How did your front suspension control arm failure cause the rear wheel to stick out like that?
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Another front suspension control arm failure
- Thread starter RDoc
- Start date
Model X purchased Sep 2016, 32k miles, suffered exact replica of rdoc's events. backing up slowly with full steering lock and bank follwed by scraping. Car is in the dealer now. I will ask for both sides to be done. This seems like a real safety issue. Great that the events have all happened at low speed but i suspect some combination of cornering plus a bump could generate the same forces at speed.
Richardbankd
Member
Clearly there is an issue. Today my control arm snapped while backing out of a parking spot. As you can see, the car is literally sitting on the tire. I only have 20,000 miles on my 2017 Model S. I had it towed to Tesla, but thankfully this happened at low speed.
Wow that is weird. Different than mine. If you look at the suspension detail photo there are three circular pieces in a triangle below the rubber CV joint boot. On my car the top one of those three circles, the shiny one, broke. I believe that is what most people have experienced. In your case the lower left circle seems to be broken i.e. the actual hub or wheel carrier. Somehow the ball joint came apart perhaps as a result. I cant see if the bolt holding the ball joint in the lower right circle is still in place pointing down to the ground, or if that broke. I have not heard of a wheel carrier breaking since the Morris Minors in the 60's.
Maybe Musk should smoke less pot and focus on putting out quality cars.
Wow. I cannot believe these suspension concerns have not been recalled.
I have a 2016 p90d with 7k miles on it. A few weeks ago I bumped into a wall pulling into a parking spot. It was try minor damage, just a few scratches. No issues driving or anything at all. Later that night I pulled into my driveway and turned the car around. When I went into reverse I heard a lot pop sound and the car wouldn't move. I get out to see what it was and my front left tire is pretty much sideways. I had it towed to a shop and I was quoted at 21k for the fix.
I haven't even talked to them yet. I figured since I bumped into the wall they wouldn't cover it. I honestly didn't even think to try it.
If it really was minor damage, it shouldn't be an issue. Tesla can't very well say that after a minor bump the suspension is expected to fail!
That's a fair point. Not to mention that the suspension and everything was fine until I put it into reverse. That seems to be a common trend from what I can tell.
Quite frankly, unless you can elaborate and break down that quote more, I don't believe for a second that cracked ball joint was quoted at $21K to fix.
dark cloud
Active Member
A "shop" ? Is that an authorized Tesla repair shop? And you didn't contact your insurance? Or Tesla? And this is your first post? How about posting the quote for us? Unless I see some pictures here I'm going to call this bullshit.
21k to replace the control arms?! The control arms are only $200 each. Sounds like there is a lot more damage than what is being told.
This just happened to me. I have a 2015 70D and front left control arm broke while traveling low speed on Friday (2 days ago). I posted pics on another thread. No accident, no pot holes, just normal driving.
Did Tesla mention what they consider an "older car"? Also, did they explain what changes were made to the part to ensure it's more safe than failed part? I'm a bit scared to continue driving the car, especially with my kids, so any info you have would be appreciated.
Bill D
Member
Nine months ago, my 2015 P90D's right Forelink cracked and Tesla replaced it.
After reading of other Forelink failures, I suspected a bad batch, so I asked them to replace my other one. They said there was no need to replace it and there was no recall, so I shouldn't worry.
Seven months later that other Forelink cracked exactly the same way. When they replaced it, they also replaced the steering knuckle, which they said was damaged. See the TMC thread entitled "Cracked Forelink?" for my photos and more info.
The second time, the service writer said they see many cracked Forelinks but they all seem to crack backing out of driveways and not on the highway. My thought was that he doesn't see the ones that fail on the highway because those cars are towed to the salvage yard instead of the service center
After reading of other Forelink failures, I suspected a bad batch, so I asked them to replace my other one. They said there was no need to replace it and there was no recall, so I shouldn't worry.
Seven months later that other Forelink cracked exactly the same way. When they replaced it, they also replaced the steering knuckle, which they said was damaged. See the TMC thread entitled "Cracked Forelink?" for my photos and more info.
The second time, the service writer said they see many cracked Forelinks but they all seem to crack backing out of driveways and not on the highway. My thought was that he doesn't see the ones that fail on the highway because those cars are towed to the salvage yard instead of the service center
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Did you or anybody ever jack up the car on this control arm? Or was it ever placed on a jack stand?
I'm suspicious that many of the failures result from improper jacking of the car on these aluminum parts. The crack caused by the jack is not visible at first and it can take months or years to break eventually. To an unsuspecting mechanic it looks plenty strong, but these arms are not made to jack up the car - see the warning in the manual: "The locations illustrated are the only approved lifting points for Model S. Lifting at any other points can cause damage. Damage caused by lifting Model S is not covered by the warranty."
Exactly, the suspension is actually designed to break in a controlled way in accidents to push the car away from the impact. Gone are the days were stuff is overbuilt and designed to never break as they found it caused other problems...
Are you seriously suggesting that several people in very different locations have jacked up their cars on the suspension components? That is EXTREMELY unlikely.
While I have no doubt that someone, somewhere, at sometime, has jacked up a car on a control arm, no one with the least passing knowledge of cars would ever do anything remotely like that. How would you even go about doing it? It would be much harder to do than just use the jack points, or if you're a complete kluge, the bottom of the body which would result in a very different failure.
The wheel's in the way you know?
Or, maybe you don't know what and where a control arm is on a vehicle.For that matter, have you ever actually jacked up a car yourself? Hmmm?
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