Freelander 1 Freelander EV

Nodge68 said:

I'm on 5 or 6 times I think, but I'm not keen on it now as my wrists will hurt for months after doing a job like that.

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This old age thing has nothing to recommend it.

Nodge68 said:

That's a good idea. Maybe use some CAT5 as it's a twisted data cable.

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No probs, I've miles of the stuff.

Nodge68 said:

That's a good price.

I must admit I'm tempted to replace our current Mazda CX5 with something like that, when the lease is up next spring. We're considering buying second hand, rather than spending money on a new lease vehicle every 3 years. Leasing seems a nice idea, and there's no worries about repairs and maintenance, but it's actually a very expensive way to have a vehicle, which we never actually own.

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I'm waaaay to miserable to spend the money leasing a car I'll never own. Up until the last two cars I wouldn't spend more than 2 grand on a car but the £1500 Zafira was a money pit so I raised my sights and replaced it with a 2013 Merc C Class which has so far covered 20k miles without costing a penny and hopefully the 2012 Kuga will be as good.
The Leaf I was looking at was 150 miles away and probably has 50 miles range at most judging by age and condition. It would be a big adventure getting it home.

Alibro said:

'm waaaay to miserable to spend the money leasing a car I'll never own.

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I'm getting that way to be honest.

Alibro said:

I wouldn't spend more than 2 grand on a car but the £1500 Zafira was a money pit so I raised my sights and replaced it with a 2013 Merc C Class which has so far covered 20k miles without costing a penny and hopefully the 2012 Kuga will be as good.

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That was us before we started leasing a car. But we'll be going back there I think.

Alibro said:

The Leaf I was looking at was 150 miles away and probably has 50 miles range at most judging by age and condition. It would be a big adventure getting it home

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It'll be an adventure, but a very quiet one.

Here are some comparison photos of the Land Rover rear diff compared to the Outlander one.
You would definitely need some longer drive shafts made up. Not sure quite how much space there is above the rear diff for all that motor. I think it would push back into where the exhaust back box would normally go and up into the pond under the boot. So I think it could actually fit with minimal cutting of body work. Kind of tempted to plug in hybrid mine now just to see if it could be done.

On the second hand car discussion. Get yourself an L series Rover 25. Picked my second one up for £200 3 years ago and had 15k out of it with the bare minimum of maintenance. If it does die half the parts will fit on the Freelander!

Wonk said:

Here are some comparison photos of the Land Rover rear diff compared to the Outlander one.
You would definitely need some longer drive shafts made up. Not sure quite how much space there is above the rear diff for all that motor. I think it would push back into where the exhaust back box would normally go and up into the pond under the boot. So I think it could actually fit with minimal cutting of body work. Kind of tempted to plug in hybrid mine now just to see if it could be done.

On the second hand car discussion. Get yourself an L series Rover 25. Picked my second one up for £200 3 years ago and had 15k out of it with the bare minimum of maintenance. If it does die half the parts will fit on the Freelander!

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They look VERY different. There is a lot of space back there but is there enough and how big a job would it be. Is it really worth it if you're having to mount a motor at the front anyway?
As for the used cars, I need a good reliable car for work or I loose money as happened with the Zafira and SWMBO has had a banger for years so deserves a nice car. She helps me a lot with my work and many of the jobs I do I couldn't do without her.

I didn't have much time to play but I did a bit more investigation this evening into the CAN bus and it looks like it's not critical at all for the engine to run.
I cut the CAN bus cables to the ECU and started the car to see what would happen and this is the result with the engine running.


RPM stopped working
Engine Temp at max
Traction Control light on
Hill Descent light on
Fuel gauge OK
Speedometer OK
Lights, indicators etc OK
Interior light OK
Car drives but only on the drive way so not sure how it would perform at speed.

Interestingly no sign of engine warning light until I reconnected the CANBUS cables, then it came on and I had to use my Carsoft to reset it. Fault showing on the icarsoft was CANBUS error but I didn't note the number.
I now have the four ends of the cut CANBUS cables extended into the car through a CAT5 cable so I can easily connect or disconnect them for further testing. At the minute they are twisted together and secured in my MPC2515 adapter so I can still read the CAN signals.

Your findings are as I expected Ali. The rev counter and engine temperature is broadcast on the CAN, so the Ipack is simply displaying what it can with the missing data.

HDC and TC is more involved, and could come from a couple of modules.

The Ipack is the junction for all CAN signals, processing what it needs to process locally for display on the dash, or sending the data on to another module.

So now you have confirmed that the ABS will actually function without the engine CAN data (as thought) , and pass on speed and error data to the Ipack which is really good.
Also the Ipack doesn't flag a missing engine ECU with a warning light, which again is helpful for MOTs and stuff. Actually if the TC and HDC LEDs were covered, it'd pass the MOT.

The next thing to work out is, are the HDC/TC lights coming from the ABS module because it's not getting throttle position data, or is the Ipack putting them on independently of the ABS module, because it can't forward the missing data? The Ipack is obviously receiving CAN data from the ABS module as the speedometer is functioning.

The only issue the needs sorting are the special programs (HDC TC) which are looking for throttle position data. I'm sure both of those can be emulated by a microcontroller. The Leaf inverter is also going to need to receive throttle position, I'm assuming via a CAN signal?, so presumably the same microcontroller could output both signals simultaneously.

What would really be good, is if the FL1 CAN data is compatible with the Leaf CAN data, although that's unlikely.

Good and meaningful progress has been made Ali.

As I side note to the CAN signals needing emulation. It would be really cool if the temperature gauge could be used to display motor/inverter temperature and the speedometer made to display motor speed.

