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Don85D
Member
The cure-all for corrosion in Canada due to salt in winter is oil spraying. Maybe a Tesla needs the same protective coating to keep brine away from connections to aluminium.
We kept an ICE as a winter beater as we are retired and don't travel much in winter. The winter beater also has winter tires which is an expense that I am deferring for the Tesla. So our Model S sits in the garage for a couple of months during the worst of winter and given this experience with corrosion I may have lucked out with the right decision. Insurance reduction helps the justification as well and our winter beater ICE produces lots of excess heat. I am coming to the conclusion that for some climates an EV and ICE are a complementary pair at least until the EV world develops further so solve some basic issues. If the Model 3 has a steel frame and body that alone could solve the issue (along with oil spraying in Canada).
We kept an ICE as a winter beater as we are retired and don't travel much in winter. The winter beater also has winter tires which is an expense that I am deferring for the Tesla. So our Model S sits in the garage for a couple of months during the worst of winter and given this experience with corrosion I may have lucked out with the right decision. Insurance reduction helps the justification as well and our winter beater ICE produces lots of excess heat. I am coming to the conclusion that for some climates an EV and ICE are a complementary pair at least until the EV world develops further so solve some basic issues. If the Model 3 has a steel frame and body that alone could solve the issue (along with oil spraying in Canada).
The conventional oil spraying of vehicles is done to the underside and body panels. What needs protection in our case are the aluminum components under the Frunk tub. Any protective spray in there must be targeted precisely in order to avoid rubber hoses and electrical wires.
dark cloud
Active Member
While cleaning the car today I noticed that my ground has been done at some point from some previous service before I owned the car : As I got no service history I get no information on whether this was an issue that was resolved or if service just did this under goodwill as a known future issue. I find this really odd though, because I assumed this car had never been to service; when I got it with 44,000 km it still had the original cabin filter; if it had been to service they would have changed that...
How do you know it was the original filter?
And I think Tesla only changes the filter as part of a paid annual maintenance visit not as part of a warranty service visit. So it could have had any number of warranty visits...
dark cloud
Active Member
You're right, good point, it could have been brought in for just this reason, or other warranty issues and not serviced. It would be nice if someone could tell me (us).
The cabin filter definitely had 44k of dirt in it; assumption still yes, it could have been changed at 10k and the car driven in very dusty areas for another 34k, but there is no other evidence that the car has been in severely dusty areas. i.e.: rock chips from gravel roads. I have seen my share of cabin filters over the years and most I have seen have half the crud at 60,000 km. So while I have no way of knowing for sure, me thinks it has been there the whole time.
So my car was towed down to the Scottsdale service center about 140 miles away...all the same symptoms as the OP. March 2015 85D. They just called me a couple hours ago and told me I had a corroded ground bolt. Complete coincidence that I just happened to see this thread now. Maybe they haven't seen this much in Arizona, as there's only a few of us up in the mountains where we get snow in the winter. Still, I had suggested we must be looking at a wiring harness issue or a ground problem, and was wondering if mobile service could fix it; they insisted it had to come to the service center. Seems like an incredibly inefficient process...I'm still under warranty (barely), so not cost to me (except half my Saturday going to get it and coming back). If I had paid for a 140 mi tow for this issue out of warranty I might be a bit peeved :/
dark cloud, that "repair" in the posted picture looks awful. Rust on the new bolt indicates they used a steel bolt. Hope they used lots of dissimilar metals compound to prevent galvanic action. I myself used a brass bolt matching the cable brass connectors. But still used compound between the brass and the aluminum frame.
Hi
I had exactly the same issue in a 2015 about 6 months ago. But it was corrosion. Tesla Mobile techs know about it and carry a drill bit, pem but kit, and but replacement to do almost exactly what you did! (I did it too).
Bravo to you for documenting .
Saimaannorppa
Member
In my previous ICE, ground nut was covered from factory with a thick layer of sticky vaseline or similar to prevent or slow down corrosion from road salt etc. It was still looking like brand new after 16 years despite being located in the front wheel well (and we use road salt like crazy here). I checked it due to weird startup symptoms (culprit was a dead starter motor).
