New Model 3 Performance owner here. I had a Gen 3 Wall Connector installed by an electrician (on the Tesla recommended list). I'm getting a "3 red blinks" fault code about 20 seconds after charging starts. It reduces to 50% amperage when it faults out. I had the electrician back here to check his work and everything looks good and is torqued down properly. It's a 60 amp breaker and I believe they used 6 gauge wire. I know these Gen 3 units are pretty new, but has anybody else had a similar problem?
The manual notes are as follows:
Three (3) Red Blinks - High temperature detected; charging limited or disabled
Check the faceplate and cable handle for excessive warmth. Have an electrician remove the Wall Connector from the wirebox and verify that the conductors used are sized correctly and that the terminal block is torqued to specification.
I scheduled a mobile service appointment with for next week, but thought I would check for feedback on here too.
I've had the same message several times over several months (once in August, once in October, three times in the last week) and I think I've finally figured out what causes it, for me.
There are two factors that seem to contribute:
1) Cold damp/wet weather
2) Pulling the charging cable too hard away from the wall connector.
I haven't noticed either factor consistently, but I think pulling the cable too hard is the real issue. My theory is that when it's cold and damp or wet, since I park my car outside (no garage) I tend to rush the process of getting the charging cable plugged in, and that means I sometimes jerk it too hard and put stress on the part of the cable close to the base. I should also note that my wall charger came with four bolts, two for the top and two for the bottom, but the bottom bolts don't hold in - it seems that the metal bolts that should be embedded into the plastic at the base are missing. So either jerking the cable is pulling the detachable part of the charger from the base that attaches to the wall, or bending the cable itself is the issue.
This also happened once when putting the cable back onto the wall connector, but this was my better half doing it hurriedly (dark and cold out) and she wrapped it very quickly around and when I went out and looked at it, sure enough the base of the cable was bent too far to one side. The cable overall was in lose coils but the first loop was pulling hard against the point where it enters the connector.
I've noticed that every time this happens, I have to turn off the circuit breaker, unscrew and remove the removable part and put it back on, and mostly that clears up the problem, but sometimes jiggling the cable might be needed too if it's still in a bent position. (The first time, Tesla downloaded a new version of the firmware to it, but I'm not convinced that's what fixed it - I was doing enough jiggling around before and after that something I did may well have solved it.
To prevent this from happening agian I've attached a couple of cable ties to the charging cable and the PVC pipe containing the power supply, about 8 inches below where it exits the wall connector, so that if I do pull the cable too hard it won't pull at the wall connector itself. Fingers crossed this prevents the issue from recurring again.
