How to Retrofit an EV conversion to J1772 in 7 easy steps

Over the last 6 months or so, more and more  public charging stations have been installed around town so I finally decided it was time to join the J1772 club. For those of you not familiar with the term, J1772 is the designation for the plugs and inlets that are the official standard for EV charging in the US. With the standard connection on my car, I could take advantage of these charging spots - and many of them are free. 


My old charger port was a L6-20 which was cheap and fine for charging at home, but few public places had this style connector waiting for me... It had served me well over the last 4 years, but change is good.


Most of the local stations I ran across were from Coulumb, so I set up an account at ChargePoint and got a $5 card for using their chargers. How's that for thinking ahead?

Original L6-20 charging port

The whole process of installing the J1772 was easier than you'd think. Here are the steps I took:

Step 1 - buy a J1772 Inlet. The Inlet is the part that goes on the vehicle. I also needed to buy the plug end so that I could convert my home charging gear (a.k.a EVSE or Electric Vehicle Charging Equipment)  to J1772 also. There are a few places that sell these parts - and they aren't cheap, btw. I bought mine from TucsonEV . I had a few questions which they promptly answered and they were quick to replace a pin which wasn't correct from the factory - no complaints.


Step 2 buy resistor(s) and diode. The J1772 standard expects to see signalling between the charger and the outlet in order to power up the connection. Here's a link to a description of the electronics for the signalling involved.  Your charger is probably like mine in that it doesn't have a way to provide these signals. One could wire up a switch to manually provide the signalling, or buy a circuit board to to fake it out, or you could do like me and hard wire it so the EVSE thinks the charger is always ready and turns on the juice. This is a low voltage, low current application, so the parts are cheap and should be readily available. You need a diode that will handle 20ma and 856 to 908 ohms worth of resistors. I couldn't find a 900 ohm resistor so I used a 560 and 330 in series. These parts came to about $6.00 at 'the shack."
  

Parts needed -J1772  Inlet, diode and resistor(s)

Step3 remove old inlet and test fit the new I pulled out the old inlet and disconnected the wiring from it. Then I dropped in the new J1772 unit in it's place. The screw holes for the old inlet didn't match the J1772, but to my surprise, the holes for the original Miata gas filler neck did! This made the swap real easy. If you aren't this lucky, you'll need to drill the mounting holes for your new inlet.


Step 4 Soldering the power pins Disassemble your inlet and figure out where the wiring needs to be placed for proper assembly. Mine had a pin retainer that needed to be over the wires before the pins were soldered on. I added a short wire to the ground so that I could easily connect the resistors and diode later. The power pins took a lot of heat to get up to temperature - more than my soldering gun would put out. I ended up using a butane plumbers torch at a low setting to warm up the pins. I tinned both the wire and the pin and then mated them together one at a time. 



Step 5 solder the pilot pin connection The pilot pin is the small one on the lower left. The one on the right is the proximity pin, which I understand isn't used. Connect your resistor(s) in series (end to end) with the diode. The stripe on the diode should go toward the ground wire. Solder one end of the component is soldered to the pin and the other end to the ground wire we put in earlier. It doesn't matter which order the parts go in as long as the diode is properly oriented.  Once you solder it, shrink tube it or tape it up and insert the pin in place. 


Step 6 Install the inlet assembly  Time to put the whole thing back together. Make sure the wires don't bind and a properly held in place by strain relief nut on the back.

Inlet installed - I later rotated it 90 degrees to allow the cord in my garage to connect easier

Inlet with cover and strain relief installed from inside the turnk

Step 7 test it out Drive out to your local charging station and plug in. Mine was at a Walgreens Drug store. Though the lot was full, the EV spot was empty, so I pulled in, plugged in and waved my little ChargePoint card in front of the charger. I heard a click and then the sound of the  charger in my car starting up - sweet.

Free parking and a free charge - Life Is Good!

DIY LED Daytime Running Lights for the Miata NA

If you are like me, you've been noticing that a lot of new cars have really cool LED running lights - or DRLs (Daytime Running Lights). Well, they seemed like something that would look slick on a NA Miata. But could I do this myself? After some research, I realized it wasn't as easy as I first thought - 

• the parking lights/blinker assembly is a sealed unit - you can't just unscrew the lens and install a row of LEDs. 
• how to handle the blinker (directional indicator function)? Two rows of LEDs? Install another bulb for the blinker? Make the whole thing blink somehow?
• What about the emergency function? The lights need to blink without the key on.

Well, I noodled on it for a while and came up with this idea.

• Use single row of LEDs - as many as I could fit - that would span the entire parking lights/blinker assembly
• find the brightest LEDs possible, but not surface mount - go old school to simplify assembly
• for turn indicators, just blink the entire row using a relay hooked to the blinker circuit.
• Tie another relay into the emergency flasher to activate the LEDs.

The plan was to run a new wire to the LEDs that was switched 12v - on when ever the key is on. This will allow the LEDs to light whenever the car is running, rather than just when the parking lights are on. Because we want the LEDs to blink when the indicator is on, we connect it to the Normally Closed (NC) position of a relay (so the LEDs are lit when the relay isn't) and to 12v ground to the other side. The wire that would normally go to the blinker goes to one side of the relay coil and the other side goes to ground. This allows the relay to activate when the blinker turns on, opening the circuit to the LEDs causing them to blink. The parking light lead isn't connected since the LEDs will be lit whenever the key is on anyway. So there are a total of 3 connections on each side.  This all works fine when the key is on, but your emergency flashers need to work with the key off. I added another relay in from of the other two that switches the input to the flasher when it's activated. 

