Broken ground prong on L5

[adagiopop]

I broke the ground prong on the L5 a few days ago. The prong is now in the extension cord.

I saw a reference to this happening to others on another thread.

Does anyone know how much this costs to fix?

Does it need to be done by a certified Hymotion dealer (Maryland is 350 miles from Cleveland)?

To be safe, when plugging the car in, I always connect the cord to the car first and then the wall outlet. And when disconnected, I do the wall outlet first and then the car. So, when I am connecting/disconnecting on the car, there should be no current flowing.

Any opinions on safety issues?

Thanks

[zcat3]

Originally Posted by adagiopop

I broke the ground prong on the L5 a few days ago. The prong is now in the extension cord.

I saw a reference to this happening to others on another thread.

Does anyone know how much this costs to fix?

Does it need to be done by a certified Hymotion dealer (Maryland is 350 miles from Cleveland)?

To be safe, when plugging the car in, I always connect the cord to the car first and then the wall outlet. And when disconnected, I do the wall outlet first and then the car. So, when I am connecting/disconnecting on the car, there should be no current flowing.

Any opinions on safety issues?

Thanks

Same thing happened to me. I have yet to address it but figure I will let the local Hymotion installer deal with it when I take the car back to him for service.

Doesn't sound so easy for you - i would call Hymotion and ask them.

[ibcs]

Originally Posted by zcat3

Same thing happened to me. I have yet to address it but figure I will let the local Hymotion installer deal with it when I take the car back to him for service.

Doesn't sound so easy for you - i would call Hymotion and ask them.

I'm being very careful, but I would like to know the answer as well.

---Kent

[V8Cobrakid]

it should be fine.. the only time the ground cable is really used (on any AC current) is at your breaker box.. where it ties in before the breakers...

if it charges and doesn't short (key word being doesn't "ever" short) you should not experience problems.

[adagiopop]

Thanks for the comments and suggestions.

I did contact Hymotion and Fitzgerald Toyota (in Maryland where ours was installed) this afternoon.

Hymotion said they would look into it and call me back.

Gil at Fitzgerald called me back after that to say he had talked with Hymotion and they would be getting back to me with some help.

I will let you know what happens.

[adagiopop]

I did get in touch with A123 last week. (They responded quickly although I was out of town, so this post was delayed).
It turns out that Green CHIPs (authorized service dealers) sometimes go on the road to service vehicles in areas that are remote.
A trip is being considered for Ohio, so I am going to wait and see if that pans out. There is also a software upgrade that would be done at the same time.
Our regular (independent) car service shop felt they could fix this problem, so that will be my backup plan, but they would not be able to do the software upgrade.
For anyone in the Cleveland area, I will add a plug for our (very green) service shop: The Lusty Wrench

Ron

[chogan2]

Mine broke a while back. I've been ignoring it until I've had time to look at it. And now the spring on the cover has broken, so that the cover merely hangs down by gravity.

Guest is a marine electrical parts maker. This finally got me to look up the part, and crap, it's not a simple job. I'm probably going to take it back to the dealer. And they are probably going to have to jury-rig a fix.

Here's the scoop. On Guest's generic charger inlet, the prongs are part of the inlet -- part of the part that you see sticking out of the bumper. If you pull and replace the inlet, you have a new set of prongs.

But none of Guest generic charger inlets seemed to have the spring-loaded cap like ours.

OK, look at the attached .pdf, at the end. We've got the special labor-saving inlet sleeve, where the prongs you are looking are the end of the cord that feeds into the battery charger. Great. What you are looking at is hard-wired to the battery charger. AND the only part that will fit the sleeve that's on there now is Guest's proprietary molded plug. Double great.

Maybe I'll take mine apart this PM and verify. But at this point, I think my options are:

1) Buy a generic charger inlet, pull the existing inlet, cut the plug off the end of the charger wire, rewire to the new inlet, drill and tap new holes in the bumper (because the generic inlets have three screw holes and the one we have has just two, or, smarter, drill two new holes in the generic inlet), and hope like heck this doesn't mess up the L5's ability to sense when it is and is not plugged in.

2) Take it back to the dealer and have them fuss with it. But I can already tell that'll either involve them putting in some jury-rigged system or involve them replacing the cable from the charger to the inlet sleeve.

And, of course, having had the part fail once, now in two ways, ... I guess you can fill in the rest of that.

If somebody here could tell me, for sure, how the L5 senses whether it is plugged in or not, I might, on the basis of that, do a replacement with the $20 off-the-shelf part and post how it goes.

Thanks for any help.

URL for generic inlet plug, note that prongs are part of the inlet:

Guest 150CCI Connect Charge Inlet

See end of attached .pdf for what I believe is our inlet sleeve. Note that prongs are part of proprietary molded head of charger cable.

As you can tell, I just hate it when people make flimsy stuff that's not designed to be easily repaired. Actually, no, I just really hate it when I end up owning it.

[TheForce]

I have not had any problems with mine so far. I to try to make sure I'm plugging in and removing the plug straight in and out. I try not to bend it at all.

As far as sensing when the cable is plugged in my guess would be that the L5 is looking for 110V and thats it. You can connect your own plug to the wires if needed.

I have the same plug your looking at as a replacement. I use it for my hidden EBH plug and it is well built except for the flimsy rubber cover. It was built for marine out door use so I would expect it to last many years without tearing off. The Only issue I see with it on a car is that it may pop out due to vibrations. If you can find an exact replacement for the one currently installed I would get one and skip the one you found.

[adagiopop]

A123 arranged for a service person from Advanced Vehicle Research Center in North Carolina to come up to Ohio and fix our ground prong (and update the firmware). They serviced some other Ohio customers (not necessarily for the same problem) and apparently do road trips like this occasionally for customers that are not close to approved service centers.

The ground prong replacement was fairly simple. The prongs (end of cord from L5) and the cap (on bumper with door to cover prongs) were easy to separate. I did not see how this was done, but I did see the end of the of cord (with the plug) separated from the cap. The cap was still on the bumper (with nothing in the middle where the three prongs normally are).

The repair was done by cutting the cable and connecting a new 3 prong plug (e.g., stripping the wires and connecting the plug to the L5 wire) and then putting the plug back in the cap on the bumper.

The service tech also gathered some information from the L5 (something about battery performance) using a laptop connected to a connection under the dash. This had to be done before the repair and firmware upgrade because something (probably the upgrade) would erase it.

After the repair, the firmware upgrade was done using a connection to the L5 in the trunk.