I finally got around to fitting an OBD2 connector on to the NOCO fused lead lead instead of the battery clamps. There is just enough wire between fuse-holder and OBD2 terminal if one carefully cuts the wire where it was originally spot welded to the clamp, and so can use the whole original length!
Pic of the connector bits after its one month journey from China, note that ground pins 4,5 are commoned on the connector pcb, and they also make almost two millimetres early compared with the rest of the pins (a good ESD safety point.)
My five year old “2.5W” Solar panel kit as supplied by Noco. However, when I first tested it back then, I measured less than 0.3Watt (10mA overcast to 30mA midday sun in UK winter). Today outside in the sun aiming it carefully for maximum, I got 100mA S/C current, no fear of boiling a battery with this one, but it may well offset the dark current quite well.
And the inside of the new connector applied to the newly re-purposed lead to allow the solar panel to charge the car from inside, now fitted with a hard-to-find 1A fuse instead of the original 10A. Pin 4 ground, pin 16 battery.
And here it is still charging the Mazda3 after five days, rain having washed away the thick coating of pollen
SWMBO wants to use this car tomorrow so this evening I cleaned the pollen off the windows, checked the battery had sufficient volts (12.55V) and went to pull out the OBD2 plug.
No go. What…?
The latch bar was gripping the immovable latch bulge on the socket. A small screwdriver allowed release, but I have now modded the plug so it does not have such a strong grip.
