Glad to hear some people have successfully been able to modify Avcon boxes. Just wanted to throw out there my experience with aged Avcon stations here in Arizona. It's a little known fact, but I have used or tested about eight left over Avcon boxes left over from the 90's with a somewhat self made Avcon to 14-50 adapter.
The one closest to me is about 5 miles away in downtown Glendale Arizona and had an accessible circuit breaker with some indicator lights. When the breaker was reset the lights came on to indicate power was present; however, I could not get this box to pass power initially. After doing some consulting with the experts I figured out how to push the cover out of the way to reveal the contacts, figuring I could try cleaning them, but turned out there was an old spider egg sac on the pilot pin! Easy enough fix I though, but it still did not. At this point I could get the box to indicate it was charging, but I could not get power at the car. What had happened was the Avcon was not used for so many years, plus it was outside, that the main power relay inside had developed some corrosion or dirt inside and was not conducting. Well after about 20 cycles or so I did manage to get it to work!
I have used this station from time to time since and it still works. I have found this similar problem with several of the Avcons around. Other designs do not have an accessible circuit breaker and simply light a "service required" light when the main power relay does not close inside. If I could get to the breaker I could probably cycle it enough to get it to work. One of them is at a McDonalds (16th St and Camelback if anyone is following) just flat does not work and the breaker is accessible.
With an Avcon in a garage I would suspect it may not have these problems. Worst case scenario if you find that the relay clunks, but no power flows you could possible disassemble it and clean the tips, or just replace it. Either way, they do have issues of non-use in my experience.
Have to add this too, best Avcon I used was about 1 mile from Arizona State University where I went to school at. It is at APS's Solar testing facility and generation station. It had limited hours, but I would disassemble a bike and put it in the back seat drive my 26 miles one way and charge about 20 feet from some massive solar arrays and ride my bike the last mile to class. I was putting 52 miles a day on my converted Saturn which realistically has about 30 miles range. Of course a few days a week I had to go retrieve the car in between classes to make this work. School refused to provide or sell me power.
