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120V Charging Blues

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Test your 120V charging cord on occasion. My plug end went bad.

While not used often I do you the 120V cord often at a hotel/B&B. The last 4 times I used it I came back to the car to find the charging stopped about an hour into the charge and thus I missed out on a good 9+ hours of charge. First hotel I attributed to a rather long extension cord and the rain. But that was not the situation at the last B&B.

It turns out the GFC head of the plug had gone bad and actually partially melted the plastic around one prong. The end is quite easy to replace and found this one on Amazon Leviton 16693 15-Amp, 120-Volt, Grounded, Compact Automatic Reset Right Angle GFCI, RoHS Compliant, Black - Amazon.com and I have found it to work well so far. Weird how the plug end just went bad after 4+ years.
 
My 120v cable head went bad as well. It was making clicking sounds and would go on-and-off. Guys at service center replaced it with another head they had at no charge (even though the cable themselves only had a 1 year warranty). Otherwise, I think they were going to charge $50.
 
Several Roadster owners have just taken off the GFCI plug and put a simple, high quality, 5-15 plug on instead. That will then fit into the chargepoint 120v outlets. I noted that Roadster connector is live as soon as the plug is live, thus only a GFCI is protecting you from being shocked. I fit the Roadster connector first then plug in the outlet to keep safe.
 
Test your 120V charging cord on occasion. My plug end went bad.

While not used often I do you the 120V cord often at a hotel/B&B. The last 4 times I used it I came back to the car to find the charging stopped about an hour into the charge and thus I missed out on a good 9+ hours of charge. First hotel I attributed to a rather long extension cord and the rain. But that was not the situation at the last B&B.

It turns out the GFC head of the plug had gone bad and actually partially melted the plastic around one prong. The end is quite easy to replace and found this one on Amazon Leviton 16693 15-Amp, 120-Volt, Grounded, Compact Automatic Reset Right Angle GFCI, RoHS Compliant, Black - Amazon.com and I have found it to work well so far. Weird how the plug end just went bad after 4+ years.

When I first got the Roadster, I went through two of these cables before I finally got one that was reliable. I agree with the advice to just replace the head end with a simple grounded plug.