EV Charging Cable Conversion

We recently upgraded to a new (to us) Nissan Leaf after over 4 years of successful and ridiculously cheap motoring in our first one. The second generation Leaf uses a Type 2 AC connector at the car end whereas the first generation used Type 1, which is now basically obsolete. New cables are £100+ so I decided to convert our existing cable instead. I had bought this from a mate for £50 because at the time Nissan didn't actually supply a charging cable, expecting home and street chargers to have a tethered cable. Some do, most don't. Anyway, when we traded our old Leaf in, I kept the cable.

The dismantled Type 1 connector is shown above, ready for sale as spares on eBay to recoup some of the cost of the upgrade. 

A new Type 2 plug cost £35 delivered via AliExpress and arrived in about 10 days. It was complete with the necessary 220ohm resistor which is connected between the PP pin and the PE earth pin to tell the car the plug is in and to draw up to 22kw from the charger. I actually need to change this as the cable isn't rated for that current, but as the Leaf doesn't draw more than 7kw it isn't critical just now. Strangely the resistor in the old Type 1 plug was 220ohm which seems wrong.

The only trouble I had was soldering the thick mains cables into the big pins. My 25watt soldering iron wasn't up to the job so I went at it like I would copper pipe with flux, plumber's solder and a dinky blow torch. Careful soldering and good joints were made.

A detailed test of the wiring and resistance values using the Type 2 cable supplied with our new car as a reference and I was good to go. Plugged everything in and it worked perfectly.

One point to note if you are doing this yourself is that there is another 220ohm resistor at the charger end wired between PP and PE and the 2 PP pins are not connected directly together. That means there is an unused wire in the cable (grey in mine) and also that you will get a strange resistance reading of circa 440ohms between the 2 PP pins at either end. 

The cable is now semi-tethered to our home charging point with the old grab handle used to deter theft as the plugs won't pass through it (clever, eh?). Makes charging at home on half-price nighttime electricity a doddle.

UPDATE -

The old connector sold on eBay for £16 so the conversation cost about £20, a lot less than buying a new cable at £100 plus.