Both of no real consequence, but it'll look nicer than a temperature gauge on max, and a rev counter stuck on zero.

I'm hoping if we maintain the CAN signal from the ABS unit to the ECU then TC and HDC lights will be happy regardless of what else is going on but if you're right and the TPS position is involved it will be more complicated
Does RPM come from the gearbox or the engine? If gearbox then it should be fine, if engine we will need to mount a sensor somewhere and send the data to the ECU. Not simple but been done many times before so there should be info out there.
The temp gauge might be a challenge but I guess it depends on where the CAN data is coming from. I'll need to check the wiring diagram but if the temp sensor goes directly to the ECU and the ECU is sending CAN signals to the dash cluster then all we need to do is swap the senor for a thermocouple and were back up again.

Some very useful info here.
https://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php?1887229-E46-Can-bus-project
I'm going through the info on the first page to see how much more we can confirm.

Confirmed so far:-

153 Speed is Byte 1 and Byte 2

1F0 Each Byte is a separate wheel speed

1F8 Byte 1 is HDC, it goes from 00 to 01 with HDC on.

316 Byte 3 is RPM, it rises from 13 on tickover to 78 at the rev limiter

329 Byte 5 is TPS 00 to FE,
Byte 1 is Engine temp,
Byte 6 is Brake pedal 0 or 1

338 With engine running B0 goes from 00 to 02 when aircon turned on,
With ignition on only it is 62 but seems to change with engine fan.

545 Byte 0 is Check Engine light 00 is off and 02 on

FYI guys I've started updating post one of this thread with all new CAN data as I get it.
If anyone has anything to add to it please let me know.

Alibro said:

I'm hoping if we maintain the CAN signal from the ABS unit to the ECU then TC and HDC lights will be happy regardless of what else is going on but if you're right and the TPS position is involved it will be more complicated

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Yes the ABS needs throttle position or demand perhaps? I'm guessing the Leaf inverter is also going to need throttle position, I'm assuming the ABS can use the same signal, although the language is likely different.

Alibro said:

Does RPM come from the gearbox or the engine? If gearbox then it should be fine, if engine we will need to mount a sensor somewhere and send the data to the ECU

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RPM comes from the engine ECU.

Alibro said:

The temp gauge might be a challenge but I guess it depends on where the CAN data is coming from. I'll need to check the wiring diagram but if the temp sensor goes directly to the ECU and the ECU is sending CAN signals to the dash cluster then all we need to do is swap the senor for a thermocouple and were back up again.

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I've had a thought. How about running the original ECU in ghost format, i.e. it's not running the engine at all, but fooled to think it is. The CAN signals can be use just as they are now? It'll take some fudging but it's possible, if a little unorthodox.

As I now have the CAN leads broken at the ECU and brought into the car I'm able to do some more testing.
First I had the ECU only connected, then the Rest of the car just to see what appeared on the CANbus.
This is ECU only.



And this is from the rest of the car.

Nodge68 said:

Yes the ABS needs throttle position or demand perhaps? I'm guessing the Leaf inverter is also going to need throttle position, I'm assuming the ABS can use the same signal, although the language is likely different.

RPM comes from the engine ECU.



I've had a thought. How about running the original ECU in ghost format, i.e. it's not running the engine at all, but fooled to think it is. The CAN signals can be use just as they are now? It'll take some fudging but it's possible, if a little unorthodox.

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I tried sending signals to the dash to see what would happen and I was able to make the Temp and fuel gauges move, turned on some warning lights but couldn't move the tacho. Probably I need better control of the signals I'm sending so will need to look into that more.
What your suggesting is pretty much what I had in mind but I'll need a lot more time and probably help from the Openinverter forum to get it sorted.
I guess the important things to concentrate on for now are getting fault lights to go out and make sure the speedo keeps working. Anything else is a bonus.
So it looks like both the ECU and the dash are sending the same CAN ID's and data so I need to figure out how the timing works and how I can replicate the car so the ECU thinks it is still connected, then replicate the ECU so the car thinks it's still connected.
At least I think that's what is needed but I'l check and report back.

With the ECU disconnected I sent signals to the Tacho and was able to move it so that seems doable.

Alibro said:

With the ECU disconnected I sent signals to the Tacho and was able to move it so that seems doable.

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Sounds fantastic Ali. What data did you send to the Ipack?

I can't remember but I think I read the signal when the car was running with everything connected then just sent it again with the ecu disconnected. I sent a couple of different numbers and the tacho moved nicely up then stopped.
If you go the first post here I listed the details for rpm as 0x316 bytes 1 and 2.
The nice thing about the rpm was it was stable while I was sending the data, when I tried sending speed the speedo jumped around a bit so it must have been arguing with data from the car.

One of the difficult things is the CAN signals are changing all the time so if I send a signal to the dash then it is immediately overwritten by the car or the car clashes with it. In the case of the RPM that didn't happen but it may mean we need to disconnect certain modules from the Ipack in order to control it.

For anyone following this thread and interested in what we're doing this thread on the Bimmer forum is must read. https://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php?1887229-E46-Can-bus-project
And as you'll see if you read it I got most of the info on my first post from here.

Tidied up first post a bit more and confirmed a few more CAN ID's.
Still a lot I'm not sure about but slowly getting there.

Alibro said:

Tidied up first post a bit more and confirmed a few more CAN ID's.
Still a lot I'm not sure about but slowly getting there.

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It's quite complicated Ali, and I'm the first to admit that I've no idea what data on the CAN actually consist of. It's there and as long as it does its thing, then the car works.

Now actually pulling the data apart and analysing it is well beyond my knowledge base.