out. I live in Anaheim, CA. I have not been able to even start It as of yet, but I used the charger cable from my 2013 RAV4 EV and it seems to have charged up. Can anyone out there help me?

If you take the cover off the top of the dash you should find a key! Did you ever get it started? I managed to buy one and am also looking for a manual or some sort of wiring diagram.

 

[jgilly69]

Can you share your secret for getting your van to run? I am stumped! Thanks

I had an error on my van stopping it from booting from the startup smith screen. If there are any faults the screen will just display the "Smith logo". I ran the scanner software and found I had the high voltage interlock error. Tracking that down can be a pain in the butt. Its referred to as the Evil loop. It really is just that a loop that goes into every connection on every system. I think I sent you the plans that show the loop, look for the interlock wires.

But the very very first thing I would do is remove each of the orange high voltage disconnect "pucks" and place them back on, but when you place them on make sure you pull the "handle outwards, then rotate them closed otherwise they will not connect the interlock at the connector. I managed to fix my loop issue with a loose wire, but still had a HV interlock issue which caused by one of the orange pucks. That was one of the root causes of the failure to start up.

I will see what I can do to get you the software. You will need a CAN adaptor specifically a PEAK USB CAN Adapter IPEH 002021. They are on Ebay used for about $150 and will work with the software. Someone local may have one you can rent or borrow. Also you will need a functioning laptop.

 

[jgilly69]

jgilly69, will you help me out with the software process? I'd like to run the scanner software like you did and everything. I know that BenjaminNelson guy on youtube just made a video about hooking his Smith Electric batteries to some PC software - he had the Valence batteries from a Smith box truck not the step van (d75 Newton Step Van).

Also, jgilly69, how did you check your orange pucks? My battery pack has four of the orange puck style ones and I just ohmed mine with a Fluke meter and they seemed fine. Also, I did find that if you don't open the latches on these pucks all the way then they won't go back in the same way and you'll have issues since they're not inserted properly - kinda like you said. When I think of "high voltage interlock" from the fault you read from the software, I'm thinking about the pucks as the interlocks? Either way, I'm not getting that fault, the van moves and everything, but on the battery interface 1 of 4 battery rings(?) is yellow while the others are green -it's the third one in from the left that's yellow. Right now,I can't figure out which if the two battery packs the bad ring is on? I wan't to avoid removing both packs.

Solarrx, I'm interested.

View attachment 122590

I think you have a low voltage cell in that pack. I would keep it on the charger and it will bring that one pack up... slowly abet slowly. I watched the final charging from the controller and it ramped down to 1-4amps, which allows the onboard balancers to take over. I have a zip file with the scanner software but cant seem to upload it to the site. Please send me a message and I will send you an email.

I have some better specific drawings to the stepvan file is huge! 26MB

 

[jgilly69]

I was given a nice gift related to these trucks and vans! Please message me and I will try to hook anyone up with a smith van or truck.

 

[jgilly69]

Smithy, thanks a lot for the info! I will definitely be trying this.

jgilly69, I think I had a similar experience with a ChargingPoint charger where it ramped down like that but I wasn't sure what was happening. I'm going to be getting my own charger very soon and conduct this experiment. If this is all there is to it, then I guess I will be home free! My initial problem and why it wouldn't start at Copart was that one of the two 12-volt batteries for the 24-volt system was dead and bad, I tried recharging it with a jump but it would die out again so I replaced it with a new one and now it starts up like normal and keeps a charge, but I have to issue with the one string of batteries on the main traction battery packs. My final goal is to charge the batteries with solar like those fellas at "Route del Sol" on youtube with the blue Navistar - but not even sure how to go about that and this is still a learning process for me.

Either way, my email is : [email protected] for anybody willing to get in touch and exchange information. Jgilly69, I will anxiously be waiting for an e-mail.

I have given a ton of thought about charging while mobile and its just an absolute pain in the ass to do with these step vans. The charging from the 240VAC line is pretty straight forward but it will not charge while the unit is running since the CanBus needs to see the battery BMS give the proper canbus codes to start the onboard charger and the whole unit processes the charge with the battery balance etc.... You could setup you own onboard charger and maybe tie it into a high voltage AC line which is a direct connection to the "Smith Power" box under the firewall cover. It would only work when all the contactors are on. - I was thinking that maybe a Thunderstuck EV 370VDC charger could do it but you need to feed it with 240VAC at 40amps or whatever you can to that charger which would require lots of extras...

