Ford Charge Station Pro weird glitch

[Tom Jensen]

This is one for the “Adversity is the Best Teacher” file. Or maybe the “Dumber than a rock” file.

Anyway, I have a FCSP. It works great. I had the charger handle (the plug) latched into the FCSP just like always when not using it. When I went to remove it so I could charge the truck, it would not come free. For all my tugging and wiggling, it would just not come loose. I pulled and twisted as hard as I felt I could without breaking something. Maybe a bit harder. I’d just gotten home from a 250 mile trip, I was tired, and the battery was very low. I really needed the charger to work. But no way would the handle come loose. Damn. Blood pressure up and rising.

My neighborhood had several lightning storms and power outages in the prior days. And the Ford app had been a bit glitchy. So, the genius in me concluded that, thanks to the power outages and voltage surges, and the peculiarities of the Ford app, the handle had become locked in place by some kind of security latch that I simply hadn’t noticed before. What to do?

I scoured this site, the FCSP manual, the app, and found nothing. That was a clue — indeed the critical clue — that I totally ignored. Instead, the genius in me concluded that I must be the only person who had yet to discover this problem and the solution was, of course, to take the FCSP apart to find a way to disengage the security latch that Ford hadn’t seen fit to document for some reason.

I did, in fact, shut off the electricity before slicing the patient open to get a look at the guts so I could undo whatever was causing me so much annoyance. Surely there would be a latch with a gizmo of some kind that I could manually reset. I would not be defeated.

Nope. Nada. Nothing except a circuit board and the backside of the black molded plastic panel that comprises the face of the FCSP, including the deep indentation that was gripping the handle of my charging cable. So, what the heck?

Well, I went back to twisting and pulling and lifting and pushing—and pushing inward did the trick. Out the handle came. What happened?

My theory is that, somehow, the cable leading to the handle got lifted (probably quite vigorously) upward which pushed the face of the plug inward and downward and jammed/pinched it between the sides and bottom of the indentation in the plastic. It was really trapped in a plastic vise. All my tugging and pulling had been while I was standing. The handle was at about waist level so I was pulling upward in all my maneuvering. That only drove the plug further downward into the plastic vice. The handle came loose when I pushed the lower end of the handle inward, which rocked/levered the face upward — pretty much the opposite of what one normally does to remove the handle from the FCSP.

So, fellow FCSP users, beware of the plug trap but have confidence you can defeat it. More important, beware of the seductive voice of the genius inside — who is probably just the 10 year-old kid you once were who loved taking things apart just because.

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[Heliian]

Congratulations, you are the second documented case of someone jamming their handle in the fcsp.

 

[Tom Jensen]

Congratulations, you are the second documented case of someone jamming their handle in the fcsp.

Whoa! I had no idea I wasn’t the OG plug jammer. I’m both disappointed at my loss of assumed glory and relieved to know I am not alone.

 

[TaxmanHog]

You are indeed number two of this episode, need to dig up the OG on this one is @rdr854

Plug Will NOT Disengage From FCSP FIXED POST 87

 

[Tom Jensen]

You are indeed number two of this episode, need to dig up the OG on this one is @rdr854

Plug Will NOT Disengage From FCSP FIXED POST 87

Thank you. I managed to not find this thread when I searched. I am impressed by the range and vigor of the proposed solutions. The dealer’s solution was essentially the same as what I did, only I was pressing down hard on the latch button while pushing down/inward on the handle. This would seem to be an easily fixed design issue. Of course, a human being has to be the immediate cause of the problem. In my case, a contractor moved some lumber that was stacked under the charger and snagged the cable while lifting a board. That was enough to jam the plug tight.

 

[chl]

The solution in the other one was:

The tech actually tried it the way I had initially tried, but used a smaller flat blade screw driver and a bit more brute force (I was worried about ripping the thing off the side of the house even though I should not have been).

Essentially, what he did was place the blade of the screw driver between the plug and the silver latch mechanism (you will have to look at the pictures that I posted earlier) and lifted/pried upwards and moved the screw driver around while pulling at the same time. He then had me restore power to the charger and plug it into the truck to make sure it would charge and release from the truck.


In the future, if you can, maybe just hang the cord and plug over the outside of the FCSP?

 

[The Weatherman]

Hanging it over the FCSP is fine, however, I would suggest you invest in a plug cover to keep the mud dippers from fowling up the receiver ports on the CCS charging handle.

 

[Tom Jensen]

The solution in the other one was:

The tech actually tried it the way I had initially tried, but used a smaller flat blade screw driver and a bit more brute force (I was worried about ripping the thing off the side of the house even though I should not have been).

Essentially, what he did was place the blade of the screw driver between the plug and the silver latch mechanism (you will have to look at the pictures that I posted earlier) and lifted/pried upwards and moved the screw driver around while pulling at the same time. He then had me restore power to the charger and plug it into the truck to make sure it would charge and release from the truck.


In the future, if you can, maybe just hang the cord and plug over the outside of the FCSP?

Thank you. I’d do exactly that (with a plug cover) if I were concerned about recurrence of the problem. Having inserted the plug into the FCSP many times and removed it without issue, I’m treating my episode as a fluke caused by a rare event (the upward jerking of the cable near the plug). My purpose in posting was to alert our fellow FCSP owners to a design feature of the charging station that can present a hassle. A solvable hassle, but still an unwelcome and surprising hassle.

 

[chl]

Hanging it over the FCSP is fine, however, I would suggest you invest in a plug cover to keep the mud dippers from fowling up the receiver ports on the CCS charging handle.

Yes, good point if outdoors esp. - I got one on ETSY made by a 3-d printer (@ Matts3dprintables) for $12.50 back when I bought my FCSP.

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