Performing a DBCAM (battery calibration) using a ThinkCar OBD scanner, with screenshots (for PHEV up to 2022)

[Daixiwen]

TLDR: the procedure starts on post nr 2

Hello everyone!
I’ve had some battery degradation on my phev lately. The battery state of health stayed religiously over 72% until the end of the battery warranty, but then started to go down faster and faster. Last week it went down by 1.5Ah overnight, down to 64.8%, so I decided it was time to do a DBCAM. I have a Thinkcar OBD scanner and discovered recently that it can actually do a DBCAM, so I thought I’d have a try and share my results. I was successful! I got my yellow card in PHEVWatchdog:

I gained back 7%, which is really not bad, but I’m a bit disappointed the battery is in this state now. I thought I took better care of it, but 7% is still better than nothing.
If you want to do it yourself, first you need to determine if your OBD device (or the one you want to buy) can actually do it. On the Thinkcar website they have a coverage enquiry page. Select “Online retailers” and your product, then choose Mitsubishi in the list. Then in the selection boxes, find “Outlander-PHEV” in the first one, the model year in the second one, BMU in the third one, and “Special Function” in the fourth one. What we are looking for in the list is “Battery Auto Capacity Measured”. If you see it, then you should be able to do the procedure with the selected OBD tool.

I used the Mitsubishi service bulletins MSB-17EXL54-501 and MSB-14EXML00_54-001, finding the correspondance with the options available in the Thinkdiag app.
There are still two points I’m not sure about, and I’d appreciate if anyone has some answers:

• The service bulletins talk about the electric power switch. When they say to turn the electric power switch on, do they mean to turn the high voltage on, and therefore to put the car in ready mode? This is what I assumed here
• I didn’t find the procedure to write back the battery manufacture date in the BMU after a reset. I can’t find anything in the Thinkdiag app either

 

[Daixiwen]

And now, this is how I did it:
First before you begin, the drive battery needs to be as empty as possible. The original procedure said that the state of charge should be under 30%, the updated procedure says that the charge level on the dashboard should be at just one bar. I don’t know which one is the easiest. If you have the PhevWatchdog app, I find it easier to use it to check the battery state of charge. But basically if you drive the car until the ICE kicks in, it should be fine. If you need it, you can also use the AC or the heater in the car with the windows open to help discharge the battery more.

Park the car, near the charger, knowing that it can sit there for a while. In my case it took 6 hours, the original procedure says up to 12 hours but the new one says up to 72 hours, so you never know how long it can take…. It will depend mostly on the battery temperature, and on whether the car has a battery heater or not.

Don’t connect the charger yet, plug the diagnostic tool in, and put the car in ready mode. If you have a charging timer configured, turn it off to be sure it doesn’t interfere with the process.

Open the Android app, and choose “ALL SYSTEMS DIAGNOSTIC”.



click on “VIN Decoding”. Let the app find the car model, and if required download the Mitsubishi software.



Choose “System Selection”, “BMU”, “Special Function” and “Battery Maintenance Function”











Select “BATT. Capa. Estimated Info. Reset” and confirm

Select “Control Information Reset” and confirm

In my case the ICE started just after the last reset, so I turned the car off and on again in the ACC mode.

Go back to the BMU screen and select “Read Data Stream”. Select “Battery Current Capacity” and confirm. The original battery capacity should now be shown (38Ah in my case). If it’s still showing the old capacity, perform the reset again until it shows the original value. I’m showing also here the Battery Remaining Capacity, which is the state of charge. Here it’s about 24%.



Turn the car off and connect the charger.

The battery should start charging and you should see the charging indicator turning on in the dashboard

Go back to the “BMU” menu, “Special Function” and select “Battery Auto Capacity Measured”



“Execution Status” should show “Not Run” (or "Complete" if you've had a DBCam performed before). Click on the “Perform” button, confirm, and you should hear the AC and the fans starting.

“Execution Status” should now show “Executing” and “Capa. Measured Discharge Current” should show “Ok”

 

[Daixiwen]

You can leave the car alone, disconnect the OBD scanner if you want. You can check the status later by plugging the ODB scanner againm, go in the app and folow the same procedure. “VIN Decoding”, “System Selection”, “BMU”, “Special Function” and “Battery Auto Capacity Measured”.

When the discharge phase is complete, the AC and fans should turn off. At that point “Capa. Measured Discharge Current” should show “NG/Not Performed” but “Execution Status” should still show “Executing”.





When the charge phase is complete, the charge light on the dashboard should turn off. “Execution Status” should show “Complete” and “Error Status” should show “No Error”. The new battery capacity will be in “Battery Current Capacity”, and the DBCAM is now complete!

 

[fresh-milk]

Whoa! Thanks for the detailed guide.

My current OBD does not work with PHEV Watchdog so will look to get a ThinkCar now

Which ThinkCar model did you use? I see a whole bunch on their site and they look like pro products.

 

[Daixiwen]

I don't think the Thinkcar OBD works with PHEV Watchdog either, I have a separate OBD receiver for the Watchdog app.

