Bosch EL-51253 - BAD unit, what to do with it ?

Hello all,

I purchased a BOSCH EL-51253 as-is (I was informed that it comes on, then displays "charger fault") from someone on ebay.. The charger is mint and I was given the box/manuals/mounting etc. . I figured I would see if I could fix it myself and if I couldn't I would take the j1772 cord and power input cables and buy an open EVSE and use those parts with that kit. But.. After seeing the BOSCH unit in person I would like to get it working as it appears to be a very nice unit.

The sticker on the side of the unit shows that it was Manufactured on June 17 , 2014 . I contacted BOSCH technical support and told them my story and I that I realized that the warranty was non-transferrable.. However, I would pay for the repair.. That's when I was told that BOSCH has no means to repair the product and that it's value is basically worthless.. The EVSE powers up, cycles through the different led colors, makes a lot of relay clicking noises, then settles on the "Red" color led which according to the manual is "EVSE fault" contact tech support at pluginnow.com.

By the way, this thing appears to have an Ethernet port on it. I could find no reference to the port in the manual, I assume that is to have several of these hooked up to a card reader/etc.

My plans for this was to set this up at my brothers business (about 55 miles away from my home) so I have a reliable charging location when traveling that direction. Kind of the first step in my own mini charging network and I will list it on chargepoint.org for others to use.

If you are planning on purchasing a level-2 charger, you may want to keep the non-reparability of BOSCH in the back of your mind.

So, what do I do with this thing ?.. is it a paperweight? Any techs out there want to try to fix it? I am open to any suggestions ..

Without Bosch's support for parts you are probably SOL. Take it apart and see if anything obvious is toasted. If not, I'd guess something on the logic board is defective. If you are handy with a soldering iron, I'd just gut it and buy a JuiceBox board. Reuse the relay and any other components that can be reused. I don't know much about Open EVSE. I suppose I'd look at cost/ease of it and compare to JuiceBox and go from there. If you decide you want to "dispose" of it I might be interested in it for parts.

If they aren't going to support or warranty it at all, it may be very difficult. Unless there is a problem with the current transformer or external wiring, I can't imagine how you would troubleshoot a problem on the circuit board, let alone fix it. My only suggestion would be to get one of the OpenEVSE kits like this:

http://store.openevse.com/products/openevse-basic-combo

That way you can reuse the contactor, case, cable, etc.

Just curious, why would the original e-bay seller just get rid of it instead of having it warrantied?

Open up your Google machine and type in Electric motor repair shops near me. Look for listings that also mention they fix motor controllers. Then call them, explain what you have and ask if they can repair such a thing. You can also Google Electronic repair shops near me. But you will have to filter out all the places that only fix cell phones, laptops and Xbox. Heck, you can call around to TV repair shops, if you can find one. And see if that one old guy who can fix anything has retired yet.

brogult said:

Just curious, why would the original e-bay seller just get rid of it instead of having it warrantied?

Click to expand...

That is a good question. If he had the same tech on the phone I did , he probably got tired of dealing with it and just cut his losses. They were less than helpful almost to the point of rude.

I did open it up and used a logic probe and multi-tester to see if anything obvious was wrong. Everything looked good, both fuses tested out OK, the relays tested OK, there is no smell of magic smoke and no areas on the board that are charred. if you didn't know any better the inside of the case looks factory fresh and brand new, it even smells new. as it should, since it was made 5 months ago.

Try to unseat and reseat every connector inside the unit. This often helps.

I learned this when buying old Hewlett-Packard test equipment on Ebay. One unit arrived nonworking. I spoke to a technican at the seller. He said:

Old HP equipment almost never has a real failure. Unseat/reseat, and tighten all connections. 99% that will fix it. if not, send it back for a refund.

Guess what...it worked. And that trick has worked several times after. Really good advice.

Also, after your best attempts to get it to work, you can probably part it out for more than you paid for it. The J1772 cord is worth quite a bit by itself.

When the charging station goes through its power up self-test, it checks a few things. Unfortunately when the Bosch fails a test it doesn't tell you which one. The station will check to see if power is present on the output of the relay when it’s not energized. If it finds power on the output of the relay it fails the test. Next it energizes the relay to do a power check. If power is not present it fails the test. It next de-energizes the relay and check to see if power has been removed. The station is also looking for ground faults all during the testing process. The station will also check the proximity pin on the charging cord for proper logic levels. So when the station is being powered up it should not be plugged into a vehicle. This could cause the power up self-test to fail.