ranger avcon
Avcon input assy. removal and bypassed
A quick note to understand what happened to me ... I have a ranger ev that I purchased that is in great shape , It needed batteries as the ones that were in it would not pull a hill at all .............
It could possibly have ran on straight flat ground but if you hit a hill you would have to get out and push ............ or pull ............  time to change the batteries , so thus there is another section that deals with the upgrade to the odyssey batteries .......  but here is the avcon problem ...
 
  First off it charged about 3 times I then came home after a run of testing the batteries and pulled into the shop and plugged in the wall charger and it immediately flipped the breaker in my wall panel ........  I reset it and plugged in the charger again and it smelled funny and boom tripped the wall breaker again, I disconnected the on board charger and checked across the connector and I got a ohm reading of over 1500 ohms which meant that the two connectors were shorted across each other, so I took apart the avcon inlet just to find that they had poured the black bakelite material around the connectors so that you could not repair it ... so on to the next step ..
 
  I have been reading that there are some cities in oregon that are starting to put charging stations in so it seemed to me that it was time to make the ranger so you could drive up and use them since the avcon charger is not going to be available , there will be 110 volt and 220 volt connectors available ... thus I came up with the idea to bypass the avcon inlet and install the DS-50 inside the ranger ev so that everything is on board , it only makes sense to have the connector inside since the charger is already there ...........
 
So since the one on the ranger was not useable and I had brand new batteries it was time to do something and make it useful on top of it and not have to buy a replacement inlet since they are expensive and they are not the future ............
 
  Here is what I did to my ranger ev ..........................................................
This is the door to the culprit a burned out avcon input assy is behind this door .............
 
I cut the magnetic switch wires and the red wire which goes to the blue wire to the ds-50 wall charger to start the charging system ...  the magnetic switch is what tells the ranger ev that it has a plug in connected to the ranger and disables the ranger so you can not drive off with anything plugged into it ...........................
 
I pulled the original cable from the on board charger to the front avcon inlet assy out on the floor and put a new 4 conductor end on the cable to get it ready for the conversion .....
 
Plugged back in the newly changed cable with end and ran it in front of the old charger and set it in place getting ready for the other end to be plugged into it .........................
 
butt splice the wires and add the blue wire to the connectors , run the 2 wires from the magnetic switch to the ds-50 box relay .........................
 
this is where we have the new connectors and the cables come together from the ds-50 wall charger box and the cable moved from the charger .....................
 
Now it is time to cut the avcon connector off of the end of the cable from the DS-50 wall charger since we no longer need it for the new installation of being on board now ...............
 
Run the power cables, the power wire from the 220 volts goes through the door .... the charger power wire needs to go up the frame up under the hood and then plugged into the power cable that was built with a 4 conductor end added and a 4 conductor end added to the wire that was originally the avcon end that was cut off and put together ........................
 
I added a relay to the DS-50 wall charger , this relay is ignited by plugging in the 220 volts to the wall charger ds-50 unit , I use a 110 volt relay coil and hook it across 1 leg of the 220 volts , this ignites both the magnetic switch wires that used to be in the avcon input assy. and the blue switch wire that tells the ranger ev and the wall box that they are plugged together .........
This makes it so as soon as you plug in the 220 volts it ignites the plug in light on the dash and makes it so you can in no way at all drive the vehicle with the power plugged in ... this needs to be done as it is a safety issue and it needs to be kept in use and in place ...............
 
I added a switch inside the door as in order for the system to work correctly after you plug in the main power cord , this ignites the relay that was added which connects both the original magnetic switch and the small blue wire from the wall charger that ignites everything to charge , I added the switch in line of the blue wire because the system wants everything else to be plugged in before the blue wire makes connection or the wall charger will error , by adding the switch You can plug everything in then just flip the switch and the charging will start ... when it is all done flip off the switch this disconnects the 220 volts from the ranger first then you can unplug the power without having any power being applied to the ranger ev ..................
 
After running the power cable out through the gas door ( a great place to hide a connector instead of the neck of a gas tank) ... I use the 30 amp 4 conductor twist lock plug even though I only need to use 3 conductors of it , the reason is that the future power may be a 4 wire 220 volt unit and in this way it will be ready for it .................... I made it so there would be a few feet of cable to come out of the door to make it easier to hook everything up .......
 
There you have it a conversion away from the avcon connector and on board to use any 220 volt connector that may be available in the future !!!