Is it safe to use 14-50 to 6-20 adapter for mini turbocord charger?

A

anshulankush

New Member
I am seeing 50-60$ adapters that can plug into my 14-50 and the other end can plug in the 6-20 based mini/bmw turbocord.

My concern is will it be safe? Provided breaker is 50 amp and not 20 amp?

Any concerns with frying the charger or car?
 
anshulankush said:
I am seeing 50-60$ adapters that can plug into my 14-50 and the other end can plug in the 6-20 based mini/bmw turbocord.

My concern is will it be safe? Provided breaker is 50 amp and not 20 amp?

Any concerns with frying the charger or car?
Click to expand...
My biggest concern would be that your Turbocord could malfunction and would not be protected by an appropriately sized breaker. If it did malfunction and started pulling more than it's rated 20 amps, your 50A breaker/circuit wouldn't trip.
 
In theory plugging a less powerful item into a more powerful socket type is fine. Certainly in and of iitself it’s not going to damage anything.
However as @methorian points out the breaker will not trip in a fault situation until 50A is drawn.
That said the breaker exists only to protect your household writing. It will flip at 50A but your wiring to it is supposed to handle more.

The same applies to a regular 110 outlet, your tiny 5W USB charger could have a fault but the 20A breaker in your panel won’t slip unless the fault pulls at least 20A by which point the charger could already be on fire.

So in my view it’s fine.

In fact I bought a portable L1/L2 EVSE that comes with about 10 different adaptors including for the purpose you mentioned.
 
It was by MaxGreen, got it on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3itwFfX

Came with 5 adapters actually, my bad, which I figure means I can charge at an RV park, (or anywhere else with a NEMA 14-50), a dryer outlet at an AirBnb etc.
Came in a square case too for neatness which fits perfectly under the trunk floor.

The only downside for me is that it is limited to 16A so 3.6kW on L2 which is half what the Mini can handle.
But finding a 32A one with adapters and case for anything like this price was proving impossible and given I may never actually need it I didn't want to spend more than $250.

I tested it one on L1 and once on L2 and it worked fine, didn't heat up (cables or unit) so seems fine to me.
 
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