Changing the J1772 cord on the Blink

[davewill]

Got it. Curious how you plan to connect the wires inside the junction box, crimping or simply with wire-nuts?

Since, I'm just going to mount the junction box on the wall, I'm going with wire nuts.

[davewill]

Was no problem. I'll take pictures as soon as I finish the cosmetic parts of the install. The Yazaki handle is such an improvement over the REMA one the Blink had. It just feels so much more solid. The REMA handle had so much play when the latch was engaged that you could interrupt a charge just by pulling on it a little bit. The Yazaki handle takes a bit more force to insert, and the latch won't engage until the handle is in ALL the way. And it doesn't budge when it is engaged.

[TimLee]

Was no problem. I'll take pictures as soon as I finish the cosmetic parts of the install. The Yazaki handle is such an improvement over the REMA one the Blink had. It just feels so much more solid. The REMA handle had so much play when the latch was engaged that you could interrupt a charge just by pulling on it a little bit. The Yazaki handle takes a bit more force to insert, and the latch won't engage until the handle is in ALL the way. And it doesn't budge when it is engaged.

Pictures

In the other thread http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.p ... 50#p318062" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; :

Yesterday morning, my plastic tip on the car's top right J pin disappeared after charging so I thought maybe the Blink EVSE melted it. I called ECOtality and in less than 30 minutes Michael Martin arrived and replaced the nozzle and cord set. Besides fixing the crimp problem, this one has a sensor that will shut it off if it gets too hot.

Does the Leviton have a thermal sensor?

[TonyWilliams]

Does the Leviton have a thermal sensor?

Leviton stopped producing J1772 plugs, and markets the Yazaki brand.

There is no thermal sensor.

[warrenc]

Ok, I got the cord changed yesterday and the car charged fine overnight.

I couldn't easily find ferrules to crimp on the L1 and L2 wires, so I crimped on insulated pin connectors. The pin then goes into the set screw connector on the Blink's internal circuit breaker. I also considered using an uninsulated butt splice as a ferrule and cutting off the excess, but I decided against that. Not sure whether that might have been a better solution. The ground wire was terminated with a insulated ring connector (on a stud with an 11mm nut), so that was easy to duplicate.

On the pilot wire, note that the Blink cable has a blue #18 pilot wire and the Leviton cable has an orange #16 pilot wire. I made sure to keep the pilot wire shorter than the other wires, as in the original installation. I determined that the disconnect in the original pilot wire was an insulated "snap" disconnect. I found an insulated "bullet" disconnect female that mated well with the original male pigtail and then reused that pigtail.

Also, the outer diameter of the Leviton cable is about 1/16" greater than on the Blink cable. So it was a snug fit going through the strain relief connector coming out of the bottom of the Blink chassis, but it worked OK.

I'm thinking that for thoroughness I should get an IR thermometer and measure the temperature rises on the terminations I made after a few hours of charging. What temperature rise should I expect for a good connection? I have a 2011 Leaf, so it will have been charging at only 16 amps.

Cheers, Wayne

I'm about to perform this exact same procedure. Although I haven't taken the case off yet, I think I can imagine what we are talking about here and wondering what the best solution is for crimping on some sort of ferulle for the L1 and L2 wires.

[warrenc]

Surgery complete, and the patient survived. Pretty straightforward for anyone considering this. The biggest problem I had was getting the strain relief over the new cable; lots of silicone and twisting. I did not use ferrules, I just twisted the wire tight before I screwed them into the block.
Also note that the one I received only had a blue pilot wire, so that might be a production change.
The outer sheathing on this cable is overly stiff, I think they could have used something a little more pliable.
I set my amperage back up to 30, and everything seems to be happy!