While galvanic corrosion is the main thing to prevent, I'd add vaseline for external protection.
While galvanic corrosion is the main thing to prevent, I'd add vaseline for external protection.
quickstrike12
Member
Any idea if this issue is more prevalent in certain year models? Or maybe they made some corrections in later models to prevent this. Just curious if I should take a quick look in this area to prevent a future issue.
Sure as &#$&@ a couple years from now it may happen to me and I will have long forgotten this post. LOL
Sure as &#$&@ a couple years from now it may happen to me and I will have long forgotten this post. LOL
I had exactly the same issues (all of them). It started with Alarm, Front trunk, Coolant, turn signal and headlight and finally Suspension.
Thank you very much for this post. I opened front part and I so the ground cable. It looked like it should. I took wire-brush and started to clean it. Then it happened. The cable jumped out from the car and I saw broken screw. I did the repair in a few minutes. See some photos.
Thank you once again. You have saved me a lot of time and EUR's
Don85D
Member
If you want a more permanent repair consider coating the joint with a liberal amount of anti-oxidization cream as used for aluminium house wiring. The feed from the transformer to your meter requires this protection because of aluminium connections.
It's called "NoAlOx", at the home center.
But it's specifically for aluminum, and it's not very resilient. Every single ground connection I re-did on my P85D rebuild got silicone grease, aka 'dielectric grease' from the auto parts store. Makes the connection water-tight and gas-tight. I also use it in my RJ45 connectors for the same reasons.
But it's specifically for aluminum, and it's not very resilient. Every single ground connection I re-did on my P85D rebuild got silicone grease, aka 'dielectric grease' from the auto parts store. Makes the connection water-tight and gas-tight. I also use it in my RJ45 connectors for the same reasons.
dark cloud
Active Member
Hard to say whether aluminium bolt is better than a steel/brass one. Definitely the steel one will last longer in a salty environment, but then you run into the problem of dissimilar metals and the oxidation between them. In either case you need goop: the antioxidant paste for the dissimilar metals, or a protective coating to keep the aluminum from bathing in the brine/magnesium chloride.
Mine does have some goop in place from whoever replaced it (see above), but I will check it at least annually when I take the front end apart and clean out all the salty sand from the front end in the spring.
What does an aluminum aircraft do? How do the ones that fly over oceans regularly hold up over time?
robby
Member
I just ran into this problem. Does anybody know the dimensions (and most importantly, the thread count) of the bolt I need? I can guess-and-check but it will save me a return trip to the hardware store.
Like others here it is the passenger side ground stud that broke on my car, but I'm debating whether to replace the driver's side bolt as well while I'm in there. This is a really poor engineering flaw given how exposed the under-frunk area is.
If any of you who have had this problem or who live in the northeast have not done the power steering recall yet, do it immediately. I had the exact same corrosion on all three of my power steering bolts and it made for a huge repair of the entire steering column instead of just a bolt replacement (thankfully, Tesla comped it because it was related to the recall).
Like others here it is the passenger side ground stud that broke on my car, but I'm debating whether to replace the driver's side bolt as well while I'm in there. This is a really poor engineering flaw given how exposed the under-frunk area is.
If any of you who have had this problem or who live in the northeast have not done the power steering recall yet, do it immediately. I had the exact same corrosion on all three of my power steering bolts and it made for a huge repair of the entire steering column instead of just a bolt replacement (thankfully, Tesla comped it because it was related to the recall).
robby
Member
Disregard the request for bolt dimensions. I wasn't able to clean it out (too much corrosion), so I'll have to tap a new thread as well.
Edit: those of you who tapped a thread and added a new bolt: did you manage any way to get a nut behind the bolt? Or did you just torque it down and hope for the best?
Edit: those of you who tapped a thread and added a new bolt: did you manage any way to get a nut behind the bolt? Or did you just torque it down and hope for the best?
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