I bought a ThinkCar Thinkdiag. Oddly enough it's not on ThinkCar's own webshop, but I bought it from Kingbolen for $89 (excluding taxes).

 

[fresh-milk]

So you used ThinkCar Thinkdiag here for the DBCAM?

Like this one?

 

[Daixiwen]

Yes it's this one

 

[jag1123]

Yes it's this one

Hi, thanks for the amazing instruction, do you think not being able to write the battery age after the reset causes any issues? Also before I buy the thinkdiag do you know if there is any way to disable to KOS keyless entry system on the car so it does not unlock when pressing the little button on the doorhandle thanks

 

[Daixiwen]

I haven't had any issues, I don't know if the BMU actually uses the battery age for anything.
I'll look into the menu for the keyless system and tell you

 

[jag1123]

I haven't had any issues, I don't know if the BMU actually uses the battery age for anything.
I'll look into the menu for the keyless system and tell you

That's great thank you

 

[jag1123]

I managed to do work out it the device came today and went to the ETACS menu and then coding customise and change the keyless entry setting all works perfectly now thanks will do a DBCAM in the morning

 

[ASeitzinger]

somehow I managed to rewrite the battery age and also the mileage, but now the battery returned to 100% SOH (40Ah)...

So I will drive around 30kms, that was the useable range until yesterday. Then try to reproduce the steps I did for writing the age and then do another DBCAM

No, I am never afraid of bricking something expensive LOL and I already have 10 LEV46 modules sitting and waiting...

 

[jag1123]

somehow I managed to rewrite the battery age and also the mileage, but now the battery returned to 100% SOH (40Ah)...

So I will drive around 30kms, that was the useable range until yesterday. Then try to reproduce the steps I did for writing the age and then do another DBCAM

No, I am never afraid of bricking something expensive LOL and I already have 10 LEV46 modules sitting and waiting...

Hope you manage to get it sorted did you rewrite the battery age and mileage before doing the dbcam? If so then that is why you have the flase 100%SOH let us know how you get on once you do the whole procedure again hopefully should have true SOH doe. Also how did you manage to rewrite the battery age and mileage any steps would be appreciated so I can rewrite and then repeat the above procedure many thanks

 

[ASeitzinger]

Hey mate,
it seems with the Thinkdiag tool, there are different ways to get to the same result - BMU / BMS is accessible through 'System selection' and also 'Maintenance Function'.
If my writeup is complete, here is what I did:

Session one

• with battery at around 50%SOC, put car in READY mode (ign on)
• let the Thinkdiag scan the VIN to decode what car it is
• System selection BMU
  • read various values by using 'read data stream'
  • execute Cell Voltage Smoothing. Although this function executed, it did not show immediate result.
  • Thinkdiag also offered the menu item capacity measurement, but the drive battery was quite full so I just looked at other service function first

I charged the car over night and used it for around 40kms (it displayed 52km of range on departure which pleases the eye) on electricity but watched cell and pack voltage to not bring it down too far. Returned with pack voltage still above 300V. 40kms is above the range my car normally offers me (30-35kms) and I used 6kWh for that trip - my pack has a SOH of around 8.4kWh so although I depleted the pack more that normally, the pack was still within its safety margins

Session two

• I connected the car to the charger (charging point at my garage, not the supplied charging lead)
• fired up Thinkdiag - if I remember correctly, I did not have to switch the car on - it wont switch to READY anyway with the charging lead connected.
• let the Thinkdiag scan the VIN to decode what car it is
• Maintenance Function BMS
  • it offers the menu items 'control info reset' and 'bat capa estimated info reset' which I did not use this time - I doubt that executing these functions is a necessity for DBCAM and it is also not mentioned in the service procedure for DBCAM. At this moment, I dont recommend to execute these functions if all you want to do is a DBCAM
  • however, as I executed the functions last time when I did DBCAM which resulted in a battery age reset. So, to correct that, I executed
  • manual writing, where I could enter the battery age im months and the km.
    I think the km is a misinterpretation by Thinkdiag as it sets the value 'total current charged and discharged since manufacturing' in Ah - at least the value read out by PHEVWatchdog was set to what I entered. But as that value was very close to the actual Ah throughput (charge and discharge) which was at 85000Ah last month, I left it with the value I entered (around 84000).
  • with charging lead connected, I was able to start the capacity measurement. Various fans and pumps started running for maybe two hours, then the car started charging. I was able to lock it with the remote control and let it charge overnight. On my mobile, I did not terminate the Thinkdiag app, I just walked out of bluetooth range.
  • Next morning, I think I had to reopen the app, do the process of VIN scan etc, go to Maintenance Function BMS, Function Capacity Measurement to find the status 'done' or 'finished', cant remember exactly.
  • removed the Thikdiag and plugged in my other OBD-II-dongle, ran PHEVWatchdog and found the yellow badge for DBCAM and 28.6Ah SOH

I am already looking forward to installing the LEV46 cells to the pack but also think about something different... am tempted to have a separate 300V battery in the trunk connected in parallel but as I also have a spare traction pack shell I may research what kind of recent cells do fit in there an run them using a can bridge... We will see.

