Nissan Leaf – Cabin filter and LEDs

In my quest to not spend any money and do nothing on the Leaf, I spent money and did stuff on the Leaf. Yeah.

In my defence, part of it is maintenance, and part of it is stuff I had in the garage already.

A local EV part supplier was having a sale on a “Leaf Bundle” so I decided to grab one. It included a cabin filter, two front strut caps, and a LeLink OBD2 dongle for Leafspy.

The strut caps were pretty easy. I removed the two covers on the cowl

Which gives access to the strut tops. One of mine was in good shape but drowning in water, so I dried it out, buzzed the rust on the top with a wire brush, coated it in WD40 and fitted the cap

The caps are nicely shaped and 3D printed, designed to snap into the lugs in the center of the top mount. They completely cover the whole top mount, so there is little chance of water pouring into them

The other side was a bit crustier, so I dried it out and gave it a good scrub with a wire brush, before again soaking it in WD40 and capping it off.

Next, since the bonnet was open, I moved on to fitting some LEDs. On this car, the low beam is some fancy and really good at night LED setup, which is very crisp white. Nissan paired these up with normal yellow park light bulbs

I had some T10 LEDs already, so popped the big cap off the side of the lamp

Which gives access to the park light bulb holder

This rotates counterclockwise to remove the holder and bulb

The bulb then just pulls out. After test fitting and checking the polarity of the LED was correct, it was refitted

The results are rather obvious. They blend in with the low beam LEDs much better

In theory, they should use a little less power too. So, you know, savings. Eco.

The interior was treated to some LEDs too, for more eco-savings

The one in the boot didn’t miss out either

Serial killer cold white, of course, for maximum SPACE AGE feels (not just because that’s what I happen to have).

Moving along, next up was to set up the LeLink adaptor and fiddle with Leafspy Pro.

So my SOH is 71.56%, a bit lower than the 75% I was hoping it was, but shouldn’t be an issue. The battery seems to be pretty well balanced too, with a low voltage differential of 17mV. Obviously previous owners haven’t done a lot of quick charging either, as in 108,000km it’s done 173 of those.

The other thing I wanted Leafspy for was to convert the language in the dash display to English from Japanese. The media unit was already converted by the previous owner. A quick and easy change in the advanced settings and everything was in English. Very easy to do, and almost worth the cost of the Pro app alone. People charge $80 for this service.

Finally, I had a nice replacement cabin filter that needed to find its way into the dash. This was a real pain in the bum, to be honest. I had seen a couple of videos about replacing them, so wanted to try the through-the-glovebox option first.

There is a little door at the back of the glovebox, that is removed with a gentle tug

With it removed, you can access the filter cover. This doesn’t line up with the opening you just created, it is further back in the dash

There is a clip on the top which I lifted to remove the cover

With the cover removed, I grabbed the filter and started to manhandle it out of its home. It liked its home, it really didn’t want to be removed.

It turns out, that the filter is much bigger than the opening, and needs to be crushed to fit through it. I got the filter half way out, but then the glovebox was in the way. Only one thing to do then. Remove all these screws

Remove this panel by popping it free and wiggling it out towards the rear of the car. The fusebox lives here btw. This might even be an optional step, I’m not sure.

And then with some wiggling and jiggling from both ends of the glovebox, pop the clips free and remove it. Dont forget to unplug the glovebox light from the top, if fitted

This gives ample room to access the half-removed filter

Once removed, this is the front door to its house

The new filter goes in the same way the old one came out, with brute force. You kinda squish each end to fit it in and then it pops out to fill the cavity inside the box

The cover then pops back into place

The old filter wasn’t too bad, based on service stickers, it looks like it was replaced a couple of years ago, but it did have a kind of earthy musty smell which I’m glad to get rid of

Refit the glovebox, and all the screws, and you’re done.

So far I’ve been really enjoying the little Leaf. It’s a funny little appliance. It can be fast, faster than people expect, but it also likes to be driven around sedately without a care in the world.

The Bose audio is great, nice and clear with some punch from the sub in the boot. Bluetooth works well, as do the steering wheel controls. The media interface is looking a bit dated these days, and I’d love an Android Auto option, but from Googling, it looks like hard work.

The heated steering wheel is LUSH. I’ve never had it before, thought it was a naff idea, but it’s already won me over. Heated seats, not so much. They’re VERY good and get real toasty, but I can’t get over the feeling you just wet yourself and you are sitting in a “warm” seat. I’ll keep trying it, as it’s more efficient than running the heater over winter.

Speaking of, I tried the climate timer out before work this morning. Set to 21c, which might be a bit low (it was on 24c but I thought I knew better), but it’s quite nice getting into a car that’s not cold inside. I didn’t need to run the heater this morning because the interior was already up to temp, and the glass didn’t fog up as bad. This is another thing I’ll play with and see what my best options are.

I bought a Type 2 to Type 1 adaptor so I could take advantage of being able to charge my car at work. Seems to work well, nothing like having a full tank of juice at the end of the day. Our chargers are only Type 2, hence the need to adapt it to the Type 1 Leaf. The adaptor I bought was Projecta branded, and the build quality of it is impressive. It’s solid, made of nice sturdy plastics, and works with no fuss. I feel like the cheaper ones, with no branding, probably don’t feel as good as this one.

Other than that, I want to change the reduction gear oil shortly, so I’ll need to grab some Redline D6 ATF for that, and then I’ll just keep zipping around, being a pest and using all my instant torque to win traffic light drags whenever possible.