Two Thinks in Finland

[Zuikkis]

Hi!

I'd like to introduce my cars.

I bought the red one in 2020. It had only 25000km in the odo. Here it is, the day it arrived:



First thing that struck me was how incredibly high the suspension is.



I was the official Finnish importer of K-Sport suspensions at the time. So I figured I would lower the car. I bought 106 coilover set and installed it. Rear needed some work because it's really from 206 and not 106, but the struts fitted with some work. Rear lowering is done by adjusting the tension bars, but you need shorter dampers.

Front uses the lower part of the original strut, but the top half is changed to a coilover.

Anyway, car looked cool now. I also bought 15" wheels!



In August we bought a Tesla Model S too. And my kid already had a Twizy 45. Missing in this family photo is my EV-converted Datsun 100A, we ran out of drivers.



Everything went well for over a year. My wife used the car to drive to work every day, even in winter time. Ground clearance was a bit of a issue in the winter, though.

However. We have a big stone in the road that goes behind our shed. Everyone knows it's there and knows you must not drive into it. Except for my kid that started car license learning and I forgot to warn him, and he drove straight to the stone. Doh! There was a big dent in the battery box, which I fixed with Sikaflex:



Car drove fine even with the dent, so I thought nothing of it. Car had no issues for entire summer of 2021. But then in August 2021 we had a baby (fourth child) and wife has been at home after that, and Think was not used for the winter. At spring 2022 I thought I'd drive the car, but it had died during the winter. Battery problem..

I'm not sure if the dent had anything to do with it, but surely it didn't help.

(story continues)

[Zuikkis]

ThinkTank Energy Storage

As we still had no use for the car, I thought I'd use the battery cells for home energy storage. I dropped the battery to see how bad it is.



After investigation, all cells were in good shape (over 3V) but five RLEC cards had burned components. One module had physical damage from the rock bump, but still over 3V in every cell. But I removed that module anyway so it doesn't burn my house down at a later time.

Here's the installation:



I used the original RLECs as a BMS, controlled by Raspberry Pi with a CAN hat. Since I didn't have enough RLECs, I made a bridge card so single RLEC can control two battery modules.

[Zuikkis]

Another Think

Ok, fast forward to August 2023. I bought another Think! It was really cheap, I paid only 1100€. But it had a broken battery, and even the body is pretty much ruined as the windshield is broken and lots of physical damage.. Even the bonnet and front bumper is broken. The car had hit a deer.



Also the car has over 130000km in the odometer. Anyone heard of a Think with such high mileage? Amazing.

Again dropped the battery:



This battery had significant water damage. You can actually see the water in the picture if you zoom in. Only 8 RLEC boards were working, and many cells had discharged to almost 0V.

I disassembled the battery case to bare metal, then brought it to a company that does sand blasting and painting. They did a great job. After sand blasting there were visible holes which I then fixed. But it's obvious how water got into the battery..

Before:



After (sorry different angle):



At this point I changed the configuration in my ThinkTank Energy Storage so it doesn't use RLECs anymore, instead a separate BMS. This way I had enough RLECs! I needed to change some of the IDs but it went well.

I also removed one module from the ThinkTank to get enough good cells to replace the 0V ones. Luckily that was enough. So ThinkTank still has 14 modules, and then I got full 16 modules for the other pack.

A week ago was a moment of truth... I fitted the pack to the red Think, switched ignition ON... and the car worked. Damn! Amazing.

Then I decided it's time to change the lowered suspension back to normal. I removed the front struts from Think #2 and fitted those to the red one.

If anyone is interested on the K-Sports I can sell them quite cheap, they are now removed from the car. But I'm in Finland and shipping can be expensive, no idea. We might visit Norway next summer though..

Here's a picture from yesterday, car back to original height and clean and tidy.

[Warlock]

 

Great story, thanks for sharing!

[RJK]

Nice!

Sorry if the humour is bad. but this song popped into my head, and I could'nt get this song of my mind!

"Oh, Think Twice! It's just another day for you and me in Paradise!"
(You and me = You and the cars!)

[worry]

Thank you for sharing. Great story!
The little red rooster (sorry couldn't resist) looked much faster when lowered! Now it's back to normal speed. Hope you keep it on the road for a long time.
BTW, our blue one just passed 130k km. No issues so far. But the battery have been out just to check for water problems.

[Marsto]

This is absolutely great. THANKS alot for a great Think story. I know the later Thinks were produced at the Valtra factory in Finland. Do you have any idea how many Thinks are still running in Finland and do you see them for sale there?

