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Another front suspension control arm failure
- Thread starter RDoc
- Start date
DrHoon I would love to see some pictures of the flaws? Can you post some?
Based on the pictures in this thread detecting the crack pre-failure might be quite difficult without something to help. The simplest setup for this would be a die penetrant kit. The process at a high level is you clean the part, spray a penetrant oil on that contains a die, clean off the excess, and then put on a white powder that draws the penetrant out of the crack. The die makes it fairly obvious on the white background of the developer powder. The nicer setup is to use fluorescent penetrant and UV lighting. In my opinion this could likely be done on the car in your garage.
Dye Penetrants and Inspection Kits - Welding Chemicals - Grainger Industrial Supply
The other way it might be detected is elongation or distortion of the parts dimensions. The reality is measuring something like that on the car is going to be pretty hard though.
Based on the pictures in this thread detecting the crack pre-failure might be quite difficult without something to help. The simplest setup for this would be a die penetrant kit. The process at a high level is you clean the part, spray a penetrant oil on that contains a die, clean off the excess, and then put on a white powder that draws the penetrant out of the crack. The die makes it fairly obvious on the white background of the developer powder. The nicer setup is to use fluorescent penetrant and UV lighting. In my opinion this could likely be done on the car in your garage.
Dye Penetrants and Inspection Kits - Welding Chemicals - Grainger Industrial Supply
The other way it might be detected is elongation or distortion of the parts dimensions. The reality is measuring something like that on the car is going to be pretty hard though.
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Just passed inspection last night *phew*
Our statuary requirements for car dealers in NSW is that buyers get 3 months/5000km warranty. Im in ACT so need to have car inspected as interstate purchase. Failing registration inspection is clearly grounds for remedial work. The warranty insurance group have their own recommended workshops, ie not Tesla. I think this fine for non-specialist parts like suspension arms etc. It took 2 weeks for the part to arrive from Tesla's part warehouse in Melbourne.
You can clearly see the location of rubbing and how over time this could be catastrophic. Most other car companies recognise these sorts of problems and release parts or kits to remediate. The bushing kit from the UK workshop is the only third party kit that attempts to address this problem. The bushings themselves should be relatively common
Our statuary requirements for car dealers in NSW is that buyers get 3 months/5000km warranty. Im in ACT so need to have car inspected as interstate purchase. Failing registration inspection is clearly grounds for remedial work. The warranty insurance group have their own recommended workshops, ie not Tesla. I think this fine for non-specialist parts like suspension arms etc. It took 2 weeks for the part to arrive from Tesla's part warehouse in Melbourne.
You can clearly see the location of rubbing and how over time this could be catastrophic. Most other car companies recognise these sorts of problems and release parts or kits to remediate. The bushing kit from the UK workshop is the only third party kit that attempts to address this problem. The bushings themselves should be relatively common
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Thanks for the pictures. That is pretty easy to detect!
I thought you had the situation where the end was going to break out.
I thought you had the situation where the end was going to break out.
This is the AWD technical diagram from Tesla's parts microsite. Bolt/bushing 11 correlates with approximately with the wear location. I imagine the arrangement would be slightly different for my RWD 85.
Another front suspension control arm failure!
Driving down the motorway in the UK, a new smooth flat straight road, I touched the brakes to avoid a car cutting in, heard a sudden pop and then a crunch and grinding as I headed towards the crash barrier at 70mph! I managed to regain control by letting go the the brakes! I was very lucky that the car in front didn't slow down - it would have been a choice between the crash barrier & the car in front to hit! Fortunately It was late evening but still had a number of near misses getting across 5 lanes to the hard shoulder (lucky again that there was one)!
I then waited 9 hours on the side of the road to get recovered by the AA. The AA was convinced I must had hit something for this type of damaged to have occurred, once on the back of the recovery lorry he had a closer look and was shocked that he couldn't find any sign of any impact, nothing.
This happened at 4yrs & 11hrs old / 55,000 miles and just passed an MOT two weeks prior, so no sign of any damage then. Mine is a Nov 2015 85D VIN 96,xxx
My car is just out of warranty and the SC manager was quite rude & abrupt. They have accepted it in for inspection but no idea when they can take a look or how long this will take. They repeated 5+ times that my car is out or warranty. Extremely disappointed with how I have been treated. I'm lucky not to have injured myself or others, not even a sorry to hear your Tesla has let you down, nothing!
Critical suspension arms shouldn't fail so early on, considering this is known issue I expect Tesla to fix this FOC & replace the other front forearm as precaution. https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/2017/MC-10110741-9999.pdf
What do you think my chances are / anyone else had theirs replaced post warranty expiry? I think the UK Consumer ACT 2015 will help but hopeful I won't need to resort to such measures.
Driving down the motorway in the UK, a new smooth flat straight road, I touched the brakes to avoid a car cutting in, heard a sudden pop and then a crunch and grinding as I headed towards the crash barrier at 70mph! I managed to regain control by letting go the the brakes! I was very lucky that the car in front didn't slow down - it would have been a choice between the crash barrier & the car in front to hit! Fortunately It was late evening but still had a number of near misses getting across 5 lanes to the hard shoulder (lucky again that there was one)!
I then waited 9 hours on the side of the road to get recovered by the AA. The AA was convinced I must had hit something for this type of damaged to have occurred, once on the back of the recovery lorry he had a closer look and was shocked that he couldn't find any sign of any impact, nothing.
