Tight J1772 plug

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Rick2112

Rick2112

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I've had my Clarity for about a year now, and enjoying the car very much. One issue I am having is with the 240v charger. I bought a Zencar charger from Amazon soon after I bought the car, and while it does charge the car, the plug is very tight. (Seems like a common problem, with this and other chargers.) So tight in fact that I am afraid of breaking the charger receptacle on the car.

I've seen some posts where people say that it will loosen up over time, but mine has shown no sign of loosening. I've seen in the reviews on Amazon where other chargers/plugs have the same
issue.

Does anyone have a workaround, or know of an affordable (around $250) charge that does not have this issue.

Thanks!
 
I purchased a Jekayla 40 amp level 2 charger and it was very tight until I removed the rubber O-ring inside the plug of the charger. Now, even my wife can plug it in and out.
 
Rick, I also have one of the Zencar units. It never has loosened up, in fact I quit using it.

I too would like a recommendation of a good Level 2 EVSE that doesn't require the strength of Samson to insert and remove.

For now, I'm using an adapter to run the Honda OEM unit on 240v. The J1772 end of the Honda unit goes on easily with a solid sounding 'CLICK'.
 
My Bosch 40-amp EVSE's connector has always been easy to insert. I believe Leviton makes the unit for Bosch. It has no WiFi features, just a couple of LEDs.

However, now I wish I had a 50-amp EVSE (is there such a thing?) to feed the 11kW maw of the upcoming MINI Cooper SE I'll be buying for urban duty because Honda won't sell me a Honda e.
 
You might try a spray on lubricant with Teflon like Rem-dri or some of the lock lubricants that dry and leave no sticky residue to accumulate dirt. I don’t think there is enough room on the inside of the circular shield to be able to enlarge the opening in some manner.
 
This is starting to remind me of a situation that I ran into several years ago where I previously worked where we needed to send out hundreds of USB flash drives with a software installation on them. Stay with me there is a connection here. Our duplicating company that we used purchased generic blank flash drives from a wholesale source. Our testing went fine and we started shipping them out around the country.

But soon afterwards we started getting calls from some of our sales reps that the drives didn't work in their company laptop, the light on the flash drive blinked once then lit steady but did not blink anymore and was not recognized. Meaning it was getting power but not communicating. But the reps said the flash drive worked on other computers, just not their laptop. On a hunch I started going around our office plugging one of the flash drives into co-workers laptops (of course with their permission) and eventually discovered that there was a particular model Dell laptop that some of the co-workers had, and the flash drive had the same symptoms in those laptops. But other USB drives worked in those laptops. We confirmed that the reps with the problem had this same model laptop. So was the USB drive defective or was the Dell laptop defective? The answer was surprising and bizarre.

If you look up the spec for USB type A plugs they are supposed to be 12 mm long (the part that goes into the receptacle). But if you grab any random flash drive around the house and measure it, you will find that the plug is 12.5 mm. Presumably flash drive makers went that extra 0.5 mm just to be conservative rather than risk falling short and not making a connection. And all of the thousands of peripherals out there work with all of the slightly overspec flash drives.

Well guess what this cheapo generic flash drive measured at? Exactly 12 mm. Creating no problem in most computers which would work with either 12 mm or 12.5 mm. But for some reason this particular model Dell laptop would not work with an official spec flash drive of 12 mm but only with standard size 12.5 mm flash drives. Of course Dell wouldn't give us the time of day, from their point of view their laptops worked with all major brands of flash drives, sorry our cheapo flash drive didn't work in their laptop. And our duplicator said the wholesaler wouldn't refund for the flash drives because they were in spec. Imagine trying to explain all of this to your boss.

So my theory is that the Clarity J1772 charge receptacle width is in spec but not standard and this is causing the problem. It's just a theory (or maybe WAG), but I think with a little investigation measuring widths and looking up specs it may turn out that most BEV and PHEV charge ports are a hair narrower than spec but the Clarity port is exactly spec and thus most J1772 plugs, which were probably tested on many BEV's but not Clarity, fit way too tight. Unless Clarity isn't the only J1772 vehicle with the problem.
 
Because my Bosch EVSE and Honda's EVSE both worked great from day 1, I blame the ill-fitting EVSEs, not the Clarity. (OK, that's a pretty limited point of view, I admit.) Does anyone believe Honda had their EVSE's connector modified to match the Clarity's non-spec socket?
 
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insightman said:
Because my Bosch EVSE and Honda's EVSE both worked great from day 1, I blame the ill-fitting EVSEs, not the Clarity.
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Oh no bringing back more of my memories of computer support "I don't have problems with any other software on my computer so your software must be the problem", and yet so many times it did turn out to be a problem with their computer which happened to affect our software even though not the other softwares they were using. Other times we realized that their computer wasn't defective per se but it had something uncommon that our software got hung up on, so it wasn't so much who was to blame it's just we realized we needed to accommodate some situations we didn't anticipate.

