[Aseras]

Car's been in the shop for a while now. My dealer has stepped up their game greatly and I've been involved with a lot of great people from The Volt Team and GM.

Bad news is the HV battery is the problem. They pretty much replaced everything else and had to send some special equipment out to diagnose the battery pack.

Album with the full res pics, here
http://imgur.com/a/53Izc

So my volt's gonna get a new battery..

to be continued..

 

[bro1999]

Car's been in the shop for a while now. My dealer has stepped up their game greatly and I've been involved with a lot of great people from The Volt Team and GM.

Bad news is the HV battery is the problem. They pretty much replaced everything else and had to send some special equipment out to diagnose the battery pack.

Album with the full res pics, here
http://imgur.com/a/53Izc

So my volt's gonna get a new battery..

to be continued..

Wow, wonder what happened.

On the plus side, you'll likely get the beefier 17.1 kWh battery! Unless you already had it.

 

[VoltDan]

What were the simptoms that lead you to the dealer?

 

[Dutch]

Un-possible.. it looks just fine to me!

(just kidding)

Sympathy for the inconvenience, hope everything goes smoothly from here on out.

 

[DonC]

Yes sympathy for the inconvenience. I think this may be a first. Nice to have the warranty and, at the end, a new battery pack.

 

[Aseras]

What were the symptoms that lead you to the dealer?

Kept getting the "service high voltage system" error, P1E00, P0AA6, P1FFF. Only those codes. Which are usually the low coolant/sensor issue. However it wasn't the sensor, coolant level or reprogramming or a new HPCM2 or any of the BCM ( battery control modules ) or wiring harnesses. I'm pretty sure they replaced everything right up to the pack as even they've never seen this from what I understand.

There's specifically a loss of isolation internally in the pack somewhere and the resistance in between several of the cells is not right. So a little > 3 weeks to diagnose the pack as bad after throwing parts at the usual fixes above.

Of course all of the above is somewhat hearsay as I haven't seen all the workups and wasn't there for every little bit of the work. But I'm an engineer and not exactly the average idiot around electronics and cars.

So now we wait to see if the new pack fixes it. The car is going to go over the legal threshold for lemon law out of service days and GM is already working on making things right from both angles should the need arise.

I'm just glad to have some answers instead of everyone telling me they don't know wtf is wrong. ( which technically is kinda still where we are, but it's isolated to the battery )

 

[garyg]

On the plus side, this usually makes similar failures on other vehicles easier to diagnose and may improve the build quality as well.

so thanks for taking one for the team! (realizing how inconvenient it has been)

 

[Loboc]

There have been other battery replacements, but, they were of the 'replace the whole thing and diagnose it later' variety rather than figuring out the pack itself is bad. Even though by elimination of everything else first.

I'd probably go for a different car since this one has been down for so long and has had major parts replaced.

 

[Dakster]

Thinking for your trouble, a direct trade for a 2017 would be worth it....

I did enjoy seeing the T shape pack out though - sorry you had to be the g. pig for that as well.

 

[Cord]

so why took the yellow cones ? ;-)

 

[Aseras]

so why took the yellow cones ? ;-)

GM probably didn't tell them to order any....

Dealer had to order a fluke multimeter ( I'm not kidding ) and the SPX battery holder/lift. My dealer is a small town dealer and doesn't do this stuff. The volt tech has done the workshops, but really has no clue. He does the flowcharts calls TAC and they tell him what to do for everything.

Anyways this time my service writer ( who is awesome ) called me and told me they were dropping the battery ( again ) and this time opening it up, and "you should come in we've never opened one and it looks cool as s***".

So yeah I went by to get some pictures.

Also in the next bay over some rich/stupid fark brought an original stingray convertible ( '68 ) for them to do an oil change and stuff on.....

 

[Rampage_Rick]

Dealer had to order a fluke multimeter ( I'm not kidding ) and the SPX battery holder/lift.

I can understand that, don't really want a tech using some Harbor Freight jacks or budget meter. It's probably easier to spec one specific meter than trust that the meters and leads in use meet the specs (likely CAT III 600V)

 

[Aseras]

I can understand that, don't really want a tech using some Harbor Freight jacks or budget meter. It's probably easier to spec one specific meter than trust that the meters and leads in use meet the specs (likely CAT III 600V)

I know, but really.... what decent mechanic doesn't have a good multimeter? I've had once since high school, big ol Simpson analog, it'll do ANYTHING.

 

[Cord]

I got to see mine when they did the side impact support and tank level sensor upgrade.
They were just opening a box with the special gloves.

 

[canehdian]

I know, but really.... what decent mechanic doesn't have a good multimeter? I've had once since high school, big ol Simpson analog, it'll do ANYTHING.

Also, if you have a volt tech on site, you would think something as basic as that would be ordered when you join the volt program.
The battery holder/lift I could understand as it is probably quite rare you'd need to pull a battery.
But a multimeter is a rather basic and universal tool that would (should) get used quite often...

 

[Aseras]

Also, if you have a volt tech on site, you would think something as basic as that would be ordered when you join the volt program.
The battery holder/lift I could understand as it is probably quite rare you'd need to pull a battery.
But a multimeter is a rather basic and universal tool that would (should) get used quite often...

Yeah you'd think so...

Dealers and mechanics these days are too reliant on computer to tell them what's wrong with cars.

 

[Rampage_Rick]

I know, but really.... what decent mechanic doesn't have a good multimeter? I've had once since high school, big ol Simpson analog, it'll do ANYTHING.

I own at least 5 of them including a Fluke 23 and Agilent U1272A, but when I'm probing VFDs I only trust the Agilent with it's CAT III 1000V rating (600VAC = 810VDC bus voltage)

Granted the Volt battery is only 360V but it's got a ton of amps available, so a meter failure would be spectacular:

 

[Norton]

....So now we wait to see if the new pack fixes it. The car is going to go over the legal threshold for lemon law out of service days and GM is already working on making things right from both angles should the need arise.

HEY HEY, This makes it easy to cut and run. The BBB Autoline is there in your corner. They make it easy.
It's nobody's fault. It's a complicated car. You can expect the local tech, who sat through a 'Training Course', to be an expert. He needed Tech Support. And long story short,,, your Volt has been out of service TOO LONG.
(The shop didn't have Fluke meter? How do they know how to use it now that they have one? geez)

Drop that debt and start over with new tech!

Have you heard of the Gen2 Volt or the Bolt?

 

[ampera_jed]

Well, they really when the whole hog there with a custom battery table capable of being very stable and safe to work around with a 400lb pack sitting on top of it on some random pieces they've found to wedge it up with!

(foreheadslap)

 

[WopOnTour]

The Fluke meter was probably the Model 1587 Insulation tester. It is required for all loss of isolation diagnosis (P0AA6)
A home office letter directed Volt dealers to purchase one from Bosch or locally over 5 years ago, so...

But based on the DTCs there may not really be anything wrong at the cellular level as it's a loss of isolation issue (or at least a perceived one). Probably something wrong with the active LOI hardware within the pack, or some sort of strange shorting under the pack where an insulative mat protects from this.

But this has been going on FAR too long. They probably should have put a pack in it long ago for simple customer satisfaction, then get that back up to the ranch to figure out what failed. You can't discount the possibility of unseen damage of some sort.

I hope (and I think I said this 6-weeks ago) you're back in your car soon
WOT