[f30paul]

Hi,

I had the dreaded red ring of death around the charging port the other day, a sign that something potentially expensive had gone wrong. Although under warranty I’d still have had to pay a £250 excess for any work.

however this afternoon I managed to borrow a mates charging cable and everything worked fine - blue charging light - swapped back to mine, immediately red again.

question is, there’s many of these available on eBay, and many different revisions too. I’m probably correct in thinking any Delphi charger 3 pin to type 2 10A should be fine? BMW don’t really brand these as their own, and many are shared with Mercedes and Audi etc…

thanks in advance for any advice - especially if you’ve got a 330e (f30 or g20)

paul

 

[Spiny]

I take It this is a granny cable, having a 3pin plug one end, a brick in the middle and a type 2 plug on the other end. In which case Screwfix do them at a reasonable price. Any granny lead will do but stick to a good one not a dodgy chinese no name one.
I'll find a link

Evse at screwfix​

​

Do consider getting a proper evse as they are are designed for continuous use not for the occasional visit to granny, hence the name.​

 

[hunnymonster]

Sounds like you're describing a Granny Charger... Like this Masterplug 10A 2.3kW Mode 2 Type 2 Socket Electric Vehicle Charging Cable 5m

 

[Charlas]

Hi,

I had the dreaded red ring of death around the charging port the other day, a sign that something potentially expensive had gone wrong. Although under warranty I’d still have had to pay a £250 excess for any work.

however this afternoon I managed to borrow a mates charging cable and everything worked fine - blue charging light - swapped back to mine, immediately red again.

question is, there’s many of these available on eBay, and many different revisions too. I’m probably correct in thinking any Delphi charger 3 pin to type 2 10A should be fine? BMW don’t really brand these as their own, and many are shared with Mercedes and Audi etc…

thanks in advance for any advice - especially if you’ve got a 330e (f30 or g20)

paul

When did you get the car, as BMW recalled a bunch of the granny chargers, mine for the 225xe was replaced under warranty etc. Worth a call to dealer, or contact BMW Genius team and see if your serial is covered by the recall.

 

[f30paul]

Thanks for all the helpful posts, yes I was referring to the 3pin charger supplied with the car.

Just checking I’m safe to use these third party chargers - essentially no different to the ones supplied original equipment? They all do the same thing surely?

 

[Spiny]

The evse's are made to follow a standard and all do the same job. There are quality differences and some from ebay and amazon are distinctly dodgy.

 

[Charlas]

Thanks for all the helpful posts, yes I was referring to the 3pin charger supplied with the car.

Just checking I’m safe to use these third party chargers - essentially no different to the ones supplied original equipment? They all do the same thing surely?

No difference at all, they all work the same as long as it's a 3.6kW 10amp type 2.

 

[80698]

3.6kW 10amp

You defnitely won't be getting 3.6kW from a granny cable, especially at 10 Amps. Realistically expect about 2.2kW out of such a cable. A Little less if you take into account losses and go by what is actually making it into your battery.

 

[Charlas]

You defnitely won't be getting 3.6kW from a granny cable, especially at 10 Amps. Realistically expect about 2.2kW out of such a cable. A Little less if you take into account losses and go by what is actually making it into your battery.

Yeah my bad, meant 2.3 not 3.6... Middle of cooking and wasn't really thinking, 3.6kW is from 16a 😂

 

[TJEV]

Some granny chargers pull 13, but these tend to be the dodgy ones. Great if your garage is separate to your house though, they’re much faster.

 

[HandyAndy]

Evconnectors.com sell these, and theirs can be set to 6/8/10/13/16A ! They have a swappable plug now, and can have a Commando plug on, hence the 16A setting. My Ampera maxed out at 14A, and I did try the 16A setting on that for a couple of minutes just to see if it would work - it did! I only had the 13A plug on!

But it's not a great idea to use these things for heavy use, they can & do wear out as they use relays rated 20A mostly, and these aren't as rugged as the commercial grade contactors used in decent EVSEs such as Viridians. The grannies have zero ventilation, so a lot of thermal cycling which stresses the PCB inside. I've had one PCB explode & damage the car's charge controller after 4 years hevy use. So again best used at the lowest current you can.

 

[DanPaul]

Excuse my possible stupidity... Why do you have to pay a £250 excess?!

 

[f30paul]

Just to finish off the thread, was going to pull the trigger on the Masterplug one, but at the last minute a new eBay listing for a Delphi charger came on at a decent price for a lightly used model. Collect it this Wednesday. Just a few more days to travel around on petrol only, and I’m finding out how much of a massive difference it is when you’ve got even a small battery phev for local journeys. Usually I use no fuel at all each weekend, today most journeys are seeing sub-40s!

thanks for the contributions

 

[f30paul]

DanPaul - it’s the bmw insured warranty, highly recommended with no quibbles about claims, but it works like insurance - I chose 250 excess to lower the monthly payment, there were also 100 and 0 excesses but each increases the cost. No way was I going to own a bmw, even a hybrid, out of warranty without cover!

 

[f30paul]

HandyAndy - since finding out about this fault not lying with the cars onboard electrics, ive been wondering why an otherwise solid charger decided to give up at 56% overnight. Something gone inside it? Funnily enough the charger leds show a red dot inside the car icon, all other lights are green, yet the car cannot communicate with it and errors out… just wondering from an electrics point of view. Quite often if the onboard converter-inverter fails it tends to trip the main fuse (or so ive heard)??

 

[DanPaul]

DanPaul - it’s the bmw insured warranty, highly recommended with no quibbles about claims, but it works like insurance - I chose 250 excess to lower the monthly payment, there were also 100 and 0 excesses but each increases the cost. No way was I going to own a bmw, even a hybrid, out of warranty without cover!

Ah I didn't realise your car was out of its manufacturers warranty.

 

[HandyAndy]

Might be a wire has broken? There's a very slender low-voltage signal wire going from EVSE to the car, this is set to 12V at the EVSE. When plugged into car's socket a resistor pulls it down to 9V, EVSE can see that, even if car's powered off. When car wants power it switches in another resistor to pull wire down to 6V, EVSE then closes contactors so 250V appears, and EVSE puts a square wave signal onto this CP wire to tell the car how much current is available.

If something's gone wrong with that wire or the control associated with it, the voltages measured may be out of spec & that could trigger the indicated fault.

I did repair one BMW charger where Owner had used it in the rain. I took it apart, put it on boiler for 24 hours to dry it out & it came back to life! I can only assume a bit of damp got in & upset it somewhere.

 

[hunnymonster]

Ah I didn't realise your car was out of its manufacturers warranty.

I imagine to stop him using (or trying to use) the warranty for consumables - even a denied claim costs to process. (I'd argue they should factor claim processing in to their business model but if they whack on a £250 excess, they can be cheaper than the competition who don't, and since most people don't read the small print...)

 

[f30paul]

Yes I’d only use it for the big ticket items, of which there are quite a few, but if the cost was close to 250-300 at the dealer, it would be cheaper at an Indy!