Well then. My 2nd Voltec failed miserably this morning. Plug jammed in the car, but also no charge (the led wasn't stuck on as in previous failures). The design is fairly well "protected" from tampering - the latch is shielded by plastic so you can't just stick a screwdriver in there to lift it and pull the plug out of the car. Wonder just what they were thinking on that one. So I pry the handle apart - easy - and work the mechanism by hand, since once again, the latch mechanism is broken, along with having been sticky before - seems they'd never heard of self-lubing plastic, or that steel metal pins rust in outdoor use, which this is rated for (I don't have a garage).
Some time back, I'd bought the expensive but very nice cable from Tuscon EV, with the idea I'd build my own EVSE that would put out a pilot proportional to the excess power my solar system had at any given moment. Since a bang-bang (switch power on and off to the whole thing) actually works better than that would, for esoteric reasons (can't know exactly how much I've got till the panels are under full load anyway in this system) - I never got around to that. But I had this super nice, long, fat wire, not coiled, cable with an obviously much higher quality connector on it laying around...
Right on time, as it happened. I used it to replace the piece of crap cheaped-out GM cable and connector, no real problems doing that, it just needed to be done. I had to remove the strain relief - the new cable won't fit through the hole where it's full diameter anyway - and reduce the size of the #6 stranded wire at the end for the 3 fatties to about #8 - the biggest that would fit in the cheezy internal connectors, wire it up correctly while chasing off the wasps that had built a nest in there (getting in through the, yes, well designed drain holes for condensation - at least they've learned about that problem), and make my own strain reliefs on the post this is all mounted to.
I'm not sure how actually long that pretty thin wire in the coiled cable was, but it was both - thin and long, taking a rather shall we say, circuitous route to the car even when pulled out to the point of putting more side stress on the car connector than I thought wise (no problems from that - other things fail first, always it seems). But if my wattmeter readings are correct, the old cable alone was wasting about 40 watts...in series resistance, at around 13 amps at 240v going through it. A watt saved is a watt earned...
And here's what the result looks like. I don't back the car all the way in, as there's a path for my tractor that has to be between it and the house, so I needed a long cable. I always back in, as it's fairly dangerous to have to back out of my driveway - both steep and blind at the end, with a drop off on one side. This puts the connector on the car pretty far away from the house.
(as usual, click pix for high res view)
The output is on the right - and from left to right, the terminals are - pilot signal, 15v (for the led flashlight), L2, L1,, GND - just in case you ever have to do this one. The new cable doesn't have the useless dim led flashlight, I won't miss it.
Here's the perspective looking from the car:
I used a few conduit clamps on the wire as strain relief, screwed to the post. They fit nicely, as it worked out - nice and tight where the manufacturer terminated the fat outer insulation and covered that termination with THICK heat shrink tubing..
And from the yard:
Kind of a distraction from the series I'm writing (and starting to get help with) on reloading ammo, but it will save me more time than it took to do, this thing is just better - seems rock solid compared to the original. And I can drive the tractor over it, without catching it, or having to lift it over my head each time. I'm pretty sure, that while my tractor doesn't put down all that many PSI, it would have quickly ruined that cheezy coiled cord with butter-soft insulation on its conductors.
The car itself remains trouble-free and a joy, with one minor flaw - the charge door sticks if you don't lube up a couple spots with dry lube once a year - you sometimes have to use a fingernail to pull it open. Wow, that's pretty good for a maintenance record, actually. It'll be 2 years old in October.