So if you went AC Side for charging with onboard - you could easy place 2kwh of solar on the roof and then just run that to a off grid inverter with its own battery storage, then feed the stepvan batteries with a level 1 ESVE charger at say 16amps slow and low? It would take forever to get charged. It would be much simpler to add a gas powered generator that can pump out 40amps and just burn that thing for 2-4 hours to recharge.

If you can feed it with 350VDC + power when running you could theoretically increase your range by quite. You can get access to the DC Bus under the firewall grey box. food for thought I guess...

 

[jgilly69]

JGilly,

Very good ideas here with the AC charge. Myself, I figured it would be more difficult to charge while in motion than when stopped, so I figured I'd pull over for a day and charge... Frankly, I did not know where to begin with this part but you've given me some very good pointers here - I did have to look up CanBus. I'm not a bad electrician but know nothing about EVs, so I kind of assumed from the gate that I would have to hook the solar panels into the same terminals as the charge port plug on the truck? I'm assuming it has to be AC that comes in through there so I would have to convert the DC from the solar panels into AC onboard somehow? I'm also thinking that there may be some logic involved where the voltage has to be a certain value for it to charge? I haven't tried charging it with 120V yet? Will that work?

I've gotten into the grey Smith Power box under the firewall - trying to find a location to get battery voltage from the battery packs but separately, being that I was trying to distinguish which battery pack had the charge issue. It wasn't a good spot to check because of how the bus ties into the orange power cords, so I started to think that I needed to find out about the software and how to plug in. Is there a communication port or something outside of the batteries? Perhaps under the dash?

What model stepvan or truck do you have?

If it is a Copart GEN2000 (A123 System) stepvan there is a little cover below the dash, there are four communications ports. (3) are Serial connection (1) is a specialty plug. The three serial ports are all canbus - VCAN, BCAN and TCAN... VCAN = Vehicle Can Bus- All the stuff you would think of ABS, Controls, Controller. BCAN = Battery Canbus this is what communicates to the VCAN. TCAN is telemetry canbus and it connects to the SmithLink Software via 3G cell which from what I can tell is offline. If you get the little

There is SOOO Much to these units and many many different systems and check and balances. When it comes to charging the charge connector uses a resistor that tells the controller what the maximum charge rate is, without this the unit will just charge at MAX which is 60Amps. I have been charging with a 32amp charger and it is consistently pulling 44amps when connected, almost the maximum I can output with the corded charge cable I have. Once it goes thru the end of charge cycle it drops down to 1-2 amps and the onboard balancing happens. I recommend you buy one of these - PEAK USB CAN Adapter IPEH 002021

 

[jgilly69]

Battery data sheet for those who are interested...

 

[jgilly69]

So, I went and started charging the batteries earlier today and it charged for 8-hours when the charger decided it was done and "charged"- but my yellow bar battery wasn't charged yet and has always remained at 4 bars:

View attachment 122598 View attachment 122599

So, I decided to charge it a second time to see if the yellow bars would come up, and they didn't after 5-hours of more charging at low output - they stayed the same. It seems that it would charge very low as it cycled around through the charged batteries and then it'd spike in intervals when it came out to the yellow bar battery? Anyhow, my next step is to hook in a PC like you'd done, JGilly, and see what type of feedback I get? I'm guessing the BCAN port, JGilly? Also, JGilly, what is the fourth alternate port you mentioned that is next to the three? I looked through that stockpile of info you provided but haven't found it just yet. What I did find and wanted to confirm was what the red fault symbol meant on the battery interface, and as I assumed it meant "battery fault".
View attachment 122600 View attachment 122601

You might have too much of a voltage deviation between each of the 4 strings....IE 1&2 = 375V, 3 is 350v and 4 is 375V so the contactors for each string 1, 2 & 4 would turn on, but the contactor for #3 would stay open. When you start up is there 8 distinct clicks? its tough to hear but if you only hear 6 or so that would be a good indication. It might be worth it to discharge the van down to get it near the voltage of the other packs. Worst case you have a bad cell and its charging to fast, not allowing the other cells to charge up causing a low voltage pack/ disconnect.

