long story short...I now hate my tesla after 8 trips to the SVC for different failures including electrical. I have also had three door handles shear off internally. One other member said he turned off the auto present handles to try and reduce wear and tear on the mechanism. What would turning off the auto present handles do exactly? How do you get in the car then?
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Auto present door handles
- Thread starter Hornedfrog1
- Start date
So it’s an advantage to make them stop presenting when you walk by the car to get something out of the garage lol. Sounds like it saves a few presentations but not many in the grand scheme of things. Does anyone turn off their auto present?
Yeah, i turned mine off. Personal situation is car stays in driveway, live in small town so usually don't lock the car. Every time I walk near car to go to garage, gardening,etc. I don't want the handles coming out and dome lights coming on. I don't need the auto-present really and this works fine. When am somewhere I want to lock car, jsut use the keyfob to lock and to unlock upon return.
Correct. You can either use the fob, or you can select a separate function on your Control screen "Walk-Away Door Lock". If that is also hit as ON, then the doors will lock whenever you walk away with the fob in your pocket. But if it is not ON, and you walk away, the doors will not lock and the car remains unlocked. (after a few minutes the handles will automatically close, but the car remains unlocked. Just press any handle and they all 4 pop out). And assuming Auto Present Handles is not turned on, every time you walk past your near your car, the handles won't pop out at you. The point is there are two different settings. 1 - Auto Present Handles, and 2 - Walk-Away Door Locks. One fucntion determines if the handles pop out at you automatically every time you are within range even if you choose to keep the car unlocked, the other actively locks or unlocks the car whenever the fob becomes within range.
I always leave mine on auto present. And yes, the car always lets me know when I am doing other things around it. It is nice to have the choice of to auto or not.
I have always wondered when you put pressure on them in the closed position if it flexes the gear negatively over time. I have no technical information to base that on, just a hunch.
I know that the gear can be manufactured to be more robust. I think that is what they are doing as of late. If not, we need to get them on the stick!
I have always wondered when you put pressure on them in the closed position if it flexes the gear negatively over time. I have no technical information to base that on, just a hunch.
I know that the gear can be manufactured to be more robust. I think that is what they are doing as of late. If not, we need to get them on the stick!
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Can you have your SC replace all your door handles with the newest version since you've had so many failures?
I don’t know if you’ve seen my other post where I talk about it but there are two roller mechanisms per door handle. Think of it as a ball and socket joint. I was told by the tech that It is the weak link and when they go out it is often because the bottom half of both sockets have sheared off. When the tech replaced my third one I asked if tesla had improved these and he said yes, they are being made stronger and tougher. BUT they are only being put into new cars. They won’t allow them to be put into cars already on the road because as he put it, they have to use and get rid of the old ones first. I already had to crawl through the back door to open the drivers door multiple times. Sounds like I get to look forward to doing it again. (Notice the lack of an LOL there. Ggggrrrrrrrr.)
mrElbe
Active Member
Hmm, 3 years and over 100,000 miles and no problems. Seems my car has a handle on it.
I have a pile of door handle mechanisms for sale but no gears or handles. Anyway... I had an odd thing happen yesterday. The door popped when I approached it but not all the way.
So I attempted to open but it was on safety latch. I pushed it closed and tried to reopen fully with a slight normal tug. It would not open so I had to climb in over the passenger seat. I opened it from the inside and normal operation has proceeded ever since.
When it happened, I may have been able to go where the car couldn't detect me and start over, and it may have reset itself without climbing over the passenger seat.
So I attempted to open but it was on safety latch. I pushed it closed and tried to reopen fully with a slight normal tug. It would not open so I had to climb in over the passenger seat. I opened it from the inside and normal operation has proceeded ever since.
When it happened, I may have been able to go where the car couldn't detect me and start over, and it may have reset itself without climbing over the passenger seat.
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jeffro01
Active Member
Great question. Existing cars get the old version while new cars get the new version and they won’t replace until it’s an actual failure. I inquired about that the first time because both my passenger and driver front doors went out one day apart from one another. I was told that they don’t do any preemptive maintenance. The unit has to have failed to be replaced. Trying to open the front door when neither front door handle will present really sucks let me tell you.
