Nolakai
Member
We were rear ended and had to have a new hatch and bumper installed. Far less noise of any kind after the repair. Might be interesting to have the hatch removed and reinstalled by an experienced body shop.
-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Ear pain/Pressure help
- Thread starter justobuf
- Start date
-
- Tags
- sound proofing
Last week I replaced the Conti RX 19” OEM tires, which were around 3/32" and had 19,000 miles on them, with Quatrac Pro's. I was very Unhappy with the OEM Conti's as neither Tesla nor Discount Tire could ever get rid of the vibrations (even with multiple balances and an alignment), which caused the dreaded low-frequency buffeting sound. The Conti's always felt squirrely on all surfaces as well, magnifying every little road imperfection.
With the Quatrac Pro's I am finally able to enjoy a quiet / low-frequency buffeting free ride, as they are smooth as silk and very quiet on good asphalt. There's still road noise on worn road surfaces, but they are still noticeably quieter and smoother than the OEM tires that I hated (probably loose acoustic foam inside).
So here are my methods tried and results:
With the Quatrac Pro's I am finally able to enjoy a quiet / low-frequency buffeting free ride, as they are smooth as silk and very quiet on good asphalt. There's still road noise on worn road surfaces, but they are still noticeably quieter and smoother than the OEM tires that I hated (probably loose acoustic foam inside).
So here are my methods tried and results:
- Adjusting OEM hatch stops (done initially, definitely helped some as the buffeting was unbearable to begin with)
- Reducing tire pressure (done as the temperature swings 20+ degrees, 40 psi seems to be the sweet spot)
- Conditioning the hatch seals (done every 6 months or so and helps some, especially in our Northern winters)
- New tires (Just done with Vredestein Quatrac Pro, and MAN what a difference, buffeting Completely Gone so far)
ilovecoffee
Member
Did you do road force balancing (I think Hunter is the only machine that does them?)
Road force balancing helped considerably with vibrations with my winter wheels. I had them balanced twice with a regular machine and then the road force balance finally did the trick.
Yes, they road force balanced the OEM Conti's too. That's my second bad experience with Tesla OEM tires that have the acoustic foam (Model 3 with MXM4's earlier). To me they seem to provide absolutely no sound reduction and they cause vibration problems, no matter what fixes I've tried.
ilovecoffee
Member
Some interesting news. Tesla has been secretly putting tubing in the gasket as part of one of their TSBs it looks like.
A fellow Y owner from my local Facebook group came by today for me to put vinyl tubing in his gasket.
He previously took it to Tesla service for the buffetting/ear pressure and asked for that TSB with that rubber hatch piece previously posted here by a few users (first identified in China I believe).
Well lo and behold as we are fishing in the vinyl tubing we hit other black tubing already in there. It must've been put in during that service appointment. Strangely the tubing wasn't installed symmetrically with large gaps between pieces. Maybe a bad install job I'm not sure (for example it was missing on the right side around the place of the hatch stop, but it was there on the left side).
The one Tesla used also appeared to be around the same size as 5/16" OD. We didn't pull it out to look at it as I was running short on time.
Nice to know that they came to the same conclusion as me though!
A fellow Y owner from my local Facebook group came by today for me to put vinyl tubing in his gasket.
He previously took it to Tesla service for the buffetting/ear pressure and asked for that TSB with that rubber hatch piece previously posted here by a few users (first identified in China I believe).
Well lo and behold as we are fishing in the vinyl tubing we hit other black tubing already in there. It must've been put in during that service appointment. Strangely the tubing wasn't installed symmetrically with large gaps between pieces. Maybe a bad install job I'm not sure (for example it was missing on the right side around the place of the hatch stop, but it was there on the left side).
The one Tesla used also appeared to be around the same size as 5/16" OD. We didn't pull it out to look at it as I was running short on time.
Nice to know that they came to the same conclusion as me though!
