Simon's new Xantia V6 and Leaf blog

[Skull]

Michel apologies I thought you were jesting

I'd stay away from the 'middle of lidl' if I was you and hope you have a swift recovery .....

[Michel]

Michel apologies I thought you were jesting

I'd stay away from the 'middle of lidl'

It was the BMX at the lad's cycling club that did my neck in. Aldi was after and I survived.

Feel free to take the mick. Everyone else does!

Apologies Simon for interrupting. Normal service to resume..

[Mandrake]

Simon Lidl do something similar this week

TROLLEY £17.99 MAX 250Kg

lidl trolly.jpg

Far too small compared to the footprint of the battery which would make it impossible to manoeuvre or control, not to mention getting beached on my uneven ground.

I don't think you guys are quite grasping the size of the battery pack assembly - its the full width of the car and goes most of the way between the front and rear wheels. Also, the weight is concentrated at both ends with not much weight in the middle (see the picture of the opened up pack earlier) so supporting it only in the middle would put a lot of strain on its chassis that it probably wasn't designed for. It really ought to be supported end to end or nearer the ends. I'll get the exact dimensions as soon as I can.

I've changed plans for my trolley slightly - instead of inch thick plywood that will cost a fortune due to having to cut from large sheets I think I'll just build a timber frame out of something similar to this:

https://www.diy.com/departments/c16-cls ... 300_BQ.prd

One piece for £7 (or maybe two at the most - I haven't calculated it yet) should be enough to build a rectangular frame that matches the dimensions of the battery pack perfectly as well as a couple of diagonal cross braces. I don't need the extra strength of orienting the beams vertically - lying them flat will minimise the thickness and therefore the height I have to get the car off the ground given the 150mm height of my chosen castor wheels.

To join the corners and middle I can just use those hammer on nail plates used in timber frame house construction and on the bottom side the bolt holes for the caster wheels will straddle the different pieces and help bolt them together as well. If I want to I have plenty of scrap 6mm flooring plywood in the garage that I could put over the top of it all as well to give it a flat, snagging free top surface - probably a good idea as the battery pack chassis has bumps and protrusions once the plastic undertray is removed.

Eye bolts to attach the guidance ropes to the corners will go into the timber frame far more easily and securely than the plywood as well.

Seems like a plan!

[Michel]

Are there no places in Glasgow that rent out workshops with 2-post lifts by the hour or day? I know there are down here. I know of one in Birmingham that's "only" £60 per day with tools etc.

Surely that would be cheaper, safer and easier if such places exist up there? Also drier, warmer etc.

[white exec]

Presumably a 2-post lift (for lowering/raising the battery pack) and a means of supporting the car at a different height...

Or somehow get a trolley/pallet lift under the battery pack, unbolt it, then lift the car body up and away.

Sounds like a full day's work, cell-replacement included?
One of these jobs that's easier second time around!

[bobins]

Can't you just get a pallet and cut off the bottom part to leave a flat deck to which you attach the wheels ? Your average pallet should be good for a tonne.

[Mandrake]

Are there no places in Glasgow that rent out workshops with 2-post lifts by the hour or day? I know there are down here. I know of one in Birmingham that's "only" £60 per day with tools etc.

Surely that would be cheaper, safer and easier if such places exist up there? Also drier, warmer etc.

I get what you're saying, but it's not just as simple as drop it out, replace a few cells and put it back together in an hour.

As I've never done the job before and very few other people have I don't know what snags I'm going to encounter despite all the preparation and research I've done. I'm taking a leap of faith out into fairly uncharted waters, especially when I'm installing second hand cells. (Hence taking the time to test them first)

If I was to do the job elsewhere in a pay for use garage I'd be driving there in the car that I'm about to work on and crossing my fingers that nothing goes wrong and that I can get it quickly back in service.

If anything does go wrong my car is now stuck somewhere totally immobile with its guts hanging out with a dangerous, dismantled high voltage battery for £60 a day while I potentially wait for further parts to arrive, and I then also have to get myself home somehow. (I have a second car but I'm the only driver in the family...)