The 4th port is for communications to the controller and programming, specific software is required (P146.exe and P176.exe). I believe it is pin # 9 & 10 that are Canh and CanL for your canbus connection. I was able to connect to this and pulled some Canbus signals down. With the software and cable you can read and program the truck on this port via Canbus and Rs232.

Hope this all helps!

 

[jgilly69]

I recently bought a 2012 Smith Newton, the box truck style from Frito Lay. Well not exactly bought... I asked the seller to only ship it when it was confirmed to be able to drive/charge correctly, but they "misunderstood" and shipped it to me anyway! I had to pay the tow truck driver $3000 and sure enough the truck wouldn't charge or drive. Well, it charged string 1 out of 4 perfectly fine, but the other strings won't budge. String 2 is at 3 bars, and strings 3/4 show completely dead. After a day the Smith display won't load when I turn the key, it only appears while charging. The seller advised I leave it on the charger for several days, and then I found a technical service bulletin that describes a condition where the batteries self-destruct when you leave it on the charger for several days! The only advice it gave was to power off the 24v and pull out the 4 pucks to stop the drain from getting worse, but did not describe a fix (I assume that would have been up to Smith techs who are all scattered to the winds).

At this point, I have no idea if these A123 batteries are ruined. What should be my next steps? Should I buy those PCAN dongles and try to run some kind of commands?

Hey Big cheif - Will it even turn on? I would be inclined to drop the voltages in the battery's to see if you can get them closer to each other. The problem is that the contactors when it starts up should "close" to allow for charging and it sounds like they are so far out of balance that they wont engage all of the eight contactors. When it starts up you should hear 8 different clicks. If not that is #1 problem, and you need to get all the battery's closer in voltage. I assume this is a A123 pack not a valance truck?

 

[jgilly69]

I got the PCAN adapters today and ran the Smith SCANNAR. Not looking great, seems like I have 4 modules with a single bad cell, and one module with 2 bad cells (all in dark blue). I assume the A123 batteries make it too difficult to swap out single cells, and that I'll need 5 working modules to get this online again?

I wonder what would have caused individual cells to fail in such a scattered fashion like that. I can see why A123 isn't really around anymore. I emailed the skeleton crew remaining at their offices and they told me to get lost, of course.

You can get some replacement battery's. If your interested in giving Thunderstruck a call they have some units that have taken out of the step vans. Another option is to pull the units out and manually charge those low cells.

One way would be to make a Jumper and manually jump from one pack series ( SBS1 to SBS3 for example) to another. When you look at the design for the connectors on the battery pods the + /_ are on separate ports. So one has the positive and the other has the negative. You need to be super careful doing this since you can dump all that voltage to the low packs very very quickly and possibly cause a fire from the hot connectors etc... like 600amps at a moment. Another way would be to get it up to its minimum low balance voltage and it will burn off the high cells. I think the cell in SBS2 is shot! That one is going to be your holdout.

 

[jgilly69]

Here are some units that drop right in.

Home :: Batteries :: Used A123 Pouch Modules

A123 modules charge to 92v at 60ah Price lowered to $520 each Four modules shown in first image 98 lbs each 26s3p configuration Approx 10 6 watts/ dollar 27 x 7 x 10 tall We disable online shipping estimates for lithium as the cart is unable to calculate hazmat shipping nor can we ship these out...

www.thunderstruck-ev.com

 

[jgilly69]

Thanks, that is probably a last resort as it looks like I need at least 5 modules at $520 each plus the cost of a palette worth of Hazmat shipping... that's not going to be cheap.

From what I'm learning, each cell is really 3 pouch cells together in parallel, so if one pouch cell is truly dead, the diagnostics might have no way of knowing?

