Failed Rear Lower Control Arm / Service Bulletin SB-19-31-001

[tm1v2]

Guys, are only older revisions of this arm affected or anyone experienced failure on latest revision too?

Also, I'm not sure if Delphi parts available in the US, but here is the video from them, which shows exactly how to replace it:

@PaulF2020 Pretty cool that Delphi made a video just for the Model S. That might have swayed me to try some of their control arms, which I was on the fence about vs going OEM. (Yes Delphi parts are available in the US, they're an American company, spun out of GM originally!)

Yikes, so it's not just the rear control arm but the front fore and aft links too? I've got 134Kmiles/10yrs on the car right now am considering preemptively replacing them as I'd hate to have these fail while my wife is driving the car.

@maximizese At 150k miles / 10 years almost every control arm on our S, front and back, had at least one worn out bushing or bearing. YMMV, but if your arms are all original I'd be surprised if your bushings are still good, no matter if the metal arms haven't cracked. We never experienced a cracked control arm thankfully, but even without that all the arms were in need of replacement, there wasn't anything preemptive about it! (We have other important metal parts crack over the years...such as one of the original wheels, and the rear subframe.)

In the front, all four lower control arms had torn and cracked rubber bushings, and one of the two upper arms had a bearing that lost its seal and was shot.

In the rear all four upper arms had cracked, torn, or flaking bushings, the dogbone links had permanently compressed / offset bushings (the rubber isn't offset in new ones!), and the lower control arms had cracked & flaking rubber too.

The ride and handling of the car had been degrading noticeably, and then the "old car" creaks and squeaks and clunks really started ramping up too. I replaced every control arm on the car and now it's smooth and quiet again like a Model S should be, and I don't worry about the metal arms cracking anytime soon, since they're all brand new now.

 

[PaulF2020]

@PaulF2020 Pretty cool that Delphi made a video just for the Model S. That might have swayed me to try some of their control arms, which I was on the fence about vs going OEM. (Yes Delphi parts are available in the US, they're an American company, spun out of GM originally!)


@maximizese At 150k miles / 10 years almost every control arm on our S, front and back, had at least one worn out bushing or bearing. YMMV, but if your arms are all original I'd be surprised if your bushings are still good, no matter if the metal arms haven't cracked. We never experienced a cracked control arm thankfully, but even without that all the arms were in need of replacement, there wasn't anything preemptive about it! (We have other important metal parts crack over the years...such as one of the original wheels, and the rear subframe.)

In the front, all four lower control arms had torn and cracked rubber bushings, and one of the two upper arms had a bearing that lost its seal and was shot.

In the rear all four upper arms had cracked, torn, or flaking bushings, the dogbone links had permanently compressed / offset bushings (the rubber isn't offset in new ones!), and the lower control arms had cracked & flaking rubber too.

The ride and handling of the car had been degrading noticeably, and then the "old car" creaks and squeaks and clunks really started ramping up too. I replaced every control arm on the car and now it's smooth and quiet again like a Model S should be, and I don't worry about the metal arms cracking anytime soon, since they're all brand new no

I'm not sure if their parts are superior to OEM (anyone know who is making those arms for Tesla?), but I really like their attention to the problem.

 

[maximizese]

@PaulF2020 Pretty cool that Delphi made a video just for the Model S. That might have swayed me to try some of their control arms, which I was on the fence about vs going OEM. (Yes Delphi parts are available in the US, they're an American company, spun out of GM originally!)


@maximizese At 150k miles / 10 years almost every control arm on our S, front and back, had at least one worn out bushing or bearing. YMMV, but if your arms are all original I'd be surprised if your bushings are still good, no matter if the metal arms haven't cracked. We never experienced a cracked control arm thankfully, but even without that all the arms were in need of replacement, there wasn't anything preemptive about it! (We have other important metal parts crack over the years...such as one of the original wheels, and the rear subframe.)

In the front, all four lower control arms had torn and cracked rubber bushings, and one of the two upper arms had a bearing that lost its seal and was shot.

In the rear all four upper arms had cracked, torn, or flaking bushings, the dogbone links had permanently compressed / offset bushings (the rubber isn't offset in new ones!), and the lower control arms had cracked & flaking rubber too.

The ride and handling of the car had been degrading noticeably, and then the "old car" creaks and squeaks and clunks really started ramping up too. I replaced every control arm on the car and now it's smooth and quiet again like a Model S should be, and I don't worry about the metal arms cracking anytime soon, since they're all brand new now.

Thanks for sharing your experience. I'll have to get do a thorough inspection the next time I have the car on a lift. I checked it out last year and there was no play in the components and all the rubber bushings seemed intact. I don't think this car has ever seen snow/road salt, rarely sees rain (and car washes), and is garaged. Even still, I will strongly consider replacing them out of concern of failure. Normally I would just press the bushings out and replace them, but clearly the issue here seems to be the metallurgy of the links.

 

[cduzz]

Two questions:

1. are the typical aftermarket suspension parts "good enough" for this purpose? In the past I'd try to get the same vendor that was the OEM supplier for a particular part, and I'd found that other replacement parts were sometimes as good as the OEM parts, but as often *not* as good as the OEM.

2. are there any shops in the boston area that would proactively replace all these suspension parts (all "wear items" but shocks) for a pre-facelift air suspension S?


In the olden days you'd keep the suspension arms and just press in / out ball joints and bushings, but these days it seems like there's almost no cost difference, and frankly with all these known issues with the various parts, new, updated-to-take-the-load parts seem like the right way to go.

 

[willdashwood]

Strangely enough, the algorithm recommended that video from Delphi to me long before I discovered these threads about control arm failures. It seems there are a lot of third parties manufacturing replacement parts and quite frankly I'd prefer to take my chances with any of them given what Tesla originally deemed acceptable! I do wonder if anyone has experience of the quality of these parts from different manufacturers and how they compare? If I'm replacing everything it would be good to know who is the best.