FFE not charging completely

[jgFFE]

Hi FFE community, I have a 2016 Ford Focus Electric with 41k on the clock. I am having problems getting the car to charge completely and consistently. Lately it has only charged to around 73%. I do not have any alerts or alarms on the dash. I still have the 3G modem. I have tried removing the modem fuse and changing settings on my charger and on the car. I tried to pull codes with my OBD II scan tool but I think it is too old or not compatible with electric cars. I have also tried changing the charge times in SYNC 3. Right now I have the car in "charge now" and the charger scheduled to charge between 12am and 5am with my 220v 40A charger. Normally the car is able to completely charge between 2.5 and 3 hours depending upon the starting SOC. The charge circle illuminates as normal when charging but does not when I unlock the car in the morning (it used to). I wanted to see if anyone has experienced these problems and if there is a solution. If I can't figure it out I may have to take a trip to the Ford dealer. Also when I try to make changes to the go times and charge times it keeps reverting to the old settings (I think this is due to the 3G modem not being able to update to the Ford network). Your advice and suggestions are appreciated. Thank you!

 

[Anti_Climax]

You'll want to pull codes using ForScan and a compatible OBD adapter. The free cell phone version will work fine. Most generic code readers won't have the PIDs used by an electric focus. Any causes I can think of would come back to that. Even if there's something happening with charging schedule I don't believe there's any option to set a specific SoC.

 

[davideos]

I had some experience with this, but it may not be your problem. I figured it out using the Forscan tool mentioned in the prior post. My issue was that the onboard charger was getting too hot and shutting itself down. On Forscan, I saw that the charge rate was dropping slowly until it finally would have a charging fault reported through the 3G modem....so since the modem isn't working anymore, you wouldn't get that warning if this were the case. The problem was that my battery had just been replaced by the dealer under warranty and the dealer forgot to put the coolant back in.

So before you take it to the dealer, check that you have coolant. But even if you have coolant, the issue could be that there is air in your line. There are "degas" lines that help purge the lines of air, but if it is serious enough where there is air at the circulating pump for the battery and charge coolant lines, the air will not get pushed out. The way to check for this is when the car is charging, the pump should be on. If there is no air in the system (this is what you want), coolant will be going through the degas lines. The degas lines go from the highest point on the charger/batteyr loop at the right side of the engine compartment to the coolant reservoir on the left. Follow that line and see if coolant is trickling into the reservoir. If it is, then this is not your problem...could still be related to overheating, but at least it isn't because of lack of coolant.

 

[jgFFE]

Thanks davideos and Anti_Climax for your suggestions. I'll have to look into getting a scan tool that will work with my smart phone. There isn't any indication of any faults on the instrument cluster but perhaps it clears once it stops charging. I'll have to give a listen for air in the cooling system. I've never heard any gurgling from the cooling system but then again its usually charging when I am asleep. The cooling system has never been opened that I know of and the reservoir is full. I'll have to read up on purging air out of the cooling system. I am leaning toward the 3G modem interrupting the charging schedule but I need a few more weeks of testing my theory to be certain.

 

[Anti_Climax]

There's a fair number of faults that won't indicate on the dash.

As for scanning, I have an OBDLink MX+ that supports simultaneous access to the high speed and medium speed CAN Busses. Works great with the ForScan mobile and windows app.

 

[jgFFE]

I cycled the charger on and off several times last night. I could definitely hear some sort of air bubble moving around when the pump turned on. Now I am wondering if I have a leak at the battery allowing air to enter and coolant to leak out.

I was planning on buying the wireless BAFX OBD2 scan tool. I am hoping I can use that with the Forscan app. I am also going to buy a cooling system air purge tool to hopefully remove the air bubble. I am thinking that I will not be able to put the car into degas mode without Fords specialized computer interface equipment.

 

[Anti_Climax]

Degas mode just sets the diverters to their midpoint and ramps the pumps up. You can do that manually with the PC version of ForScan. I've heard it suggested NOT setting the pumps to full speed as it can actually cause air to be pulled in. Also keep in mind that a bit of gurgling doesn't necessarily mean you have a problematic bubble in the system.

As for the adapter, so long as it's an ELM327 based device or a full clone, it should work.

 

[davideos]

I hope you got things working, but I had 2 notes I wanted to make:
1) Check to see if you have coolant coming out of the degas lines dumping into the coolant reservoir. Just start charging the car and I'm pretty sure the pump will start to circulate coolant. If that is working, you will see the coolant trickling into the reservoir. See my earlier post.
2) When you get your scan tool with forscan working, you can monitor the charge rate and the charger temperature. As the temp goes up, the rate goes down...to the point it will give a charging fault and stop charging.

 

[Anti_Climax]

I've not seen the L2 charging rate change with temp - If the loop hits 97F it will start running the chiller which will reduce the amount of power that goes to the battery, but the current draw through the charger doesn't drop until the battery is almost totally charged.

 

[jgFFE]

It has been charging reliably over the last few weeks ever since I started changing the charge setting to Charge Now (I have to do this daily in the charge settings menu). At this point I am leaning towards the charge time settings in the car are the causing the issue. I believe that the 3G modem not able to communicate with the Ford network is part of the problem. I am setting the car each day to Charge Now and I have my charger controlling the actual time of day charging. It is inconvenient but working. Thanks!!

 

[scottt]

It has been charging reliably over the last few weeks ever since I started changing the charge setting to Charge Now (I have to do this daily in the charge settings menu). At this point I am leaning towards the charge time settings in the car are the causing the issue. I believe that the 3G modem not able to communicate with the Ford network is part of the problem. I am setting the car each day to Charge Now and I have my charger controlling the actual time of day charging. It is inconvenient but working. Thanks!!

AT&T shut down 3G in Feb (think I have that right). My car value charged just fine until Ford broke it with the 4G modem upgrade.

So it should not have to talk to the mothership to value charge.

 

[Anti_Climax]

Official shut down was going to be Feb 22. I believe that was pushed back to March 22, but they didn't just flip a switch. Devices got turned off for real in June but Ford could have killed the SIMs whenever they wanted.