That's a really bad situation to be in, and I can't count on any help from whoever I'm renting the garage space from because you can bet they won't know anything about working on EV batteries. If I'm unlucky the whole thing could go pear shaped.

Even assuming all goes well I will be doing the cell swap with the battery pack discharged to about 30% to match the storage charge of the replacement cells (the cell state of charge and voltage has to be accurately matched with the remaining cells in the pack before installation, +/- 50mV or so) which means that after doing the swap the car will have very little range in it and need charging - depending on what I charge it with that would take 4-6 hours which would be wasted time in someone elses workshop. I'd much rather do that initial charge at home.

After an initial full charge to ensure the cells are accurately balanced I'd then need to perform a battery calibration process with the Lexia for the ECU to learn the new usable capacity of the pack - which requires me to run the battery down low again and and then start a calibration routine on the Lexia and charge it up again.

I've done this calibration routine before and it takes most of a day to complete because as well as discharging the battery and a 4-6 hour charge time it enforces hour long wait periods between each step. Last time I did it I started at about 10am and it wasn't finished until about 8pm at night...(although 95% of that was waiting time where I could go off and do other things) So ideally I'd do the cell swap and charge on a Saturday and then go through the battery calibration routine on the Sunday.

So while the 2 post hoist sounds like a good idea, for a job where I'm navigating uncharted waters, need to charge the car before use afterwards, and want to be able to take my time to do a careful job and not stress about any problems leaving me standed in an awkward situation, nailing together a timber trolley sounds like the least of my worries...

It's also partly about building on the efforts of others to find ways of doing this sort of cell swap safely with minimal facilities and without fancy equipment like a 2 post hoist that not everyone has access to. As these cars age more others will need cell swaps as well, once a few people such as myself have done the job and documented the equipment they used and how they did it it will be that much easier for the next person.

[Mandrake]

Presumably a 2-post lift (for lowering/raising the battery pack) and a means of supporting the car at a different height...

Or somehow get a trolley/pallet lift under the battery pack, unbolt it, then lift the car body up and away.

To do the job with a 2 post lift you still need a trolley to support the battery anyway, although in that case it would typically be a waist high trolley for easier access instead of low to the ground. You remove most of the mounting bolts for the battery except a few at the edge, bring the car down until the battery is lightly resting on the trolley, remove the remaining bolts, then lift the car up off the battery then wheel the trolley away to work on elsewhere on the battery.

Getting the alignment just right to reinstall the battery can be tricky - one advantage of the threaded rods is you can guide them into the holes initially and then once they're inserted, as you raise the battery the rods will continue to guide the battery perfectly into place whereas with the 2 post lift and a trolley you have to be very careful to align things manually as you drop the car down onto the pack.

Sounds like a full day's work, cell-replacement included?
One of these jobs that's easier second time around!

I'm allowing for a full days work, yes, but most of that is getting the car set up on supports, disconnecting all the wiring, getting the battery lowered down etc. Once the cover is off the pack the affected modules have to be removed from the pack, then the CMU board for the module has to be removed to get access to the cells beneath it, all without electrocuting yourself or dropping a spanner across a cell...

I'm replacing 4 cells but only two of them are from the same module, the other two are in different modules each so I'll have to remove three of the modules and three of the CMU boards. I'm sure it could be done in half the time the second time, but I'm going to take it carefully and take plenty of pictures.

[white exec]

You're right to do it at home, or somewhere without time and cost pressures. I would be doing the same.
The threaded rods (studding) sound a really good idea, as they offer control, alignment and some safety.
Take care working on your slope, though.

[NewcastleFalcon]

I'm sure it could be done in half the time the second time, but I'm going to take it carefully and take plenty of pictures.

Maybe even a pioneering youtube video for the second time you do it Simon?, guess you will have your hands full working out exactly what to do, and how to overcome the problems first time round to faf about with filming it Videos these days do hit a wider audience though, and when I am looking how do a job on a car youtube its the first place I look.

REgards Neil

[myglaren]

It seems like YouTube videos are no the go-to for HowToDoIts.
I was online with my eldest who is gearing up for DIY in his girlfriend's house and he mentioned routers.
I told him not to buy one as I have two he can use.
He asked about Triton and another make. I hadn't heard of either but checked my wet/dry vac to be sure (it isn't)
Looked on Google and what do I see:



And guess who has one in the 'workshop'?
Never used it.