Again sorry for what may seem like unrelated analogies but in my experience troubleshooting has some common elements regardless of what field it is. So I would say either Honda or EVSE manufacturers or both didn't anticipate that there would be a conflict, if they had known in advance they might have been able to avoid it, but unlike software this is not as easy to fix. Hopefully Zencar for example can modify their plug to work better with Clarity but still work well for other cars. Not high hopes that Honda would do a recall and replace the charging ports so that we can use all brands of EVSE out there with no problem. Especially since technically it works, but some are worried about long term possibly something breaking.

insightman said:
Does anyone believe Honda had their EVSE's connector modified to match the Clarity's non-spec socket?
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No, just that they didn't realize their receptacle was slightly different than many or most other EV receptacles out there and that this would create a problem for some EVSE's (which by the way apparently work fine on other cars from what people say) and they didn't catch it because it worked fine with their EVSE.
 
It's good to have a list of J1772 connectors that fit easily. I didn't want to spend another ~$300 only to find the connector is a tight fit.

Looking at the business end of both of my J1772 connectors, I do notice the Honda OEM unit doesn't have the rubber O-Ring that the Zencar has. Thinking BPratt's idea is a good one.
 
Mowcowbell said:
Looking at the business end of both of my J1772 connectors, I do notice the Honda OEM unit doesn't have the rubber O-Ring that the Zencar has. Thinking BPratt's idea is a good one.
Click to expand...
That would be great if it turns out to be something as simple as that.
 
I did remove the O-ring, but it only provided marginal improvement. Still stiff, but I can get it out with one hand, though I still need to put my weight into it.

I do think the problem is with the plug though, and not the Clarity. I have stopped at many public charging stations (casino, hotel, Whole Foods, shopping mall, etc.) and never come across a tight fitting plug (and I assume that those were all ChargePoint or other quality brand chargers, not some budget knock off).

Thanks all for the great info!
 
My ChargePoint fits well, but I added an extension to allow reaching the car more conveniently and it's plug is very tight. I added a small amount of Di-electric grease and it is much easier to plug-in and remove.
 
Rick2112 said:
I did remove the O-ring, but it only provided marginal improvement. Still stiff, but I can get it out with one hand, though I still need to put my weight into it.

I do think the problem is with the plug though, and not the Clarity. I have stopped at many public charging stations (casino, hotel, Whole Foods, shopping mall, etc.) and never come across a tight fitting plug (and I assume that those were all ChargePoint or other quality brand chargers, not some budget knock off).

Thanks all for the great info!
Click to expand...
Rick, I've noticed the same thing on public chargers. I have no problem with tight fitting J1772's on public chargers. My only issue is with the J1772 on the Zencar EVSE.
 
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2002 said:
Unless Clarity isn't the only J1772 vehicle with the problem.
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Clarity is not the only vehicle with this problem. I bought a EVSE extension cord for traveling and my daughter liked it so well for her 2012 Prius Plugin that she kept it. It is very tight on both cars. Takes me two hands to remove it.
 
My Jekayla 40 amp was very tight. I had to wiggle either side-to-side or up/down each removal. Was worried I'd damage the car's port. I had already spent the money (on the EVSE) and since it otherwise worked fine, I just kept using it. Several months later, and it works much better. No o-ring removed or changes. It's still not as nice as the one that comes with the car in terms of ease of use, but it can be removed with one hand now.

I would of otherwise ranked the 'Jekayla 40 amp' very highly since it works without fail and the "price was right." But due to the tight fit, I've never strongly recommended it. I do like the combination of NEMA 14-50 plug with EVSE as my total cost was dramatically lower (at least where I live). i.e. about $250 for plug install, then $400 for EVSE, and $650 later I've got a complete solution. Here in western Oregon (Eugene), I called several electricians asking for install cost of customer provided EVSE (i.e. clipper creek). The lowest quote I received was $1000 and none included the EVSE.

KentuckyKen and others on this forum encouraged me to try getting the NEMA plug and don't mention what it will be used for. The price quote to install the plug went to $200. This coupled with a "portable" EVSE was much cheaper. If I had it all over again to do, I would of kept the NEMA 14-50 idea, but bought the portable from clipper creek instead (https://tinyurl.com/yxwznmga). And yep, like $200 more than my cost, but I would of liked the piece of mind of having an easy connect/disconnect.

-Dan

PS: oh and one more thing: I wanted 40 amp for future proof. Turns out the way I use this thing, even a 16 amp would of been fine, and certainly the 32 amp option is fine (clarity's max). In retrospect, I don't really care to try future proof that far out. Just too hard to plan for tech that far out.
 
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Rick2112 said:
I've had my Clarity for about a year now, and enjoying the car very much. One issue I am having is with the 240v charger. I bought a Zencar charger from Amazon soon after I bought the car, and while it does charge the car, the plug is very tight. (Seems like a common problem, with this and other chargers.) So tight in fact that I am afraid of breaking the charger receptacle on the car.

I've seen some posts where people say that it will loosen up over time, but mine has shown no sign of loosening. I've seen in the reviews on Amazon where other chargers/plugs have the same
issue.

Does anyone have a workaround, or know of an affordable (around $250) charge that does not have this issue.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
I just want to say that I noted the same problem with some chargers including my Juicebox 40. I tried a little silicon spray on the outside of the plug and smooth as silk ever since. (Jig a loo brand).
 
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