Just to summarize, In driving mode, the LEDs are lit. When the blinker is activated, the relay closes and opens repeatedly causing the LED strip to blink. Since both LED strips are independent, while one is blinking, the other side stays lit. When you hit the emergency flasher, another relay kicks in to power the LEDs.

I ordered a kit of 100 super-bright LEDs and resistors from Parts Express. They also carried automotive grade 12v relays, so I ordered 3 of those. I bought a Perf Board (a perforated sheet of plastic for building electronics) at Radio Shack to assemble the LED strips.

With all of the parts in hand, and a wiring plan in my head, I began the work.

Step One- assemble the LED strips

Find the perf board and the LEDs and resistors. Insert the LEDs into the perf board making sure you get the polarity the same for all -doesn't matter which way at this point, but make sure the long lead or flat edge of the housing is all pointing the same way. You want the LEDs as close to each other as possible to get the most LEDs in the housing - more LEDs = more light. I ended up laying the LEDs in the pref board at an angle and got 39 in the row.

Next install the resistors beside the LEDs. Don't share the hole with the LED so that you can twist the leads together on the back side. This makes for a solid connection and holds both parts in the board. You can angle the resistors so that they are tight to the LEDs, or lay them out vertically (this just makes the resulting  board bigger. If you angle the resistors you will run out of room at the end of the strip. I put half the resistors above the LEDs and half below to make the board as compact as possible. It doesn't matter which side of the LED the resistor is on.

Now flip the board over an twist the LED leads to the resistor leads making sure the the LEDs are polarized right (long lead on the same side). You can add another wire for the outside edge of the LEDs and resistors or simply flatten them into a long strip that will be soldered together later.

Trim the excess leads from the twisted connections and solder.

Apply solder to the bundle of leads or your new lead that runs along the outside edges.

This picture is actually from a couple of steps later,
but I wanted to show the twisted leads down the center
and the leads at the top and bottom soldered together.

Step Two - test the LED strips and fix any loose wires

Solder a couple one lead to the top leads of the strip and one to the lower. Make them longer than you need so you can test it. Find a 12v source to test with  - I used a electric tire pump that has a 12v cigarette lighter output. Take note of which are the positive and negative wires  and make sure every LED lights. If one is out, check the connections and resolder until they all light reliably. Do this for both strips/

Step Five - cut the strip to size
Your perfboard is probably too big to mount.  We want to cut it down to something we can fit into the flicker housing.  Mark the perfboard outside of the soldered area and give your self some extra room for mounting it to the wire retainers.  Cut the excess.

Step Six - dissect the parking lights/blinker assembly

We only need the lens for our LED blinkers/DRLs. Pull the two parking/blinker lights from the car by removing the two screws on each and them pulling out the bulb/socket assembly from the back of each. 

As you can see the lens is attached to the reflector with tabs on the plastic lenses and a gray adhesive filler.To deal with the tabs, we are going to cut the reflector side so that the tabs don't have anything to hold on to.I used a dremel to do this, but I'm sure there are other ways.

Next I removed the gray putty that glued the lens to the reflector.  For this I used a spray solvent. It turned the hardened putty into a soft gooey mess...

And after some prying with a large standard screwdriver...






The lens came loose.

After some scraping with the screw driver and a razor blade, it came pretty clean.

Step Seven - trim the ends of the lenses


The lens interlock with the reflector where they mount to the car. I needed to be able to reach the mounting holes on either side, so this interlocking bit needed to go...

First I cut either end of the section that needed to be removed...

Then "nibbled" the section off with a pair of pliers.

Step Eight - 

dead battery

Well, haven't had much to post about in quite a while. Generally I come home, plug the car in and in the morning I unplug it and drive it to work. Simple as that.

Tonight it wasn't so simple...
It was a misty morning so I drove to work with my driving lights on - not the headlights, just the driving lights - it wasn't dark, or rainy just a little misty. So I park in the lot in plenty of time for my 9:00 meeting and at when I return to my car at 6:00 - nothin'. No dash lights, no familiar thump of the contactor, just nothin'. At first I wasn't sure what had happened, then I noticed that the light control was still on - the battery was dead. Without the 12v battery, the contactor won't close, the controller won't get operating voltage, nothing will work.

Now I sat for a minute and remembered something... When I first built the car I had the DC/DC converter connected directly to the pack, but it was constantly charging the battery and draining the pack, so I put in a relay so that the DC/DC converter was only active when the key was on. Now there was a small mechanical switch on the side of the relay that allowed you to activate it manually, I knew if I could get the relay to close, the DC/DC converter would provide the 12v needed to get the car to work.

I popped the hood and unscrewed the cover of the High Voltage Enclosure to access the relay, With a flash light I checked either side for the switch - there it was on the driver side - just below 2 high voltage leads. I   turned the ignition key on then dug a pen out of my laptop bag thinking it would safely flip the switch, but it wouldn't reach it. I thought about it for a minute, but I knew I had to use my finger to do this. I put my left hand behind my back (an old trick I learned from a TV repairman - you don't want to touch ground with your left hand when you get a jolt on your right and have the shock pass through your heart...) and with my right index finger reached between the wires and pushed the little plastic tab in.  It made a satisfying clack as the relay closed and the 12v from the DC/DC converter kept it that way.

I closed the hood and got behind the wheel. Everything looked normal now., As I turned the key into the start position I heard that familiar thump of the contactor and we were mobile.

It was dark and with the headlights on I knew eventually the 12v would drop pretty low and the controller wouldn't like it - maybe enough to stall out - so I took the streets home. Sure enough, about a mile from my door the "Check Engine" light came on solid but she continued to drive fine. I got her home and safely into the garage.

I can't think of another car that will start with a completely dead battery. I've compression started a lot of cars, but never with the battery completely dead. Even the old crank-start cars needed a battery for ignition, right? These electric cars are somethin' aint they?