I happened to have a FLIR E5 camera to play with for a few days, so naturally I wanted to see what my car looks like in IR. It was a cold day (14F /-10C) with heavy snow, and the front of the car looked like a giant snowball after my commute.
Seven years after the last teardown, we once again have an electric toothbrush that failed. Oddly enough the failure mode was exactly the same- top seal breaks, water gets inside, things corrode and battery discharges. This one was a week before the end of the warranty, so Philips was nice enough to send a new one.
Houston, we have a problem! This message greeted me one day when I turned the car on . Everything turned on except the loud clunk of HV contactor was missing. Considering the car had 8k miles, that was “exciting”..
As some of you may know, my daily driver is a second gen Nissan Leaf. The car, like all EVs is awesome, but has an interesting quirk, apparently dating back to Nissan Versa days. For some mysterious reason, the drain hole under the drivers side windshield wiper sits right above the strut tower. So any water that drips there ends up sloshing around in a nice cup on top of it. Can’t wrap my mind around this one- why? Reading around the forums, it appears that after the early Leafs had the top of the strut corrode to the point of failure. Nissan changed the hardware to stainless but did not do anything to eliminate the cause.
After checking my own car after a rain, it was clear I needed to do something.
