Good afternoon! All a V2l cable which I bought on AliExpress no, not on AliExpress it was actually on Alibaba.com Um, some time ago before I knew the details of the vehicle to load cable for my mg Zs EV and I never used this because while it was in transit and it took quite a long time to get to me, we found the details of the resistor that you need on the Pp pin 470 Ohms. Now this one is actually a 2K so this would never have worked and as I took it apart and changed the resistor and that's kind of what I'm doing now I'm looking at it seeing how it's built. I'm going to have to change that resistor from 2K to 470 ohms because that's what the MG cars use. So I've taken this apart and it wasn't easy.

Um, I'll show you why. So this type 2 connector which appears to be really a sealed Hollow tube. There is a seam line down there, but I think it might be ultrasonically welded and in fact this piece which takes the pins is a push fit in there and it's a very tight push fit. Oh, it's all falling off my desk.

Um, it had this rubber washer which is now a very odd shape. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to reuse that in any meaningful way. so you can see on here there are two kind of molded um, lugs. Now they don't press in or anything, they're just there and they fit into these little recesses in here.

but it's all very tight. I can't do it now because uh I've got all these wires dangling out. I'm going to cut all these because um I want to completely rewire this new resist. a new cable, New everything.

So in fact, what I might do now is cut these wires so that I can demonstrate the various pieces of this in a rather better way. So let's cut Live neutral. Earth These Cutters have gone a bit bad at the tip. They don't cut terribly well, right? All these pins are falling out.

that is the resistor. and they've done it in an odd way. They did it so that the resistor was sort of buried in that hole and I don't know whether this is particularly heat transmissive plastic. Um I don't think that resistance gets particularly hot I Suppose it's quite a neat place to put it, but uh yeah, that's where the resistor was.

Now that goes to, oddly. um, a thermal cut out which is just poked into one of the unused lives because these connectors have seven pins, two control signals Earth neutral live and two more lives for live live, One live, two live, three which are four, three phase. Uh AC Now my car doesn't output. uh, it doesn't take three phase in.

It doesn't put three phase out so I'll never use that. And in fact, the pins aren't fitted. Um, so let's Uh yeah. so it goes through this.

um, thermal cut out which is just pushed into one of the unused holes that connects uh PP Proximity Pilot to that resistor through the thermal. Uh, cut out to Earth or what they call PE protective Earth So on the basis that I might reuse that thermal cutter, I'll cut that close to the connector as possible. So that's the Earth pin. Uh, that's the thermal cut out.

I'll cut this resistor because I'm not reusing this resistor and that's the shell which screws into here and slides in to hold all the pins in. and then three screws go into there so it's fully self-contained and then this thing I can get this wire out now. Yes, this assembly. perhaps I'll take that out.

Um, pushes into here and it is a very, very tight fit. I Think courtesy of those two um, little raised bumps either side that makes it a very tight fit. I'm not even sure whether that would need a seal I Don't think I'd ever use this overnight although I might use it in the rain, but that is really very tight. You can see from all the destruction around here and that it took quite a bit of effort to work that out.

Uh, broken a small screwdriver in the process. Yeah, that's a tight interference fit in this handle. and then on this cable. we've got various clamps.

There's a clamp thing there. There's a rubber thing there which fits into the smaller end of the Type 2 plug. There's another ring which clamps up against that ring. Some screws go in there.

There's the bung which you put over the end of the connector to keep the water out. And then they also came up with this. They've packed out. um, this grommet with a piece of wire sleeving.

It looks like it is. Yes, it is. It's uh, some sleeving from. um uh I think uh.

car charger cable. possibly three phase because it looks like there's more than just the three large wires in there. I think there are five in there. uh, possibly.

plus the two small control wires. And then they've tipped hot glue into the end of the bun and packed it out with bits of cut off wire, presumably to use a bit less hot glue. And then they've actually painted the or sharpied the hot glue so it looks black at the end. I Mean it's it's an interesting uh idea.

The seller was very good, very helpful. um was very Keen to make sure I got the right end for UK plugs. This is a proper one as well. not some sort of multi uh plug type with switches.

um, but it was expensive. This was about a hundred pounds 135 dollars it was. but at the time I knew nothing about how V2l worked and I just wanted to have a look inside. But as I say while this thing was in transit, all the details emerged.

And so when this arrived, I didn't really need it. but now I want to repurpose it and make it into another V2l cable. Now, the high current connectors which are live neutral and Earth have all been crimped with a high pressure crimper, but they've also been soldered which is a bit odd. And I'm just wondering whether they repurposed an old connector that had previously been crimped and then just soldered these wires in.

So I'm very interested to see whether um, these wires are actually crimped or whether they're just dipped into a bit of solder on the end of these pre-crimped connectors to get these heated up enough to get those wires out. I'm going to get them very hot, which means taking these little Uh seals off, otherwise they're going to burn. Now for a charging cable, you absolutely would not solder these high current connectors. you'd crimp them.

Um, but for a V2l cable where you know the current's going to be limited. Uh, soldering is probably okay, and since this is me and my cable and no one else will ever use it, I'm going to solder it and just see how we get on. The first thing I want to do is try and unsolder what's already in there and see whether these wires were actually crimped in or whether they've just been soldered into previously used connectors. So I'm just warming up the hot Ryobi iron the one that gets to 480 degrees too hot for a sponge.

So I use the shards of metal. Probably just steel coated in a orangey color so that it looks like, uh, brass probably isn't brass, right? Let's see if we can get some heat on here. Is it fine? Hot? Yeah, it is hot. Some lay some heat down on here and see if I can start to melt the pile of solder and see if this comes out.

There's a lot of crackling, so there must be a lot of flux on here. Is this going to come out? Or has it actually been crimped in? Possibly crimped because that isn't pulling out? So yeah, maybe they did crimp and then solder. I'm not quite sure why they would do that. This is, uh, lead free solder.

It's just not flowing. Horrible stuff. but it's the law so you've got to use it. Not when you're just doing a project in your own home though, you can use the old leaded solder.

Yeah, that's just not wetting or flowing at all. It's horrible stuff, right? Can I pull this out of its crimp if I rotate it around these pliers? Uh, it's all not being held very well by this crop clip and that's going to be hot now, isn't it? That's not that hot? Yeah, it's difficult to apply the Heat and apply the force and everything all at the same time. Yes, I Think that probably was crimped because there's enough length of wire which I have managed to rotate. can do it on camera because it's just too difficult rotate under heat and pull it out of the crimp.

So if these fairly thin wires were crimped into these connectors, it wasn't a very good job. And I can just understand why they soldered on top of that. I'm just going to with my new one I'm just going to solder them and accept that I'm going to be putting well. I'm only going to run this thing up to two kilowatts.

so I'm only going to be putting 8 amps through these connectors. Solder should be adequate right? In the end, it proved too difficult to pull the wires out with these hot, and so in the end, I've just drilled them out, filled the missile, drilled them back out again with a three mil drill. I've got a reasonable depth in there, probably four or five millimeters. Uh, so that I can solder my new wires in.

Yes, I mean you're not meant to reuse crimp connectors, but I think I can probably get away with it.