There is a funny little myth around EVs, that they “don’t need servicing”. They need less servicing than an ICE car, but they still need to be serviced.
On the Leaf, there are a few items that need to be serviced; Brake fluid, brake pads and rotors, bushes, coolant, washer fluid, the 12v battery and the cabin filter. The same stuff that needs to be done on an ICE car, just without the regular engine oil and filter change.
Being that my car has over 110,000km on the clock and no service history, I wanted to give everything a good look over and change the reduction gear (gearbox) oil. Technically the reduction gear oil is “inspect” every 12 months or 24,000km but has no change interval, which is stupid.
I started by checking under the bonnet. The coolant level was good, and I had topped the washer fluid up the other day. The brake fluid looked very clean, so I wasn’t too worried about it but stuck my tester in to see how it was anyway. After removing the cap, you need to remove the little filter basket so the tester can get to the fluid.
A perfect reading, less than 1% moisture content.
Next was to check the 12v battery condition. These things can make the Leaf go a bit crazy when they start to degrade. The Leaf uses the big high voltage main traction battery to charge the 12v battery as needed, but it needs the 12v battery to trigger the contactors and allow the HV battery to work.
I connected my TOPDON BT tester
And passed with no issues. A nice healthy battery
Now it was time to get the car in the air and roll around in the rain puddles on the ground. I’m not a big fan of working on cars that have been out in the rain.
I removed the front left wheel so I could have a look around at the suspension
All looked pretty good to me. The bushes were a bit old, but not torn.
The rotors look almost brand new, and the pads are about 1/4 worn. They don’t get a lot of use due to the regen braking. The rears are a bit older, but the pads are only about half worn.
To get to the reduction gearbox you need to remove the under tray. Half a dozen clips hold it in, along with a bolt in the recess at the back, and a row of bolts along the front edge. All bolts have a 10mm head.
With the under tray off, the motor and gearbox are accessible.
The reduction gear drain and fill are here. It’s a nice simple replacement, much like a manual gearbox. Fill is the orange arrow, make sure to crack this first. Drain is the green arrow.
Both use a 10mm hex. Mine were SUPER tight and needed some extra leverage.
With the fill plug removed, some fluid may seep out. When removing the drain, be aware the fluid is very thin and will come out with some speed, so expect it to go some distance. I used a clear jug so I could check the colour and level.
The level was close, about 1.3L, but the colour was very dark, almost black. No signs of the red it should be.
Both the plugs are the same and both are magnetic. Mine had a little coating of sludge on them, but nothing concerning. Give them a wipe, and swap the washer for a nice new one.
The fluid spec is Nissan Matic-S. A lot of people use Redline D6 ATF, but locally a few people have used Nulon Full Synthetic Low Viscosity ATF, as this meets Matic-S spec. This was available locally on a Saturday morning, so that’s what I’m using. You need 1.4L of fluid.
Reinstall the drain plug and torque to spec (34NM, or one elbow click). Now fill the gearbox. These bags are very handy, just pop the hose into the fill hole and squeeze. Access is very good, so a pump would work here, or others have used a hose and funnel from up top down to the filler.
I pumped in one full bag, and enough of the second bag until it started to come back out of the filler.
I let it run for a bit, reinstalled the fill plug, torqued it to spec and gave the area a clean with brake cleaner.
Reinstall the under tray, and you’re done. A reduction gear oil change is no harder to do than a manual gearbox fluid change on an FWD ICE vehicle (heck, access is better than a lot of ICE cars I’ve done).
Finally, before I was done, I wanted to grease the axle splines. This is a very common issue with the Leaf, where there will be a clicking you can hear and feel from the front of the car when you come on and off the throttle. Nissan has released a bulletin regarding the issue, and the solution is to undo the nut, push the axle back and grease the axle where it goes into the hub.
Nissan recommends replacing the hub nut during this service, and you’ll ideally want a new split pin too. Apparently “Clicking could occur” if you reuse the nut, but I can’t see what difference it makes.
I removed the split pin and the little cap slid off
Next, I used a 32mm socket on my rattle gun to ugga dugga the nut off
The left one was a bit stiff and took a couple of hits from a soft face hammer to move. You only need to push it through the hub a little bit (as far as it goes) and don’t need to completely remove it, or anything around it. I found it easier to turn the wheel so you can see behind it better. Heck, for the RH side I didn’t even remove the wheel, I could access the axle from under the front of the car.
Excuse the blurry photos, I was shooting blind and the focus got a bit wonky. Both axles were completely dry, with some crumbly remnants of what I presume used to be grease.
The spec for grease is Molykote M77, which as far as I could tell doesn’t exist new New Zealand. If you can get it, use it. In my case, I’m taking a punt and using some high temp bearing grease. I’ve greased axle shafts with it before on other cars with no issue, so it should do the job here too. I applied it with an old brush. It’s messy, but everywhere it needs to be (the top of the splines and the face of the bearing where the axle sits). I cleaned around the axle once it was refitted, to remove excess grease.
With the axle greased, I pushed it back into the hub and tightened the hub nut until it stopped turning, just to seat the axle. I copied this work to the other side of the car too, and then lowered the car to the ground.
Once on the ground, I torqued the hub nuts up to the required 121NM, refit the locking cap and new split pin.
And that was the service done.
A quick test drive shows the car still works, so that’s a success. More noticeably though, it appears the clicking I have had from the axles is mostly gone. I’ll keep an eye on it when I take the car to work on Monday, but it looks like it’s fixed. It’ll be interesting to see if I get any improvement in economy from the new reduction gear fluid, some people have reported a noticeable difference.
That should be enough servicing to keep the car happy for the duration of my ownership. It’s due for a WOF next month, and some more RUC in 600km or so, so unless something fails in the WOF we should be good to keep on zooming for another year or so.
I’ve done almost 3000km in the car since getting it, and it’s been pretty great, to be honest. The boot is smaller than the Fit, which isn’t a surprise, but the shape of its kinda crappy and the Bose sub gets in the way. Speaking of Bose, the audio system is pretty damn good, combined with not having any intrusive IC noises or vibrations, I’m often having a one-man rave on my way to work in the morning.
It’s very much an appliance, there is little feeling from anything it does, other than ripping away from the lights. The handling is solid and fairly reassuring, but it never feels sporty. I’m sure the Nismo suspension upgrade is helping in that regard, standard ones must be so wobbly.
There’s a decent amount of low-down punch, but it lacks anything “up top” at speed. It’ll pass other cars, with your foot to the floor, but the Fit would wipe the floor with it at speed.
It is a pretty nice way to commute though. Peaceful, easy, comfortable and cheap to run. It’ll hang around for a bit longer.
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