Month: January 2018

It turns out even the oldest R-Link consoles have Android Auto support, though disabled. It takes some work to enable it but it is very doable. Need to drop a few huge thank-yous for people involved and I really hope I am not forgetting key players:

• Cedric Paille for making and maintaining DDT4all, a wonderful CLIP like tool for tons of cars Renault;
• The guy who wrote the instruction on goeingelectric.de, which again is based on a posting on cliowelt.de;
• SpeakEV user “Tooney”, who tested and compiled this very detailed English version.

More on this soon. I made the required cable last week and just installed the required software on Ubuntu. I will try to do the procedure today.

PS: Any Android Auto developers out there? Please comment if we can meaningfully incorporate some of it in CanZE.

For a few days charging has been a bit problematic, and finally it quit altogether yesterday. The problem was now definitely the plug locking mechanism as it kept on clicking while the plug was surely locked. I removed the mechanism which usually helps as there is no force involved anymore. Not for me. So then I took it out of the car, opened it up and checked it the micro-switch was working, which it was. I was pretty baffled. I was actually afraid for an expensive cabling or BCB problem.

So this morning I called my dealer (Hans Jongerius Gouda), asked for advice, and luckily I could come. He had a Kangoo ZE on premise that nowadays uses the same lock motor so it could be swapped. Running on the last electrons I arrived there and he swapped the mechanism. Car was happy and started charging again. Fantastic service but WT*???

Long story short…….

The thing is so tight on tolerance that only a bit of wear and tear kills the micro switch engagement.

Dealer was unable to book it under the 5 year drive train warranty so I payed the bill myself (EUR 179.30) and I’ll see what I can do about that with Renault. However, since I did, I took the old part with me. I wrapped 3 layers of kapton tape around the lip that should engage the micro switch and all was dandy again. I’ll keep it “in stock” should it happen again or if some poor sod close by runs into this problem.

Edit: Renault refused to honor my warranty claim on this one. However, they made a gesture that was in my opinion absolutely fair.

Previous posts:

The charge plug locking mechanism #3

The charge plug locking mechanism revisited

The charge plug locking mechanism

This is a guest post by SpeakEV user modrich.

I managed to locate and replace the blown 10amp fuse that feeds the reverse light, camera and parking sensors. The reason for this post is that the fuse isn’t located in the cabin fusebox. The fuse is actually under the USM module which is located to the right of the 12v battery under the bonnet.

The USM module resides under this cover. To access it, release the 4 tabs on each corner of the cover (2 at the front, 2 at the rear) and slide 2x red latches (front and rear of the cover) to the right

This is the USM’s top side.

Lifting it up reveals the fuses and connectors. I was lucky as the fuse I was looking for was the red 10amp fuse which is relatively easy to get at with the fuse puller from the main fusebox, but if it had been any of the fuses at the back of the USM it would have been a different story as this would probably have meant unplugging the module, which I wouldn’t recommend without knowing the correct procedures for doing so. Putting the fuse back in was a fiddle, a pair of small bent nose pliers might have helped, but just about managed holding it between 2 fingers. So all done, and everything back to normal and working again

I ended-up in this situation after I tried to replace the reverse light bulb whilst the car was still in reverse and shorted the fuse, so note to self: Isolate or switch-off before replacing electrical components.