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Any place to recommend for adjustable camber/toe arm installation in Boston area?
- Thread starter lxgw
- Start date
I haven't been yet, but I'm planning to reach out to these guys in Amesbury if/when I decide to do the camber adjustement. I have 3k miles on my '24 and for the moment I'm holding off until I can see visible inner wear. I
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Thanks.
I overheard that they change to adjustable arms for S/X now, don't they?
I'm always amazed how Elon could on one side claim he's so first-principle minded, while in the same time fell for this un-scientific 0-60 mph time concept on EV and knowingly ruined the S/X suspension for that.
Will check them out and update here.
I overheard that they change to adjustable arms for S/X now, don't they?
I'm always amazed how Elon could on one side claim he's so first-principle minded, while in the same time fell for this un-scientific 0-60 mph time concept on EV and knowingly ruined the S/X suspension for that.
Will check them out and update here.
Um. Back when my M3 developed a bad case of the squeaks last year, I thought to myself, "This is the suspension! There's nothing particularly EV about a suspension!" and took the car to a local tire shop/service center down here in NJ whose work I had trusted in previous years.
They correctly diagnosed the issue as being the ball joint. A stethoscope was involved. They had two comments:
I set it up with Tesla. They didn't charge me for the labor, just the parts. A mobile tech came to the house and, right there in the driveway, swapped out the upper control arms on both front wheels. Pretty odd looking at the wheels canted over at a funny angle, just like the car had been in some kind of major accident, but the guy got it all back together sans problems. And the squeaks were gone.
Implication: Any competent mechanic can do this? And, if you're sweating wheel alignment, any place that can do that might be preferable.
They correctly diagnosed the issue as being the ball joint. A stethoscope was involved. They had two comments:
- Not the kind of part they carried in stock.
- If it was a warranty repair, They Were The Wrong People
I set it up with Tesla. They didn't charge me for the labor, just the parts. A mobile tech came to the house and, right there in the driveway, swapped out the upper control arms on both front wheels. Pretty odd looking at the wheels canted over at a funny angle, just like the car had been in some kind of major accident, but the guy got it all back together sans problems. And the squeaks were gone.
Implication: Any competent mechanic can do this? And, if you're sweating wheel alignment, any place that can do that might be preferable.
Thank you for sharing your experience and thoughts!
Point 1 touches the essence of the issue. Tesla suspension story has been retold by many people for many times. Many people in the past have the experience that alignment shop got puzzled why the data all in spec but customer was so close to disaster and no one could see it from outside. I simply want a shop who has gone through this myth set by Tesla that I don't need to persuade the technician to trust me.
The still lagging behind Tesla service sys. continues to be an obstacle for its products to perform and show the world what EV could do. The real risk for Tesla overall is: there could be a point, when EV do more for Tesla, than what Tesla do for EV.
Thanks again.
Um. Guess I should have mentioned the following:
The SO and I decided to drive her 2021 MY to Dallas and back for the eclipse. So, in the run-up to going, we thought, “Maintenance!”.
Turns out that the wheels hadn’t been rotated in quite some time. And, doing a quick web search, discovered that somebody-or-other suggested getting the wheel alignment checked.
The local AAA, it turns out, does both. And the wheel alignment actually was out a little: the toe was a bit off front and back. So had them do that, too, about $150 for a four-wheel alignment.
So, places that can do alignments can do Teslas, I guess.
Thank you and you are not wrong at all. That's the way it should be.
Just one thing, if you joined the party some years earlier, (actually not so long ago if we look back), you probably would have run into some shops refuse to service any Tesla at all, and there also was a time, some technicians refused to touch any EVs.
Time dose fly, on this specific part, for the good.
To me, I have gone through the learning curve that watching technicians (from Tesla or not) to go through their learning curves, and simply want a peace of mind if I don't have time to do it myself. People do learn fast, especially after many Tesla technicians left and spread out now.
We will see. Thanks for the advice.
The M3 that I spoke about was a 2018 model year M3, bought in 9/2018. So, while not the oldest old codger on this forum, I'm up there a bit.
Initial problems with getting tires repaired had to do with the foam on the inside of the tire; that was newish, put in there by Tesla to cut down on road noise. And a fair number of technicians hadn't seen that before and didn't know what to do about it. Nowadays, most tires don't come with that; and the techies have figured out that they can cut out the foam around a hole and then glue it back into place, no problemo
At one point I did take that car into the place where I had gotten new tires from for a wheel rotation, three or so years back. The guy told me that getting the wheel covers off took a special wrench, which he claimed they didn't have. That got a raised eyebrow from me.
Went back into the parking lot, kneeled down and took a good hairy look at the wheel cover which, at that time, I hadn't had any reason to pull off. And didn't see any kind of lock. So, reached out, snagged the wheel cover with a pair of Mark I hands, and jerked. Off it came.
The funny part was that, unbeknownst to me, the service manager had seen me kneel down and had walked into the parking lot to see what I was doing, just in time to see the wheel cover come off. He more or less slapped his forehead and put the car in for service.
There's some excuse: There were, at the time, variants of Teslas that did have a special tool. But not that car.
The other bit that got to people were the hockey pucks that go into the lift points. Turns out that, while nice and semi-guaranteed to make sure that the car doesn't fall off a lift point (important when at the side of a road), they're not required when using a shop, four-way lift, especially if said lift has a rubber pad on the bottom, so long as the jack lift points are square on the reinforced bits on the frame. I think that, at the time, there had been a number of cases where the shop guys weren't careful and put a hole in the battery pack, which is bad karma. The shop people, or at least those who work on Teslas, are a lot less concerned these days. Witness that AAA shop that I mentioned. They didn't have the hockey pucks - but they know how to put a Tesla on a lift.
Initial problems with getting tires repaired had to do with the foam on the inside of the tire; that was newish, put in there by Tesla to cut down on road noise. And a fair number of technicians hadn't seen that before and didn't know what to do about it. Nowadays, most tires don't come with that; and the techies have figured out that they can cut out the foam around a hole and then glue it back into place, no problemo
At one point I did take that car into the place where I had gotten new tires from for a wheel rotation, three or so years back. The guy told me that getting the wheel covers off took a special wrench, which he claimed they didn't have. That got a raised eyebrow from me.
Went back into the parking lot, kneeled down and took a good hairy look at the wheel cover which, at that time, I hadn't had any reason to pull off. And didn't see any kind of lock. So, reached out, snagged the wheel cover with a pair of Mark I hands, and jerked. Off it came.
The funny part was that, unbeknownst to me, the service manager had seen me kneel down and had walked into the parking lot to see what I was doing, just in time to see the wheel cover come off. He more or less slapped his forehead and put the car in for service.
There's some excuse: There were, at the time, variants of Teslas that did have a special tool. But not that car.
The other bit that got to people were the hockey pucks that go into the lift points. Turns out that, while nice and semi-guaranteed to make sure that the car doesn't fall off a lift point (important when at the side of a road), they're not required when using a shop, four-way lift, especially if said lift has a rubber pad on the bottom, so long as the jack lift points are square on the reinforced bits on the frame. I think that, at the time, there had been a number of cases where the shop guys weren't careful and put a hole in the battery pack, which is bad karma. The shop people, or at least those who work on Teslas, are a lot less concerned these days. Witness that AAA shop that I mentioned. They didn't have the hockey pucks - but they know how to put a Tesla on a lift.
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