Hi Jeff. If I had a patient come in with a balance problem and say to me, “fix it.” I wouldn’t know what to do. I would need details as to what’s going on and what started the problem. It’s the same thing with my car. I’m ultimately hoping to find someone on here who is experiencing the same problems as I am or feeling as frustrated as I am, and either by their experience or by putting our heads together, figuring out how to maybe, just maybe, start enjoying my car again. We learn by asking questions, talking to others with more information than ourselves, and by trial and error. During trial and error we hope that it doesn’t blow up in our face and create huge problems for us. I am in the “finding subjects for my research” phase by talking to others, asking questions, and posing my delima to others to see if anyone can help me. Posing my problem in multiple locations allows me to have a much broader audience in the hopes of obtaining useful information. By giving readers all of the background information with my car I am only increasing my chances of finding others with the same problems and thus increasing my chances of having some type of positive outcome. This post is actually based directly off of a person who said they didn’t use the auto present feature on their Model S to try and save some wear and tear. So in the hopes of avoiding yet another door handle replacement, I am inquiring as to the functionality of the door handles on my car to make sure I am understanding some of the features. I understand that my way of figuring out and trying to deal with big problems may annoy some and I apologize since it seems as though you are bothered by this. The good news is that since you can see the person who posted originally, you can skip over my posts so as to save yourself any annoyance by my methods of information gathering. I truly hope that you get many wonderful years of use from your tesla and that you never have to deal with recurrent and or multiple issues like I have. Safe travels.
That’s just awful...but I like it lol. Have you done anything to try and preserve the functionality of the handles? Lubrication, turning off auto present, only using the driver side unlock feature?
Whether or not they lock automatically when you walk away is a separate setting. So, auto present and walk away locking are independent.
mrElbe
Active Member
I have done nothing and auto present is on. I had two incidents:
1. Driver side door handle would present but could not open door. Problem was that I went to DIY car wash at -14 C outside temp and water got in and froze preventing micro switch operation. It thawed out next day.
2. Passenger front door handle was stuck in extended position. No matter what, could not budge it. Contemplated removing mechanism but impossible with handle extended. I had visions of expensive Service Center replacement job out of warranty. Thank heavens for the knowledge on TMC. Suggestion was to pull fuse 72. As soon as I pulled it, handle popped into normal extended position and all was well.
I’m super curious about this door handle thing. I’m wondering if there is a way of opening the doors or vandalism that could cause the problem.
If I understand correctly -
- the paddle gear fails
- it is responsible for pushing open against spring tension
- it opens by motor spinning
- the motor runs until the paddle pushed the handle far enough to trigger a switch
So, the paddle could be broken by -
- pushing the handle in when it’s extended
- extra strong springs or resistance to opening
- pushing in on the handle when retracted??? (Guess it depends on what is setting and holding the “in” position)
- switch not detecting handle at full extension and motor pushing too far.
- is the computer involved in turning off the motor? Or directly by switch?
I think reply above about pulling fuse implies some processor is involved.
...
If I understand correctly -
- the paddle gear fails
- it is responsible for pushing open against spring tension
- it opens by motor spinning
- the motor runs until the paddle pushed the handle far enough to trigger a switch
So, the paddle could be broken by -
- pushing the handle in when it’s extended
- extra strong springs or resistance to opening
- pushing in on the handle when retracted??? (Guess it depends on what is setting and holding the “in” position)
- switch not detecting handle at full extension and motor pushing too far.
- is the computer involved in turning off the motor? Or directly by switch?
I think reply above about pulling fuse implies some processor is involved.
...
I’m by no means an electrician but I think you have the general function correct. When my third one failed I had the tech show me the bad paddle assembly. He said what normally fails is the roller mechanism. It’s basically two ball and socket joints on the back of each paddle. A motor pushes the sockets, the balls on the end of the paddle rotate within the socket, forcing the handles to extend. Over time, on the previous generation handles (which is what broke on my car every time and was replaced with the same generation instead of the new generation) the back half of both sockets shear off and prevent the paddles from presenting. You can actually hear the motor trying to push the paddle out.
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