Last edited:
I just looked at my 2020 MY. There are two short lengths of tubing asymmetrically put in the gasket. Both about 13" long. One starts at driver side top hinge, goes down. The other, starting a few inches to the right of center at the bottom, goes right. My car is in a car port and doesn't spend much time in the rain so I have no leakage issues to report.
Last edited:
PecuniaNonOlet
Member
WTF.
It came that way from the factory? It's almost like the tubing was supposed to come standard and the guy in charge of doing it skipped most cars and stuck little chunks into the rest and called it a day.
Or else someone in QA is doing it to make the hatch seal when adjusting the stoppers fails. And then that knowledge was passed on to service center techs one of whom messed with ilovecoffee's contact's car when it was in for service. I guess I can see it if the hatch is so far out of alignment that adjusting the hatch stoppers isn't enough *and* QA doesn't want to realign the hatch. Indeed my hatch is slightly misaligned. But I've read it's a bear to realign and to my knowledge no one here has done it, so I didn't even consider it. So I guess Tesla QA and I feel the same about it.
It came that way from the factory? It's almost like the tubing was supposed to come standard and the guy in charge of doing it skipped most cars and stuck little chunks into the rest and called it a day.
Or else someone in QA is doing it to make the hatch seal when adjusting the stoppers fails. And then that knowledge was passed on to service center techs one of whom messed with ilovecoffee's contact's car when it was in for service. I guess I can see it if the hatch is so far out of alignment that adjusting the hatch stoppers isn't enough *and* QA doesn't want to realign the hatch. Indeed my hatch is slightly misaligned. But I've read it's a bear to realign and to my knowledge no one here has done it, so I didn't even consider it. So I guess Tesla QA and I feel the same about it.
Now at 27k miles, just returned from a 3k mile r/t road trip. I now have 17k miles on the MPP coilovers. Still on OEM 19" ContiProContact.
I'm still impressed with the ride and stability of the MPP coilovers. Harsh pavement is still...harsh...just not as sharp as OEM. It's the stability over uneven concrete that continues to impress me. My final analysis is still the same: In regions with old, uneven concrete, the MY isn't a good choice. It's just too stiff and with the OEM suspension, feels out of control.
Driving around the DFW region, I still encounter uneven concrete that is a challenge, and I30 west of Little Rock is a disaster. The MPPs handle it all very well, but for sure, the OEM suspension would make for an uncomfortable ride.
As for the Contis, they are whisper quiet and smooth up to and over 100mph (smooth asphalt). Never any vibration/low frequency noise. I'm impressed enough that I might buy them again (not really...HAHA!)
YMMV.
I'm still impressed with the ride and stability of the MPP coilovers. Harsh pavement is still...harsh...just not as sharp as OEM. It's the stability over uneven concrete that continues to impress me. My final analysis is still the same: In regions with old, uneven concrete, the MY isn't a good choice. It's just too stiff and with the OEM suspension, feels out of control.
Driving around the DFW region, I still encounter uneven concrete that is a challenge, and I30 west of Little Rock is a disaster. The MPPs handle it all very well, but for sure, the OEM suspension would make for an uncomfortable ride.
As for the Contis, they are whisper quiet and smooth up to and over 100mph (smooth asphalt). Never any vibration/low frequency noise. I'm impressed enough that I might buy them again (not really...HAHA!)
YMMV.
Wow - this is bizarre.
Wait - Tesla has QA now?
ElectricAnt54
Active Member
My rear hatch was realigned after tesla agreed it was out of spec. Tesla had to send car to body shop.
So what is the conclusion? Would like to know as well.This thread has been extremely interesting and informative, thank you all! I just picked up my brand-new 2022 MYLR (Fremont VIN #434xxx, 19" Conti's), and instantly noticed the severe low-frequency resonance and booming. It feels like I'm inside a cranked-up subwoofer playing "Oh, Yeah" on a loop. According to the Decibel X app on my iPhone, the oscillations are 90dB - 100dB (C scale) at ~43Hz, which is really uncomfortable to my ears. My wife notices too, but it doesn't bother her as much; she's more sensitive to some intermittent very-high-pitchnoises the car makes that I can't hear. (We will try to track those down as well.)