 

[jag1123]

Hey mate,
it seems with the Thinkdiag tool, there are different ways to get to the same result - BMU / BMS is accessible through 'System selection' and also 'Maintenance Function'.
If my writeup is complete, here is what I did:

Session one

• with battery at around 50%SOC, put car in READY mode (ign on)
• let the Thinkdiag scan the VIN to decode what car it is
• System selection BMU
  • read various values by using 'read data stream'
  • execute Cell Voltage Smoothing. Although this function executed, it did not show immediate result.
  • Thinkdiag also offered the menu item capacity measurement, but the drive battery was quite full so I just looked at other service function first

I charged the car over night and used it for around 40kms (it displayed 52km of range on departure which pleases the eye) on electricity but watched cell and pack voltage to not bring it down too far. Returned with pack voltage still above 300V. 40kms is above the range my car normally offers me (30-35kms) and I used 6kWh for that trip - my pack has a SOH of around 8.4kWh so although I depleted the pack more that normally, the pack was still within its safety margins

Session two

• I connected the car to the charger (charging point at my garage, not the supplied charging lead)
• fired up Thinkdiag - if I remember correctly, I did not have to switch the car on - it wont switch to READY anyway with the charging lead connected.
• let the Thinkdiag scan the VIN to decode what car it is
• Maintenance Function BMS
  • it offers the menu items 'control info reset' and 'bat capa estimated info reset' which I did not use this time - I doubt that executing these functions is a necessity for DBCAM and it is also not mentioned in the service procedure for DBCAM. At this moment, I dont recommend to execute these functions if all you want to do is a DBCAM
  • however, as I executed the functions last time when I did DBCAM which resulted in a battery age reset. So, to correct that, I executed
  • manual writing, where I could enter the battery age im months and the km.
    I think the km is a misinterpretation by Thinkdiag as it sets the value 'total current charged and discharged since manufacturing' in Ah - at least the value read out by PHEVWatchdog was set to what I entered. But as that value was very close to the actual Ah throughput (charge and discharge) which was at 85000Ah last month, I left it with the value I entered (around 84000).
  • with charging lead connected, I was able to start the capacity measurement. Various fans and pumps started running for maybe two hours, then the car started charging. I was able to lock it with the remote control and let it charge overnight. On my mobile, I did not terminate the Thinkdiag app, I just walked out of bluetooth range.
  • Next morning, I think I had to reopen the app, do the process of VIN scan etc, go to Maintenance Function BMS, Function Capacity Measurement to find the status 'done' or 'finished', cant remember exactly.
  • removed the Thikdiag and plugged in my other OBD-II-dongle, ran PHEVWatchdog and found the yellow badge for DBCAM and 28.6Ah SOH

I am already looking forward to installing the LEV46 cells to the pack but also think about something different... am tempted to have a separate 300V battery in the trunk connected in parallel but as I also have a spare traction pack shell I may research what kind of recent cells do fit in there an run them using a can bridge... We will see.

That is great news and thank you for the detailed write up I will now also follow the same steps I had sucsessfully done the DBCAM but the battery age and mileage reading I did not rewrite so they are showing up incorrectly on the watchdog app as before doing the DBCAM I did reset the battery age and capacity

 

[Daixiwen]

Thank you for all the details. I'll try and write my battery age the same way

 

[ASeitzinger]

Thank you, please write how you got along...

mmc-manuals.ru is known?

 

[jag1123]

Thank you, please write how you got along...

mmc-manuals.ru is known?

Hi, I have written the battery age and mileage after the two reset commands and then did a DBCAM all seems to be well now with battery SOH at 84.6% @38.9AH up around 3% so happy with the result, had the same issue as you where the charged/discharged value is the same as the mileage but it is similar to the value before and battery age is wrong by 10 days but that should not make a difference thank you both for your help

 

[user]

Thank you for all the details. I'll try and write my battery age the same way

Afternoon, I completed the dbcam as per.the instructions above with the thinkdiag odb. All seems to have gone well until after I had recharged the battery. The charging process went well and finished as normal.
My driving range was reduced to below pre dbcam.
I took the car for a drive anticipating to get new recalculated values with higher driving range.
Unfortunately no improvement in range and.the battery capacity after dbcam was accurate.
What I don't understand is is why it's lower than before dbcam.
I also carried cell smoothing successfully.
Any ideas?

 

[fmus]

Thank you, please write how you got along...

mmc-manuals.ru is known?

I completed the dbcam today using the thinkdiag obd on my 2014 Aspires outlander phev.
Initially everything appeared to be going well and I was getting the values and results as per the posts above.
After the car had stopped charging i checked the battery capacity. This is when things started to look odd, the capacity was lower than before the dbcam an
d the driving range was also lower.
Has anyone experienced this and what could be the cause.
I decided to toke the castle for a drive in case it needed to relearn range etc. Unfortunately the post dbcam range was the same as in real world driving.
I also did the battery cell smoothing which was also successful.
Any ideas?