This happened at 4yrs & 11hrs old / 55,000 miles and just passed an MOT two weeks prior, so no sign of any damage then. Mine is a Nov 2015 85D VIN 96,xxx
My car is just out of warranty and the SC manager was quite rude & abrupt. They have accepted it in for inspection but no idea when they can take a look or how long this will take. They repeated 5+ times that my car is out or warranty. Extremely disappointed with how I have been treated. I'm lucky not to have injured myself or others, not even a sorry to hear your Tesla has let you down, nothing!
Critical suspension arms shouldn't fail so early on, considering this is known issue I expect Tesla to fix this FOC & replace the other front forearm as precaution. https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/2017/MC-10110741-9999.pdf
What do you think my chances are / anyone else had theirs replaced post warranty expiry? I think the UK Consumer ACT 2015 will help but hopeful I won't need to resort to such measures.
If yours is a Nov 2015 then the TSB you linked to doesn't pertain to your car. It is only for Model S and Model X vehicles built between approximately January 19, 2016 and May 25, 2016. (Either that or they need to adjust the date range to include more cars.)
Cape Coddess
2 Roths full - holding!
just started reading this thread so apologies if you've already answered this question. What is the defective part number please?
Sparks85D
I would advise you to point out the bulletin even though your car isn't (may be, I didn't check) listed on it. It is usually easier to get them to expand a bulletin when the problem is the same than convince them this is their problem with no history of failure. This would certainly imply that they need to expand the bulletin to cover a larger amount of VIN's.
My question is "Can it be detected before failure?" Usually these sorts of failures start as a small crack. Then the cycles grow that crack until it hits a critical minimum amount of material, and then it fails. A general inspection isn't likely to notice a very fine hair line crack. Any crack easy to see with your eyes would have already failed catastrophically in all but the rarest of scenarios. By seeing the failed part surfaces we can hope to see how much of a crack there was before the catastrophic failure, and where it was at. We can also attempt to estimate how long that crack was there. Assuming it is a crack propagation failure, then we could put in place an inspection program to detects cracks in these parts, and proactively replace them before failure. (maybe)
I will also offer that if that pressed in bushing is larger than it is supposed to be, or the inner diameter of that suspension link is undersized the loads placed on the aluminum by pressing it in place will force it to break much sooner than expected. So the part might be strong enough, but just the wrong size. I will also point out that aluminum and steel have different expansion rates at temperature, and it is starting to get cold, which may have caused this already weakened part to finally fail.
I really want to see what the broken faces of that metal look like. You can tell a lot about a failure by looking at the surfaces that failed.
Post 72, 116, and 172 in this thread has the pictures I am looking for, we need more examples of that.
I would advise you to point out the bulletin even though your car isn't (may be, I didn't check) listed on it. It is usually easier to get them to expand a bulletin when the problem is the same than convince them this is their problem with no history of failure. This would certainly imply that they need to expand the bulletin to cover a larger amount of VIN's.
My question is "Can it be detected before failure?" Usually these sorts of failures start as a small crack. Then the cycles grow that crack until it hits a critical minimum amount of material, and then it fails. A general inspection isn't likely to notice a very fine hair line crack. Any crack easy to see with your eyes would have already failed catastrophically in all but the rarest of scenarios. By seeing the failed part surfaces we can hope to see how much of a crack there was before the catastrophic failure, and where it was at. We can also attempt to estimate how long that crack was there. Assuming it is a crack propagation failure, then we could put in place an inspection program to detects cracks in these parts, and proactively replace them before failure. (maybe)
I will also offer that if that pressed in bushing is larger than it is supposed to be, or the inner diameter of that suspension link is undersized the loads placed on the aluminum by pressing it in place will force it to break much sooner than expected. So the part might be strong enough, but just the wrong size. I will also point out that aluminum and steel have different expansion rates at temperature, and it is starting to get cold, which may have caused this already weakened part to finally fail.
I really want to see what the broken faces of that metal look like. You can tell a lot about a failure by looking at the surfaces that failed.
Post 72, 116, and 172 in this thread has the pictures I am looking for, we need more examples of that.
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dark cloud
Active Member
Magna fluxing is probably still a thing, but not easy to do on the car. Die penetrant would be easy to do assuming the cracks start on the exposed metal and the parts aren't overly porous.
The one good set of pictures I have seen do indicate that a crack could be detected by die penetrant, and possibly with a VERY detailed visual inspection in the correct spot using magnification.
The three instances I have pictures of in this thread all seem to be breaking in the same two spots. It looks like the break closest to the arm is the part that cracks and the bit at the point at the far side of the circle snaps off once the crack propagation failure happens. The part that snaps is right at the point where it looks like the casting is poured so that metal may have some unusual properties compared to the rest of the part. I don't think it is actually the problem, just the weakest point once the chaos of failure starts to happen.
Add mine to the list. Tried to back out of my parking spot and heard the awful noise. Tire rubbing on wheel well. Could drive it home very slowly, but sounded terrible. Tesla Toledo was great, and fixed it within an hour of the tow truck delivery of my car. New fore link assembly.
dark cloud
Active Member
File one of these File a Vehicle Safety Complaint | Safercar.gov | NHTSA. And could you include the info/year of your model S?
I have to admit, knowing about this thread, quite often when backing up my car I try to do it abruptly with a quick steering input so that if it the link has a weak spot it will break in a place where safety is not a concern, and not at high speed on the corner of some mountain road. I shouldn't have this thought in my head when driving.
There has got to be enough instances of this part failing to warrant a recall by now.
It's probably to late, but try to get some pictures or the failed surfaces, and where it failed on the part. The more we have that show a consistent failure point and mode the more easily it can be argued.
Pl view my forelink pics. Mine failed without braking a piece first. It has opened up though. Been a lot of force to do this. When I have finished with it I may repair it with my Mig welder to take on long trips for roadside repairs.
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