Turning over a new Leaf - Part 1

After searching for weeks on several scrap car auction websites, I found a Nissan Leaf through Copart that had been written off but still had the high voltage components in tact. If you have never purchased a car from a scrap auction before the process may seem a bit intimidating at first, but it's really not that bad. I rented a truck, drove half way around the country and after a short wait, my leaf was brought out on a forklift and dumped onto the vehicle transporter.

After a quick check to see if it would power up, I quickly discovered that there was no life at all. A problem for later! With my new purchase in tow, I set off for home.

I finally arrived at the garage well into the wee hours of darkness, not a good time to start diagnosing problems with any car. To make things worse, the front impact damage meant that the bonnet catch was completely stuck. After a lot of work I was able to get a multimeter onto both terminals of the 12v battery. It was reading 1.2v. So I connected a separate 12v battery to the terminals and...

Thankfully the Leaf had just enough life left in it to allow me to release the parking brake and roll it into the garage, where I could start work on removing the components needed to create the Fig-Leaf.