I don't see how manually charging the low cells would help, they are below 2500mv which is supposed be where lifepo4 takes permanent damage. I was also told by an ex-Smith tech that 2000mv is the threshold where the BMS will no longer attempt to charge the cells back up. Those reading at 1900, 1700, or 1300 have got to be pretty much toast, right? I would think if they can be brought back up they would continue to throw the whole pack out of balance going forwards.

They can be brought back up. The BMS will control it after 2.5v, but the problem is the SBS2 pack - that one cell will be too low and is most likely shot. I think Brian at thunderstruck EV has a way to connect to the BMS Units but again you need to manually charge it up. They sell a charger that you can buy that can be programed to just plug in and will charge up each pack. Here is a skematic of the battery packs and how to connect to them...

 

[jgilly69]

Well that is probably a indication that you have a low cell in that pack that is holding it back. I think the PCAN unit can tell you what the voltages are but in order to correct it you will need to get that one cell back up to the minimum voltage. One way would be to get the packs back to a similar low state of charge (Just above the low pack) and parallel them using a jumper. This will be a manual way to get the pack up in voltage without having to use that charger. You can get the unit from thunderstruck, but just don't go crazy with it, charge it slowly since you are trying to bring that low cell up just to the minimum cut off voltage, then let the internal bms take over.

 

[jgilly69]

I have this charge cord if you want to borrow it? I will for sure need it back since I need to return it to the guy who loaned me the whole battery Pod.

 

[jgilly69]

i am a new user of this site with a newly purchased Smith step van. as a new user, i cannot message you outside of this post. how can one reach you to get a copy of the software and info you have? i have a few issues and think it would help greatly. Thanks
Doug

I shot over a conversation, let me know what questions you have. Where did you manage to pick it up? Copart?

 

[jgilly69]

Oh, thanks! I am not sure exactly how the cells are grouped, but it seems like the best hint is those little holes stamped in the middle of the rows, are exactly 26 holes, and I know it's a 26 series battery. Should I be charging them like I illustrate with the colored squares? The way I'm holding the multimeter probes in the picture was giving reverse polarity to what was marked on the battery, but by placing the probes in the matching color areas it was giving 3.3v at polarity that coincides with the battery markings.

View attachment 123303

It is actually group 1, 2 & 3. I will have to look thru the schematics, but I think the connectors are listed on the wiring diagram.

 

[jgilly69]

i have a question i hope someone can answer. i bought one of the d75 step vans and copart has apparently lost the keys. Best i can find the steering column is Daewoo Avia d series and looks to share the ignition key and lock cylinder with an Isuzu NPR. since there is little info out there and i havent found any kind of key number for the van, i amhoping someone has had to deal with this and can help me out. i am going to pull the column apart next weekend. hopefully it is something i can pick up pretty easily. Thanks in Advance for any info!

Take the cover off of the dash. Look for a keyed connector, possibly even with a key. Start there. 99% sure you will find something.

 

[jgilly69]

Big Chief and JGilly,

I finally got the SCANNAR going on this thing. Here is the status, all I got is ONE bad cell. Big Chief, I neglected to get a picture of the charger screen to see if charger 2 lit up but I'll get a pic for you soon if needed.

May I have an option from either of you? JGilly, ya still there?

Did the cleaning of the cables work? I still think the issue maybe the cables. I will hook my van up tonight to see what If this is similar to what your seeing on the screen. I just don't remember what it was that was causing a similar issue on my van.

 

[jgilly69]

Well…
I just bought one of the staples valence based vans…

but got the A123 packs of batteries…

any possible way to hook them up?

Ok So I am confused? You got a van, but it has the valance packs in it and you want to convert to A123? or it has A123 cells in it. Smith made a Gen 2000 van that used the A123 packs, if it runs use it!

 

[jgilly69]

Hi there, would like to check in to see if you were able to get it started. The FedEx Smith D75 has the keyless swiper so were you able to bypass? There is a video on Youtube wih a guy riding this truck and his keyless bypass could be seen open and possibly hot wired. Let me know

I didn't bypass my keyless system. I just took it out, and disconnected the horn up front. I don't have access to the locks on the keyless system but you can get new keys made for the utili-master locks. You can find a key / plug under the black dash cover. Chances are high that it actually has a key in it .