Help with problems with the 12 v battery

[smueller99au]

Righto. I have finally solved the issue, and found what the original problem was (high confidence level).

First off a big THANKS to those that helped out, especially KIEV. It really helps when someone can respond with some useful information that isn't apparent at first.

Recap: The first problem with the car was that the 12V battery was not being charged. After some measurements it showed the charger was working, but stopping shortly after it began charging. This showed the fuse, circuitry, etc was in place and functional, but the charger could not determine the battery voltage and ended up being cut off on over-voltage.

I removed the charger and replaced with another one. This new charger worked for a while, then after 2 weeks it also failed, throwing earth leakage fault codes amongst other things. I checked ALL connectors and links that I could and tested the wiring harness to the OBC, EV-ECU, replaced all relays, removed and replaced all fuses (why?!?). I ended up removing the new charger again. This is when I found this:







I was not impressed. Someone had removed a single bolt from the water cooler which cause a partial flooding of the lower compartment giving the earth leakage fault and 12V DC/DC charger fault. It also explains why I could not clear the OBC fault codes!

I removed the bottom board of the "new" OBC and cleaned it up carefully, blow dried, heated slightly, blow dried, etc. Then I put it in the old OBC and placed it in the car.

So, back to the old OBC with the known working DC/DC charger. Switched on the car -> READY but with battery light. But, the battery was charging at 14.4V (fuse must be ok). Feedback was not being received by the EV-ECU (pin 127). I tried the AC/DC charger and that simply did not work when before I removed the OBC it was working fine.

Again I went through the connectors and eventually opened the top compartment of the OBC and took a look. After reading the 58 page forum post on the OBC charger I saw that the top control board receives it's 12V supply from the car battery not the 230VAC. So this must be common with the 12V DC/DC board. I could see the RED and BLACK wires from the E-03 connector are split in the wiring loom too.

Measuring the terminal on the internal OBC connector there was no 12V supply! But the E-03 connector at the wiring loom had 12V. Thus - wire breakage was located:


This was the wiring problem I was searching for in the very first post. Unfortunately I didn't find it until after all the rest of the work.

I put the harness from the flooded OBC into the original OBC and set the car to READY. All working fine. Charging correctly.
I put the car on 230VAC charge and it was also working fine, together with 14.4V charge level to the battery.

Perfect. I just took a very long road to get there.


Thanks again to everyone, and hopefully this post will help someone out in the future.

I have full photos of both sides of the DC/DC charger if anyone needs them.


Cheers. Stephen.

 

[kiev]

Congratulations Stephen, your hard work and persistence has paid off in the end, and you have learned many things about these cars. Thanks for sharing your pictures and story. Especially about the splice in the harness for the red and black wires, that is something we never knew before.

How do you suppose the wire was broken? the insulation and the one next to it looks like it was punctured by the tip of a voltmeter or probe? or someone was rough handling the harness? or road vibration causes rubbing on a cable tie?

The OEM lid sealant is a small bead of gray sealant; i see that someone was in there and gobbed it up with the red rtv. Too bad about the leak, but without it you may not have puzzled thru the wiring fault. The wiring and connector check is the first part of the troubleshooting flow chart, but it is very difficult to find something like that.

 

[smueller99au]

The red sealant is gasket goo, which was just my choice of sealant because that is what I had. Hopefully it does the job long term. But yeah, when I cracked the bottom lid I could see some non original sealant there. If it wasn’t sealed then I would have found the coolant before the electronics did.

It seems to me that the red wire was already cracked at the E-03 connector and that salt had entered during the winter. Our Danish winters are pretty horrible for cars, with the temperature bouncing around freezing point and salt being dropped on the road ad libitum.

Anyway, as you say, I learnt a heap. Number one rule for all these issues are to follow the Mitsubishi flow charts. Same with the air conditioner causing the earth fault problems. The worst part is our dealers over here simple don’t follow anything - they just go for the most expensive problem and say the motor inverter needs to be replaced. Odd.

Cheers
Stephen

 

[mwahlgreen]

Att Stephen

In you post with the solution, you show a double wire splice (y-splice) of the 12V power for the OBC. Where is this located in the wire harness? Inside the OBC or somewhere under the car?

(I have trouble with a car in DK, Herfølge, similar to you issue, however I have yet to locate any wire damage or breakage...)

The car have been left alone for a long time and will no longer go into Ready mode, so this is not the only problem I see at the time being...

I think I have blown a fuse or something somewhere on top of this error code.

I will try to read error codes tomorrow or Tuesday. My OBD II reader was forgotten with a friend.

 

[smueller99au]

Hi Mikkel.
Those spliced wires were inside the OBC within the black conduit between the connector and the DC board. I still have the old wiring if you need to take a look.

Let me know if you need to borrow an OBDII cable and the Peugeot Diagbox software. It gives us everything we need for the diagnostics, not just the codes. You can pull up charts for voltage measurement, etc.

I'm in Kirke Værløse.