[Zuikkis]

This is absolutely great. THANKS alot for a great Think story. I know the later Thinks were produced at the Valtra factory in Finland. Do you have any idea how many Thinks are still running in Finland and do you see them for sale there?

There's only a handful here. Even if they were manufactured here I don't think many were actually sold here. Most were exported to USA and Norway.

Most Finnish cars are sold at nettiauto.com and usually it can be months that not a single Think is there. Currently there's one selling at 3900€, and I have seen the same one there multiple times earlier... So it doesn't seem it's exactly going at that price.

[Marsto]

Okay. I hope you will be able to keep your red Think running for many years. With so low milage it should last a long time. Here in Norway we have as of december 2022 207 cars left, Classic and City. Most of the sales here is done through finn.no but exactly the same here. Very few for sale.

[Zuikkis]

Some good and bad news. I'll start with the good ones.

The car was not driven for two years, so I had to take it to be inspected so it can be legally driven again. All clear, no issues! See you next time before 19.9.2024!  Brakes were a bit rusty and sticky but still within specs.

But then the bad part. When driving to the inspection, suddenly the red "flash" warning came on, and my Nikometer showed "Ext. Isolation Fault". Doh! Car still drove fine, and after restarting the error was gone. And more importantly didn't come again during the inspection, and most importantly didn't halt there. That would have been embarrassing.

I probably do nothing if the error doesn't come back. But doesn't "external isolation fault" mean something else than the battery? The heater perhaps? It was a cold morning so heater was running at full blast, and it hasn't been used in two years so it's possible there was some moisture?

[Warlock]

Yeah, this is typical a pre-warning for the heater, specially if you have the original Mes-Dea. Was it on a moist/rainy day? I've seen the insulation on the cables to the heater crack, specially very close to the heater where it does a 90degree bend, and water and such can penetrate in there quite badly. I guess it might in some unlucky instances make a voltage creep to the grounding system causing a external insulation fault which comes and goes with the weather...

It could of course be many other things as well, but at least it is a place to start. If you get it quite often in near feature, try swapping the heater connector with a blind-plug and see if the problem disappear.
(Unfortunately, if it is problems with the heater, it might blow a fuse inside the CPU-box, and that is a pain to take out for repair)

[Zuikkis]

Update after almost two months and maybe 1000km of driving. The "ext iso" problem has not reappeared! So that's good.

However there is a new problem. Sometimes, few minutes after starting, car enters "Power Limit" mode with warning lights on.. But after stopping and toggling power, all is fine and it doesn't happen again until many days.

Car had this exact problem two years ago, exactly the same symptoms. Then the battery died completely so I figured it was related to that. But now I'm thinking maybe car has separate problem which still isn't fixed.

I do have a Nikometer. It doesn't show anything special during the power limit. Battery voltages and temperatures are fine, and it doesn't show isolation fault. So is this something in the PCU?

Car is driveable with the "power limit" sign flashing, but it is really really slow. But enough so you can drive it safely on the side of the road and toggle the power.

It's interesting that the problem appears almost like a clockwork after ~2 minutes of driving. First I thought it's location related when it always happened at the same place after leaving home, but now it has done it in same way when I leave work.

It's still not "critical" as it only happens perhaps once a week, but sure is annoying. Especially if you have long line of cars behind you.
 

[Zuikkis]

Oh, I forgot the most important part. My wife didn't dare to try to car after the battery fix, but then she needed to go to the gym and Tesla was out of juice so she finally decided to try Think. And obviously THAT was the time this problem appeared the first time. 

She phoned me from the side of the road, "car just stopped and doesn't move".. I asked "have you tried turning it off and on again?" .. wait a few secs .. "OK now it goes again! <click>"

[Warlock]

Make yourself a CHAS/Siadis-cable and ask the PCU what's wrong when it happens.
With me it was the accelerator pedal which had problems when exactly this happened some time back...
https://elbilforum.no/index.php?topic=62004.0

(if you need the CHAS software, we are more than happy to share)

[Zuikkis]

Thanks for the hint!

I actually already bought the parts for a CHAS cable some months ago, but since the car started working I haven't build it yet. I do have the software.

Now that you mentioned the throttle, it kind of makes sense.. thinking backwards, the problem has appeared when quickly applying throttle. Like when you are the first car in the traffic lights in a long queue, then lights turn green and Think decides not to go.