Be careful if you attempt this, you’re working with 240v electronics.

A few months ago I noticed my EVSE started buzzing really loudly every time I would plug in to charge. A few days after that it stopped charging entirely. It’s a Clippercreek, that is 8+ years old, I can’t complain too much but I can’t exactly afford $300-ish for a replacement, so I decided to try to replace the relay myself.

I opened it up and found that the big problem with doing this is that the relay has 6 large contact studs that are all soldered into the circuit board. I can only heat one up with a soldering iron at a time, and the one cannot pull out because the other five are still holding the relay onto the board.

So, I got a hacksaw blade and slid it behind the relay and cut off each leg one by one. You have to be very careful doing this to avoid cutting anything else, but I did get them all cut off without much damage to any of the other circuitry. After that I can melt the solder and remove each stud one by one.

I bought the exact brand/model relay for $40 off Amazon. Probably could have got it cheaper elsewhere if I was willing to wait.

The next problem is that all those holes in the circuit board are full of solder that block the new relay from going in. I found that there is such a thing as “desoldering wick” which I used to absorb the melted solder out one by one. Then the new relay could be inserted and the six studs soldered in one by one.

And it works!