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$3800 AC repair bill??
- Thread starter PhxGT
- Start date
Don85D
Member
If the compressor has failed then the entire system is contaminated with debris. I have replaced compressors in the past and recharged the system only to have it fail within a year. A wise AC tech told me that all components need to be changed for a lasting repair.
That might explain the cost.
That might explain the cost.
Tam
Well-Known Member
It looks like you got a bargain. In 2016, it costed $4,000:
"Dcp9142 | April 29, 2016
At 60,500 miles the air conditioner died. Turns out the DC-DC converter failed and fried the compressor. $4k to repair. Car is a 2013, vin 160xx."
ucmndd
Well-Known Member
Sometimes people drive a lot. It’s not that uncommon. My Dec 2016 car has been out of warranty for ~8 months now. I trust the OP knows what his mileage is.
Wat?! The compressor runs on 400v, not 12v.
Sure Tesla recommends replacing all the parts. But I didn't. I took a page from residential HVAC and carefully flushed each segment of the system with this special HVAC flush solvent from URI. Been running fine now for 1.5 years and will continue to do so.
PS - My problem wasn't burnout, it was mineral oil poisoning. I'd rebuilt my car from a major accident. I knew that you need synthetic non-conducting oil and that's what I used.
BUT my A/C gauges are old and I've had them since I owned an apartment complex before most of you were born, and these gauges had a film of mineral oil in them. A drop is all it takes to poison a system that has exposed coils carrying 400v. A carbon trail is eventually made. Took 6 months for the symptom to start appearing, slowly at first, then worse and worse.
The symptom? I started getting errors that 'resistance is too low between + and - battery'. This means HV. But it didn't know where. So I bought an insulation testing meter (very high resistance), and disconnected branches inside the HVJB one at a time and tested them. The circuit going to the front was at fault. Disconnected the DC-DC but still resistance under a megohm. Disconnected the heater, same. Disconnected the compressor and bingo.
Tam
Well-Known Member
It's not the first time that I heard D/C converter had to be replaced for A/C as well as separate cases of Heater problems.
I think Tesla A/C and Heater can use shore power if plugged in.
At home, that's 240V and at Supercharger that's 400V.
Different voltages so it might be logical that a separate D/C converter is needed for A/C and Heater and not the 12V battery D/C converter.
That's one of the big problems with tesla service. If any little thing goes wrong with something their default answer is to replace the entire unit instead of trying to repair it. Thus the cost of out of warranty repairs is astronomical
I bought the extended warranty based on reading the forum and threads here on repairs. You pretty much just need 1 or 2 repairs after the initial warranty expires to be worth it as each repair would be like $2000 to $5000.
gavine
Petrol Head turned EV Enthusiast
Can we say "air conditioning" instead of A/C when we are discussing D/C currents/converters? I'm getting confused over here.
From the 2 threads linked, it seems when the "air conditioning" compressor fails, it would also cause the converter to fail. And if it is the other way around.. when the converter fails, it will damage the air conditioning compressor. And since it takes too much time to figure out if one thing fails, the other is still in good working condition.. so they will just replace both for a bargain price of $3800 or around $4000.
