newbie: 106 electric with a broken charger

[Quinten]

Hi from the Netherlands, I am new here on this forum. I bought an electric 106 2 months ago, it drove very well ( only had to fix one Saft battery that was cracked and spilled the cooling water) for a while but suddenly the charger stopped working, coincidently just after I connected the Marechal plug with a new Mennekes plug that is needed for the public charging stations here in Amsterdam. The range of the 106 (125000 km, it is a Swiss one, from dec 1996) is only 45 km or so but that is enough for short trips in the city. Anyway, does anyone have a suggestion how to bring the charger to life again?

I saw a website from I believe Italy that suggest to remove a filter where the 220 AC goes into the charger, if the filter seems to have shorted?

Oh and yesterday the 12v light also came on. Does that mean that the DCDC is the next organ that has left me?

[highend]

do you have an evlite or similar tool to check errors?
did you tried to replace 12V battery?
try to disconnect temperature sensor from top pack (is that similar like in Berlingo?) and see if it's start charging...

[timpootle]

Hmm... I am suspicious of your Mennekes plug. Have you tried puting a dumb plug back on and checking that the charger really is broken?

*CAUTION- The paragraph below is as I understand things, but may be wrong*
The J1772 Type 2 (Mennekes) lead is a "smart" lead which means the car and charging post talk to each other before allowing charge to flow. The Peugeot/Sagem controller will not know how to speak J1772, so simply attaching a Mennekes plug to the Marechal lead is not enough. You need to include a blob in the lead which can fool the charging post into thinking a smart car is attached.

http://code.google.com/p/open-evse/
http://www.leaftalk.co.uk/showthread.ph ... t=protocol

12v light is bad news, yes. A new 12v battery /might/ fix it, but I think you need the DC/DC repaired.

Oh, and welcome to the forum

[Quinten]

something strange happened today:

I put the (normal) plug in the wall socket and the marechal in the car and suddenly it seemed that the charger started working again...normal steps like the lights briefly go on, the water pump starts and the green charger light on the dash starts blinking...very strange (a week ago just nothing happened at all if I put in the charging plug but there was still 12V power because no failure light on the dash and the water pump could be heard)

but after an hour, the needle had not left the orange part of SOC dial (sorry for my poor english) ... it got stuck at 20% where it also was before this charging attempt

at the same time the 12V light was still on ... maybe the 12V battery is dead. the day before I had put a separate 12V charger to the 12V battery, maybe that has made all the difference

in my other EV (home built), when there is a too low voltage of the 12v battery, a number of functions, like the BMS, stop working (makes sense) ... possibly the same happens with the Peugeot 106?

does that happen: charger seems to work but does not charge the Ni Cads ??

About the Mennekes: they call this a Type 2, mode 3 charger: of course some modifications are necessary to mate it with the Marechal. There are 2 signal pins and if you both connect these to the central ground pin, each with a different resistor, then the Charging station is misled and will start charging ... if anyone is interested I can post the schedule here

[timpootle]

About the Mennekes: they call this a Type 2, mode 3 charger: of course some modifications are necessary to mate it with the Marechal. There are 2 signal pins and if you both connect these to the central ground pin, each with a different resistor, then the Charging station is misled and will start charging ... if anyone is interested I can post the schedule here

Just resistors, not a square wave generator? Yes please, post your schedule.

Regarding the 106, I can't be sure about your specific problem but a bad 12v battery gives all sorts of trouble. Our first recommendation to anyone with strange problems is to put a new one in.

[Quinten]

About the mennekes plug, if you go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_62196 under Signal

if you connect a resistor between the PP pin and the PE pin and also between the CP and PE pin (see the matrix which resistors to use) you actually "go back" from Mode 3 to Mode 1...for mode 1 the charging station does not require signal input from the car to start charging ...



not a very clear picture but it shows that IN the plug there is enough space to add the resistors

I should add that I have not successfully tested this, as my charger or 12V failed me just when I wanted to try this on a public charging station here in Amsterdam ... Maybe our Lord intervened after having seen from above that I did not buy a new electric vehicle that already complies with the charging protocols but instead of that an old Peugeot .. who knows...but this Peugeot is much more fun and very well engineered I must say

this is my car by the way http://www.mijnalbum.nl/GroteFoto-7OWQ6EYH.jpg I bought it in Switzerland with broken batteries ... here one battery that I repaired ... http://www.mijnalbum.nl/GroteFoto-L7LDE8FU.jpg

but let me first quickly test and replace the 12V battery and see what happens ...

is there a way to test the DCDC converter?

[highend]

I've got same problem with BERLINGO last SUNDAY!

Was charging/not charging - some strange things happened, and 12V light was ON!

I removed SAGEM box, and opened it. DC-DC converter was FINE!

charger failed (yours probably too) there was strange bad smell from charger.

I took another SAGEM with broken DC-DC (but all rest OK), simply exchanged DC-DC and put all back together.

Now I have one good working VAN, and one sagembox with broken charger & dc-dc converter.

So I'm pretty sure that your converter is OK, and 12V just coming because of broken charger. Littlebit odd, but that's what was on mine (where dcdc was OK, and charger damaged).

[Quinten]

I've got same problem with BERLINGO last SUNDAY!

glad you could fix it ... however, I am just out of spare Sagem boxes!

where do you or did you get a spare one? how much are they?

and how do you remove them actually?

but the funny thing is, my pack voltage is now 119 v while the SOC on the dash indicates 20% ... could that that correct? ( I am clearly not an expert)

and my 12v battery is actually 12.5 v so I assume it hasn't died!

[highend]

Well. I've had one Berlingo with broken engine but with good sagem and good batteries.
I've bought another Berlingo with duff dcdc converter - so swapped just whole SAGEM.
Then last week I bought another berlingo with broken charger. So then took two SAGEMs and mixed contents to make one working. There was also 12V light up so I thought it might be dcdc, but it was because of broken charger and dcdc was fine.

So I think for you the best is to find a person who could fix sagem's charger - as I think it broke when you connected to mennekes plug. Also I'm pretty sure your dcdc converter will be fine.

Also voltages and indicator are sometimes inaccurate. The only good indicator is whole pack voltages.

Removing sagem in Berlingo is very easy, I'm not sure about 106 - no experience there, but I think it is quite similar.
In Berlingo:
First remove traction fuses, then disconnect 12V battery, then find three sagem mountings (two on the left, one on right),
in Beringo one mounting is below Webasto so need to remove webasto first,
disconnect two water-cooling pipes coming to sagem, unscrew mountings, disconnect sagems wide connector on the right, and take sagem out - quite heavy but possible for one person.

[timpootle]

Highend makes a good point - the Sagem controller is very modular inside, so you can mix and match duff components at will.

I still worry about the Mennekes plug mod. While the Berlingo accepts dumb power, it does a health check on the supply before beginning to charge. Maybe your resistors upset it? I hope someone with a better understanding of how the Sagem controller works can answer this.

All I know is that I had a problem plugging into an Electrobay 13A post several years ago, because the car did a health check of the supply and the post did a health check of the car connections, and each decided the other was no good.I have been told that Electrobay have tweaked their posts now so it works, but I haven't tried one recently.