4 prong dryer cord with 3 prong leaf charger

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gloomis

New member
Joined
Apr 8, 2017
Messages
1
Sorry everyone, total newbie here.

I just purchased a used 2013 Nissan Leaf. Currently, I am renting a home so I can not install anything in the garage. My laundry room is directly inside the garage door though and the cord will easily reach the dryer outlet. The problem is the dryer outlet is a 4 pronged hole and the cord is three pronged. Can I run to Home Depot and get an adapter? Or is there something wrong with that?

Thanks!
 
You probably won't be able to purchase a pre-made converter cable but you can easily make one with a 4 pronged male plug and correct 3 prong female, along with some #10 gauge wire with 3 wires inside it(available by the foot at Home Depot). Note finding a female end(other than an outlet you'd need to mount in an outlet box) may be hard. I mean you can go the plug, wire, single outlet box, outlet, outlet cover, route but an easier solution might be to just cut(or preferably take apart and remove if it's not a molded plug) the existing EVSE plug and wire on the one you want.
Your EVSE will have 2 hot wires and a green ground. When wiring on the new plug connect the hots to the hot, ground to ground and the neutral lug on your plug won't have anything connected to it. No safety issue as EVSEs don't use a neutral, just two hots. Well if it's a 120/240v EVSE it will use a neutral when plugged into a 120v outlet but in that case your outlet neutral will go to one of the hot wires going into the EVSE, doesn't matter which one.
 
There's (usually) nothing wrong with using an adapter to go between different plug types, but you probably won't find it at a store -- you'll either have to order it online, or make one (not hard).

But, let's step back a bit. When you say, "Leaf charger", what exactly are you talking about? Is it the charging cable that comes bundled with the car? If so (and if it hasn't been modified), that's what we call a level 1 EVSE, which only supports 120 volts. If you want to hook up to a dryer plug (and again, I'd want more details -- a photo would do if you can't identify the socket type) to get a faster, 240-volt charge, you'll need a level 2 EVSE for that.
 
There should be adapters available online for not much money if you want to buy instead of make one. From my understanding, the neutral connection is so devices can pull just 120v for some pats of the device instead of trying to power everything at 240v. For example, an oven can have 120v to power the little display by using one hot wire and the neutral wire. Then it can also use two hot wires for 240v to power the heating element. A level 2 EVSE only needs to run at 240v so a neutral is not needed. A 4 wire down to 3 wire should be no big deal but you can't go 3 up to 4.
 
To the OP, the ÖBERCHARGER EVSE here would be perfect for your use case:

http://ober-ev.com/products.html

There's another thread just below yours in this subforum where a guy mentioned that he bought that product. I would private message him for details...
 
BTW, if the only issue is finding any place to plug in, and you're happy with (slow, slow) level 1 charging -- then yes, there should be no problem using an adapter to draw 120 volts from a 4-prong plug.
 
wmcbrine said:
BTW, if the only issue is finding any place to plug in, and you're happy with (slow, slow) level 1 charging -- then yes, there should be no problem using an adapter to draw 120 volts from a 4-prong plug.
Thats a very good point! If this is the case then DON'T use the two hots in the 4 prong dryer outlet, rather use one of the hots(either one is OK) the center neutral and ground. Do NOT hook up 240v to a OEM Leaf EVSE, it will blow :shock:
 
You may need to make your own adapter. For a 240V EVSE you connect the lines and the ground wire. The 120V neutral is not used. Many of the pre-built adapters are for supplying 120V so they use one line plus the neutral and ground.
 
Just guessing, but it sounds like the OP has the stock Nissan EVSE and that's it. If he wants to use the dryer outlet (NEMA 14-50R) then the EVSE I mentioned would be perfect.

Basically, if you put the dryer on then the car stops charging until the load finishes, then automatically switches back to charging the car.

Wish I had a dryer in my garage, would have saved a bunch of money :)
 
alozzy said:
Wish I had a dryer in my garage, would have saved a bunch of money :)

That's why I had a dryer socked installed in my garage when we built our house (even though I never intended on putting a dryer in the garage)...for only $25 :D
 
Realistically a 24A EVSE on a dryer outlet will charge even 40A cars overnight. If you have an unused dryer outlet then that is the way to go. It avoids the expense of running a dedicated 240V line.

Me, my dryer in the garage was gas only and the panel was close so I installed a 50A 14-50 circuit.
 
As the OP of this 2 page thread hasn't even bothered to log back on since his OP, we may never know if they were just trying to use their OEM Leaf charger or a L2 EVSE :? Until they do, everything is just speculation :?:
 
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