[Mandrake]

Finally, the cell testing has finished! Next time I would get a more powerful (but more expensive) charger/discharger as it took a ridiculously long time - about 2 days per cell.

But anyway the results are in, and all the cells are good, better than I expected in fact, and quite well matched

USABLE capacity measured discharging from 4.1 to 3.63 volts, which is the reduced voltage range the car uses the cells over and FULL discharge to 3.0 volts, which should give near the manufacturers rating of 50Ah.

Cell A - 40.0Ah USABLE, 43.6Ah FULL
Cell B - 39.9Ah USABLE, 43.5Ah FULL
Cell C - 40.8Ah USABLE, 44.5Ah FULL
Cell D - 40.6Ah USABLE, 44.4Ah FULL

So they vary from 87% SoH to 89% SoH - which given the age of the cells is a good result.

Although I can't be certain, I think the first figure of each column should correspond fairly closely to what the battery management unit in the car would report. So the cells in the car at the momement range from 40.5Ah for the best cells down to about 33-34Ah for the worst cells, including the ones I'm replacing.

So the replacements are as good as the very best cells in the pack which is all I need - if they were even better it wouldn't have any real effect on the performance as it is always limited by the weakest cell in the pack so they are more than good enough.

After doing the swap I'll be putting the four old cells through the same tesing procedure to measure their exact capacity out of interest. I'll also be keeping them as although their capacity is quite a bit less than they should be and not enough for the car they are still perfectly useful cells that could be put to work in some other application.

What, I'm not sure.... although 3x 4.1 volts is 12.3 volts. Hmmm. Usuable capacity would be around 34Ah and they can output up to 150 amps continous, 300 amps peak...

The only problem with using Lithium Ion cells in any second life application is that you MUST have a proper charge and discharge controller that includes a cell balancer for charging to keep the cells balanced and measurement of individual cell voltages to shut off the load if any cell goes below 3.0 volts.

Lithium Ion cells really, really don't like being over charged or over discharged. Controllers for Lithium Ion battery packs are readily available though.

[Mandrake]

Just when I've been getting organised for the battery cell replacement on the Ion the Xantia has let me down...

It hasn't been driven for a couple of weeks and I was about to take it to B&Q to pick up some wood to build my battery trolley for the Ion cell swap and fortunately noticed before leaving that there was fluid leaking onto the ground while the car was idling...

A closer look revealed it was LHM, and it's coming from the crusty bottom of the coiled up pipe near the pressure regulator, which I believe is part of the supply line from the hydraulic pump to the pressure regulator ???

Can anyone confirm what this pipe is and where it runs ? I've had a look through service citroen - if it's the pipe I think it is it doesn't fit neatly into the steering, braking, suspension categories etc... I've done both a manual search and used the search function on things like "piping", "hydraulic" etc but no sign of it...

Any help appreciated in identifying this pipe. I suspect it's going to be NFP or expensive so I might need to track down a second hand one. Also does anyone know if it is replaced from underneath or above or a bit of both and whether there are any joins or whether it and the flexible hose are all one piece all the way back to the pump ?

Getting it up onto ramps now would be a challenge given that I can't drive up my ramps without raising the suspension and it's pissing LHM out what is probably the main pressure supply from the pump...

Unfortuately until I can fix this the cell swap in the Ion is on hold as I can't afford to have both cars off the road at the same time. Grr....!

[xantia_v6]

Without looking it up, I am fairly confident that that pipe runs from the regulator to the safety valve, so not a long run.

It is probably unique to the V6, as the regulator is mounted differently on the 4HP20, but you may be able to re-bend the pipe from another model to fit.

[RichardW]

Either service.citroen is down or I have been rumbled and my account disabled as I can't get on....

Agree Mike, it looks like the pipe from the reg to the safety valve. Plaeides or Eurocarcare will make a pipe pipe up if we can find out the length. The coil is easy enough to make round a suitable former. I suspect that access to the safety valve to get it out might be, er, interesting....!!