For the low frequencies, I’ve tried the envelope trick of readjusting all four hatch stops until I could just barely extract an envelope without tearing it, but it didn’t make a perceptible difference. I have a mobile service visit scheduled for later this week, and we’ll see what they say. Consolidating various tips from this and other threads, here is my current list of things to try, roughly in increasing order of cost/complexity:
- Adjusting OEM hatch stops (already done, didn't help)
- Reducing tire pressure (the car was delivered with 45psi, which certainly isn't helping!)
- Conditioning the hatch seals
- Adding side rubber blocks (Tesla China does this, maybe US now)?
- RPMTesla noise reduction kit or BASENOR kit
- PVC hatch stops
- 5/16" vinyl tubing
- Cargo cover (probably ModelYShelf.2, or maybe BLAPREZ)
- Quarter-panel and wheel-well insulation
- New tires (e.g. Vredestein Quatrac Pro or Bridgestone Turanza Quiettrack)
- New coilovers (e.g. MPP Comfort)
I’ll post an update after my SC visit Thursday. Hoping this is a very temporary and overcome-able glitch in an otherwise phenomenal car!
Ben W
Chess Grandmaster (Supervised)
A mobile tech took a ride with me and acknowledged that the car was noisier than typical, though they weren't able to do much to fix it. Then yesterday I dropped the car at the SC for a more thorough look; the tech who drove the car claimed not to hear any excess noise, even though my decibel meter was registering 90+dB for most of the drive. They're going to realign the hatch (which I noticed is pretty badly misaligned; wide panel gaps (~1cm) on one side and less than a millimeter on the other, even after carefully adjusting the hatch stops), and perhaps that will help. No matter how it ends up, I have most of the materials to do the various improvements now (PVC, vinyl tubing, weatherstripping, cargo shelf, and thick cargo mat) and will see where that gets me. If that's not enough, I have a body shop that can do the soundproofing of the wheel wells and quarterpanels. Expecting the car back on Mon, and will keep the thread posted.
Thanks a lot. I just picked up the car 2 days ago, love it. Only complain is road/wind noise...
ElectricAnt54
Active Member
Wait about 4,000 miles , road noise might diminish as tires break in a bit. My performance model Y seems to have less road noise after 5 months of ownership. YMMV
after-dark
Member
This has to be the jankiest OEM shenanigans I ever heard lol
ilovecoffee
Member
I ordered one, here is a much cheaper link for $199.99
What I like about this is the ability for me to maybe layer this with some other material such as MLV, butyl or even something like the below to reduce glass roof sound reflection
I'll have to see what it is made out of, my only concern is rear collision safety as I sometimes have kids in the back seat. I don't want something too rigid back there.
That definitely looks interesting. I may order one as well. I have the roller type but have never installed it because I was waiting to finish the last bit of my internal soundproofing. I have to do the driver's side wheel well and I got two bass absorbers to shove up into the fender cavity on each side.
I ordered the roller cover when I got my car just to have the privacy. This looks like a good solution for both privacy and sound absorption.
ilovecoffee
Member
I have a roller one currently. I took it out because it makes subtle creaking sounds. And when I'm becoming obsessed with noise reduction, hearing the slight creaking drives me nuts. I guess the flex of the body puts pressure on the bar. I tried putting felt tape on the edges but that didn't help.
ilovecoffee
Member
Oh and just a note, purely anecdotal and I may be wrong, but I stuffed those cavities in the rear wheel well with "bass absorbing" foam blocks and it seemed to make the problem worse, as if perhaps it was impeding airflow towards the vent in the rear bumper. Just something to keep in mind.
