First of all, please forgive me any spelling mistakes as English is a second language to me.
I want to give you my impressions on the Tesla Wall Connector and the possibility to change it's charging cable. I translated this from German. Also, I wrote more about my motivations and experiences going into this project. I can also translate this into English if you are interested. (Here is the link to my German article)
How-To
(DISCLAMER: I do not take any responsibility for this guide or any faults that may be a direct or indirect consequence of it. Also I am no electrician AND English is my second language, so please forgive me for any false terms)
This is a translated guide and the cabling is adapted to European power!
I want to give you my impressions on the Tesla Wall Connector and the possibility to change it's charging cable. I translated this from German. Also, I wrote more about my motivations and experiences going into this project. I can also translate this into English if you are interested. (Here is the link to my German article)
How-To
(DISCLAMER: I do not take any responsibility for this guide or any faults that may be a direct or indirect consequence of it. Also I am no electrician AND English is my second language, so please forgive me for any false terms)
This is a translated guide and the cabling is adapted to European power!
- TURN OFF THE POWER!
- Remove the old charging cable
Unscrew the top cover of the wallbox. Also, the upper black panel has to come off. To do so, carefully insert a plastic pick under the round clip and lift it up.
You will find the relay in the top. Unscrew the cables coming from the right and undo the ferrules as to separate the small cables to connect them to the new cord.
Also you have to unscrew the grounding, located in the bottom of the case.
Next, you have to unscrew the small communication cables. They have the following purpose:
Purple: +-12V Control Pilot
Red: +3.3V for the UHF switch, opening the Tesla-Charging Door
Black-White: NTC temperature sensor of the charging handle
Orange: Proximity Pilot
As a last step, the strain relief in the very bottom has to be loosened. Now you can pull the old charging cable out of the wallbox.
- Installing the new cord
My third-party cord came with the following cables (Again: EU configuration, can be adapted to US)
3 x phase, neutral, PE and CP
The phases as well as neutral have to be connected to the corresponding smaller cables and ferruled together and screwed into the relay.
Next, the PE has to be screwed into its original position at the bottom.
Now we have to deal with the small communication cables. (going left to right)
- the CP cable of the new cord is inserted into the leftmost screw terminal.
- the next terminal on the right (3V3) is left with no cable attached
- in case your new charging cable does not have a temperature sensor you have to replicate the signal. Because the original cord had a temperature-sensitive resistor, we can use a regular resistor with 10K Ω which resembles a temperature of 20°C/68°F. (Again, I am no electrician and can not be held accountable for this guide! Please use your temperature sensor if your cable has one). The wallbox will measure the resistance against the PE of the charging cable. Thus we will connect the 3. terminal via a 10K Ω resistor to the PE of the charging cable.
- the last terminal on the right is the PP. One of its tasks is to tell the car how many amps the cable can deliver because of its length and resistance. This information is delivered by fixed resistance values between PP and PE (63A ≈ 100 Ω, 32A ≈ 220 Ω, 20A ≈ 680 Ω, 13A ≈ 1500 Ω/again, please double check). My new cable is able to deliver 32A, so I am connecting the 4th terminal via a 220 Ω resistor to the PE of the charging cable
- Moment of truth
The diagnostic LEDs on the front cover of the wall connector are a good possibility to check for mistakes.
You can check in the Wall Connector manual for the LED sequences. They can be replayed by holding the RESET button on the left side of the box.
Either way, if you get the all green: Congratulations!
I hope I could save you some time on your own project!
Also: See the attached diagram of the circuit board of the Wall Connector as well as the one of my charging cable.