Tesla wall charger cable is failing to connect to my vehicle

[Padelford]

I’ve started having problems recently with plugging in my Tesla wall charger to my MX. The latching mechanism tries and fails to engage the notch in the charger connector. I get an orange ring on the receptacle and a warning on my Apple Watch that the charging connector has failed to connect.

This started happening infrequently a couple of weeks ago and has progressed to the point where every time I try to charge, the connector fails to seat properly. I see no wear at all on the charging cable connector, and I’ve been using this wall charger for about four years. I can’t see anything wrong in the vehicle receptacle either. Sometimes if I wiggle the connector up and down in the receptacle, the latch will engage and the vehicle will charge. But that trick is working less and less frequently.

I just asked for mobile service, and the estimate is about $660. If anyone has a tip for solving my problem and avoiding the service call, I’d appreciate hearing it.

 

[NewbyMaybe]

Try starting the charge from the phone app.

 

[brkaus]

Are you sure nothing is stuck in there? There was a period of time when the tips came off the charging wand and would stick in the charge port (or perhaps the other way around).

You could also try electric contact cleaner.

Sounds like they are estimating replacement of the charge port?

 

[Padelford]

I looked at both sides of the charger connection tonight & realized that the plastic tip on the right vehicle HV connector has broken off. I think the broken tip is stuck down inside the charger connector. Likely I have to get both replaced. Merde.

 

[brkaus]

Search here fir that situation.

Tesla replaced the tips in my charge port a long time back. They pull off / push on. I believe it was a service bulletin.

The tip stuck in the wand has some tricks too. Someone mentioned a sharpie barrel. Someone said heat a pin or paper clip and push it into the plastic. Let cool and pull out.

You might also let Tesla know what you found and the price estimate maybe adjusted.

 

[brkaus]

Fix for plastic charge pin insulator stuck in charger handle

There is a common failure where the plastic piece from a charge port pin is breaking off inside charger handles, and causing either the supercharger or the UMC to become unusable. It often happens with earlier build cars, and especially with rough treatment of inserting the charger handle, or...

teslamotorsclub.com

 

[Padelford]

I tried searching here, but way more than half the battle is getting the search parameters right. My original search found nothing, hence my post. Thanks for the references. I’ll let Tesla know what I found.

 

[NewbyMaybe]

Try using a shop vac to suck the tip out. Clean the vac first so you can retrieve it.

If necessary you can temporarily super glue the tip back in place in order to move the car.

 

[Padelford]

Looked at the referenced link about using a Sharpie. My problem is that the little sleeve in the back of the black plastic tip has broken off in my case, so the sharpie/straw trick won’t work. I’ll try the hot paper clip trick today. Pictures of the situation:

 

[brkaus]

Always a trick to find the best search words.

I didn’t see them do ours, so I don’t know how much was replaced. Or if your charge port is repairable.

 

[Padelford]

I’ve managed to get the broken tip out of the charging connector with the heated paper clip trick and rapping the charging connector downward on a plastic table. It takes quite a bit of heat to melt into the broken tip plastic.

However, I still get the same orange light when I plug in the connector. The connector seems to be locked in. Jiggling side to side and up and down doesn’t fix it, but I did get a good connection thru more jiggling, perhaps where the charge cable goes into the charging connector. ??? It’s charging now, further experimenting later.

 

[Rocky_H]

Always a trick to find the best search words.

Also, I have just found the search within this site to be pretty bad. I've found it just refusing to find things so often, I won't use it anymore.

Helpful tip: You can just use Google but limit it to search only within one specific website domain:

broken tip site:teslamotorsclub.com

 

[Padelford]

A Tesla mobile tech showed up yesterday, and we agreed that the problem was in the Tesla wall charger connector, not the receptacle on the vehicle. It actually worked for him once or twice, then failed repeatedly with the orange warning light. It seemed to be latching (heard a click) but not completely latching.

BTW, I could charge with my mobile charger, and I could charge at a Supercharger. Just not with the wall charger.

I found a solution. I used a utility knife to just trim an edge of the locking slot on the wall charger connector, a little 45 deg bevel, to help the latch pin slip into the slot. See the picture below. I probably removed less than 1/16” of material. After that, the connector worked 100% in repeated tries with no more orange warning lights. I also sprayed the sides of the connector with graphite to help with inserting it.

He also confirmed that the missing plastic tip on one of the HV receptacle connectors was no problem for charging.

 

[Rocky_H]

I found a solution. I used a utility knife to just trim an edge of the locking slot on the wall charger connector, a little 45 deg bevel, to help the latch pin slip into the slot. See the picture below. I probably removed less than 1/16” of material. After that, the connector worked 100% in repeated tries with no more orange warning lights.

I'm glad you found this and a good straightforward solution to it. I've been hearing about this kind of issue over the years and suggested simple solutions like this when others are going straight for the homerun shot of replacing a bunch of equipment. These are slight differences in the manufacturing tolerance of the plastic housings between the charge plug handles and the ports on the cars.

I have an old 2014 Model S. All of the old V2 Supercharger locations plug in and latch easily first try. Also my mobile connector handle latches easily. But almost any V3 newer Supercharger location I go to have a very hard time, where it tries and tries to latch and usually takes a few times for the locking pin to get into the notch of the handle. I'm sure it's catching the edge of the notch in the handle because the distance/alignment is just barely off. It could be fixed the same way you did, by widening that one edge of the notch just barely, but I probably shouldn't go around Dremmeling the handles on Superchargers, so it's just a little annoyance I deal with sometimes.

 

[Padelford]

I'm glad you found this and a good straightforward solution to it. I've been hearing about this kind of issue over the years and suggested simple solutions like this when others are going straight for the homerun shot of replacing a bunch of equipment. These are slight differences in the manufacturing tolerance of the plastic housings between the charge plug handles and the ports on the cars.

I have an old 2014 Model S. All of the old V2 Supercharger locations plug in and latch easily first try. Also my mobile connector handle latches easily. But almost any V3 newer Supercharger location I go to have a very hard time, where it tries and tries to latch and usually takes a few times for the locking pin to get into the notch of the handle. I'm sure it's catching the edge of the notch in the handle because the distance/alignment is just barely off. It could be fixed the same way you did, by widening that one edge of the notch just barely, but I probably shouldn't go around Dremmeling the handles on Superchargers, so it's just a little annoyance I deal with sometimes.

My fix just takes a relatively sharp pocket knife and a few seconds of work. I took just a little sliver off the corner edge of the slot.

 

[NewbyMaybe]

Access to the locking pin possible? For bevelling or correcting it's edge?

 

[Rocky_H]

Access to the locking pin possible? For bevelling or correcting it's edge?

Much harder to get to, since it stays recessed into a hole at the bottom of the charge port in the car when it's not being used. The notch on the plug handles is just far easier to get to, to work on.