Simon's new Xantia V6 and Leaf blog

[RichardW]

Busy day, well done!! For the exhaust you need a pair of these

You could have come round and borrowed mine - it probably would have been quicker than trying to fight it on with other means!!

[Mandrake]

Finally some progress on preparing for the Ion cell swap!

I've had the cells tested and ready to go for a couple of months or more now and really wanted to get the job done ages ago, but I've been plagued with setbacks (all unrelated to the Ion) that have prevented me from getting ready for this job until now, including a several week setback caused by the unexpected hydraulic leak and broken exhaust of the Xantia, (both time and financial as I had to use money put aside for the Ion to fix the Xantia) all three of us have been very sick, twice in a row in the space of a couple of months, so we were all pretty much knocked out of action for quite a while, and various other things have got in the way including family commitments, attrocious weekend weather, replacing the flurescent lights in the garage so we have light to work on the pack - which haven't worked for a couple of years as they were water damaged and rusted away from a leaky roof...

I've been very concious of the fact that we're nearly in the middle of winter now and we're lucky to not have had ice and snow yet and that it's just a bad time of year to be attempting this kind of ambitious job...At the same time, the reduced range of the faulty cells has really been biting hard when we have had a few near or sub zero days - we can't make it home on the daily commute without a 5 minute rapid charge on the way home when we get proper winter temperatures. So if I can't get this swap done before winter sets in for real its going to be a very unpleasant commute this winter...!

Anyway, today I finally got the chance to build the battery trolley:

Nail plates on both sides of each corner and then the wheels bolted against the nail plates, which make excellent load spreaders. The whole thing feels very solid.

I added four eye hooks for rope to attach to so that the pack can be pulled out from under the car and also pulled back into place. As my driveway from car to garage is uphill and curved it will probably take a good tug with two ropes to pull it up into the garage.

I was planning to put a diagonal brace on it as well but the nail plates are so good at resisting racking that after completing the first corner I decided in the interests of saving time that it wouldn't be needed. The battery pack assembly weighs 230Kg (apparently) and with my 100Kg bouncing up and down on it it doesn't even flex so I think it will be more than strong enough. The caster wheels are rated at 70Kg each so about 280Kg, so should be OK.

I was originally going to use larger higher load rated wheels but I have a delicate balancing act to achieve with the height of the trolley. On the one hand it needs to be as low as possible to minimise the height that the car has to be raised for the cooling vent in the top of the pack's lid to clear the bottom of the car, on the other hand it needs to be high enough so that it's slightly higher than the lowest position on my jacks, which worked out just about perfect:

The length and width of the trolley has been chosen so that the battery pack will have enough overhang on each side so that a jack can go under the edge of the battery pack frame even when the pack is resting down on the trolley at ground level. That way the jacks can be used to lift the battery off the trolley and back up onto the threaded rods. The idea is that a jack at each end will do the lifting and lowering and you just spin the nuts by hand to follow up the jack and provide something for it to fall back on when you fiddle around with the jack, as the jack will need to be directly on the ground when the pack is near the bottom but will probably need to be put on top of something later on. The rods give the temporary support as well as guidance.

While I was at Lidl recently they had both floor jacks and axle stands on sale for a good price so I thought I'd pick up a second jack (as my original one is starting to get a bit cranky) and another pair of axle stands. So I now have three different kinds of axle stands to help support the car on this job...

Getting the car up high enough for the battery to clear and also make removing the millions of bolts underneath and disconnecting the high voltage cables etc easier is going to be the trickiest part of the job I suspect, axle stands or ramps alone are not quite high enough, I've worked out that I probably need to raise the car about 35cm minimum to have comfortable clearance. So to do that I'm going to cut up one of the railway sleepers I had for the garden into blocks to put the axle stands on and I think that will give enough extra hight to do the job. So preparing these blocks is the only thing I have left to do before I'm ready to do the job and hopefully I'll be able to get that done tomorrow.

No skill saw here, my hand saw will get a good workout...

[lexi]

If your sleepers are soft wood and the saw is new, it won't be too bad.

[Mandrake]

The saw is a few years old so I only managed to cut a couple before I gave up, and I need at least eight blocks. The teeth are still sharp but have worn sideways so that they're flush with the side of the blade. Fine for cutting thin pieces but the blade is completely binding in the gap half way through cutting something of this thickness. The wood was a bit wet as well which probably doesn't help. Off to buy a new saw later in the week...

[Hell Razor5543]

And then you will be going "Saw, saw, saw, saw, saw, saw, sore (hands/arms, that is!)".

[Mandrake]

Yep, that's why I stopped sawing yesterday.

I really need to buy a circular power saw one of these days, I've wanted one for years but not had the excuse to buy one. It would slice through them in seconds.

I'm hoping to build some new larger speaker cabinets next year for a new speaker project - it will be almost impossible to cut out the large panels (at least neatly) without a circular saw with guide rails so maybe I'll treat myself to one then.

[white exec]

Another demon speaker builder!!!

Not much good for railway sleepers, but I did buy one of these a few years back.
Ideal for cutting wood, plastic and soft metals. About 95mm cut depth. 6tpi for wood, 14tpi for plastics and thin stuff.
Superb for working with high-density MDF for speaker enclosures, after a rough-cut with something else for large sheets.
Built-in disc sander allows precision edges, bevelling, etc.

Mine's a Rexon, but others similar from Sealey, Clarke, etc. I guess.

