[DRIVING] 1940 Chevrolet with Tesla Motor

[P.S.Mangelsdorf]

Oh no, what's happening with the charger (Dodge) ?

Short version: on Tuesday it was towed into the dealer for failure to start. It's still there.

Long version: There appears to be a significant issue with the Charger Daytona (and presumably the whole STLA Large platform) regarding the 12V system. Several owners, including myself, have had issues with the car refusing to start with a "service EV system" error. It often resolves itself by waiting a bit and trying again, and occasionally by charging the 12V. In the past few weeks its gotten noticeably worse. On Tuesday mine wouldn't start and none of the tricks worked.

According to a Mopar tech on the Daytona forum, what he has been told by Stellantis engineers is that, (caveat here that this in now 3rd hand info), basically when the 12V battery voltage drops even a little bit the DTC that it throws tells the car to open the HV contactors. Which obviously then prevents the DC-DC from charging the 12V battery. Which then causes a cascade of other errors.

[barracuda816]

Wow, that's hell of a programming oversight. But hopefully an easy (and quick update fix for you.

[P.S.Mangelsdorf]

But hopefully an easy (and quick update fix for you.

So far its not looking that way. Stellantis seems to have the most bass-ackward system of communicating with the dealer tech's, and they also seem to not have an update ready for this issue.

I don't know if this is a result of legacy code/hardware, or some engineer convinced this was a smart idea, or just big-organization inertia, but they don't seem to have a real fix. Its also still there with no news other than "the tech is talking with Stellantis"

[P.S.Mangelsdorf]

Got the inverter swap done last night. Left the drive unit in the car and just dropped the suspension enough to pull the inverter out, which can be a bit of a pain but is less of a pain than dropping the whole drive unit.

Only had time for a quick drive down the street to make sure everything worked, hoping to do some tuning this week and maybe a track test next weekend.

[dbc105]

Paul, when you built this car did you weld the rear sub frame in or is it mounted on the rubber bushings? I was thinking about using your same suspension swap on some GMs with a 4-link. Thanks

[P.S.Mangelsdorf]

Paul, when you built this car did you weld the rear sub frame in or is it mounted on the rubber bushings? I was thinking about using your same suspension swap on some GMs with a 4-link. Thanks

The forward two bushings are in place, the middle point is bolted to the car's frame.

However, I don't recommend using this solution. The subframe prevents the drive unit from getting as high up in the car as it should be, leading to weird axle angles and the combination of a tall ride height and low hanging drive unit. Also, the GTO rear suspension is known to have camber issues (and no real adjustment) and I have had issues with that.

A better approach might be using the GTO hubs and trailing arms with custom mounts, rather than trying to use the subframe like I did.

If I was to build this car over again, I'd probably go with a de Dion style axle. In fact, I'm working on designing one for the next race car, which I'll be pairing with a parallel 4 link.