[Hell Razor5543]

I once came up with an idea for 'poor man pit' buy using five railway sleepers. You would put four of them into two rows two sleepers long, and the fifth sleeper would be cut diagonally to form the ramps up to the two rows. You would need to secure them together when in use, and fit them with wheels to move them in and out of storage.

[lexi]

The saw is a few years old so I only managed to cut a couple before I gave up, and I need at least eight blocks. The teeth are still sharp but have worn sideways so that they're flush with the side of the blade. Fine for cutting thin pieces but the blade is completely binding in the gap half way through cutting something of this thickness. The wood was a bit wet as well which probably doesn't help. Off to buy a new saw later in the week...

Wet thick wood is murder for handsaw. Bow saw would cut that better with the special tooth blade for green wood. Maybe £8 from Bills. Bahco 244 is a great saw for about £6.50 out of Bills tool store. Chainsaw is the biz for wet timber. Nice wee one here if you need a borrow.

[myglaren]

Chainsaw is the biz for wet timber. Nice wee one here if you need a borrow.

[white exec]

The blade is the size of an index finger!!

[Mandrake]

Ok I'm now officially a glutton for punishment.

With Richard unavailable for the next few weeks to lend a hand and the worry about snow and ice setting in and ruling out doing the cell swap until next spring I thought I would tackle the cell swap on my own this weekend since we have "good" weather that I couldn't afford to waste. I figured it might take me two days instead of one with help. Hah!

I seem to have massively underestimated the work involved in doing this job, and after working on it from 9 to 4 today I still don't have the battery out yet, although I don't think I'm too far away and should have it out by lunch time tomorrow. So any hope of getting it finished and back up into the car tomorrow has evaporated, it now clearly looks like reassembly will have to be next weekend.

One of my concerns ahead of time was the difficulty in getting the car high enough of the ground and safe/stable and that did turn out to be very time consuming, I think it took me well over two hours just to get the car carefully ratcheted up high enough with lots of axle stands jacks, blocks of wood etc, but I'm reasonably happy with how it ended up and I have nearly 50cm of clearance between the bottom of the battery and the ground, which I'm hoping is high enough:

Only the axle stands are supporting it but I have ramps with spacer blocks at the rear and a pile of sleeper blocks as "backstops" to catch it if it were to try to fall for any reason.

Before attempting to disconnect or remove the traction battery the high voltage safety link plug has to be removed, which is located under the front left passenger seat:

That of course means removing the seat first which means disconnecting the 12v battery for 30 minutes to unplug the airbag in the seat...

First off underneath is two large plastic covers with a lot of 10mm bolts. (4mm thread) This turned out to be a major hassle as approximately half of them simply snapped. I used rust penetrating spray and was careful with a small 5" ratchet and despite them turning moderately easily many of them just snapped off below the head of the bolt. So I have a lot of left over bolts remains to drill out before reassembly... Very poor quality steel in those bolts.

After removing the covers its clear that there is a lot of corrosion under this car hidden by the plastic covers (and perhaps made worse by them since they may trap salt) and in a couple of places the crossbars on the bottom of the battery chassis are so rusted I can push my fingers through the rust.

Not bad enough to be an imminent concern however pretty poor for an 8 year old car. In fact the whole underneath of the car is covered in rust far worse than the 22 year old Xantia... definitely only rust proofed to JDM standards not UK standards, EG painted but no underseal.

Next out after confirming there is no voltage are the main high voltage DC cables - one goes to the DC rapid charging socket the other goes to the onboard charger/drive inverter units at the back:

These are very well made - instead of a connector for carrying up to 200 amps, it's simply a bolted terminal, and it's sealed with an o-ring where it enters the enclosure so theoretically water proof. The big fat fuse is 280 amps while the two small ones are for the feeds to the heater and air con compressor which have seperate connectors up front that I haven't disconnected yet, as well as the data and low voltage cables.

I got as far testing one of the threaded rods for fit:

Looks like it should do the job. The M12 x 1.25 bolt in that hole was extremely tight - I couldn't get it undone with my normal ratchet and had to use my large torque wrench as a breaker bar (I really need to buy a breaker bar!!) and it was tight all the way out. Once out I couldn't see anything obviously wrong with the bolt, not corroded in particular and with a little bit of spray grease I ran it through one of the spare nuts I have and it freed it up nicely. I think it must just be that with such a fine thread the slightest rust makes it very tight. I have 5 more of these probably tight all the way out bolts waiting to test me tomorrow...

And at that point I had to pack up for the night as it was dark and down near freezing again.

At this point I think I'll be happy even if I just manage to get the pack down and into the garage tomorrow, then I can work on the actual cell swap in the garage after work and get it ready for reassembly next weekend!

I really hope all this work is worth it, I must be off my rocker...

[Zelandeth]

Sounds like the same bolts they used to hold the front lower cross member onto the 107 (which you have to remove to change the radiator...because someone thought that was smart). Four out of the six snapped when I came to remove them at ~ 6 years old. I Was Not Amused.

[white exec]

Good progress, but please, please, Simon, get some additional stable and solid support under that car to prevent catastrophe should it shift off its stands/supports. Personally, I would not be working under there like that.
Risk increases when the very heavy battery is loosened and manoeuvred.

You're far too special a person to have a mishap. Seriously, though.

[lexi]

Just be careful when yanking fixings and the like............it looks a wee bit precarious up at that height.