bo3bdar
Member
Thank for that extra detail and other installer experiences. I agree that this must be pretty uncommon to have problems actually, I think we'd see a lot more angry threads like the reddit if it were more common. An installer having done 50 kits would surely have gotten direct complaints if they were failing.
I asked the reddit guy for a followup, and he kindly responded. Tesla replaced his DC-DC converter in the car as a failing unit, under warranty. There is no way they'd do that on a whim, they surely tested it and found it faulty. So that answers the questions about both his original and second failure- the car itself was having problems. The only remaining question is thus whether the Hansshow caused the problem with the DC-DC converter or not. I'm inclined to think no, because that converter can provide something like 150 amps, and a stereo is just not that big a deal to it. It also has protection circuity for that in-rush current- the error messages people originally saw if it's too much.
Interesting example of the use of the 12V battery in the front. This is the part I cannot quite understand, because the guy who tested the power draw from the battery using a 12V inverter clearly demonstrated that there is a max draw that will work, on the order of 3 amps. Anything higher than that will draw down the battery. There are a couple of possibilities.
One is that even a massive stereo has a modest current draw while playing music, even loud. Thumping bass is not continuous drain, and the long term drain could easily be less than 3 amps. Peak wattage used can be for small fractions of time, and not be that serious a load. Even a deep-cycle 12v battery like Tesla uses will be able to provide some good peak current, they are often rated like 45Ah (20hr), where they can provide 45 amps for 20 hours. And something like 500 Amps for one hour.
Second non-zero possibility is that the cars have changed over time. No way to know for sure what is in older cars versus newer cars, so the 12V inverter test is only a single car. I had a report that you could use the 12V inverter for 1Kw directly off the 12V battery, from a guy who used to work at Tesla. But it's entirely possible that Tesla defeated that in software changes, or added a limiter of some form, after they started having excessive 12V battery deaths.
After having studied this as much as I've been able to find- I think it's actually become clear that best place for 12V power is the penthouse connector.
Even if the battery up front can do it, that battery is getting a lot of excess use/cycles. Now failing 12V batteries is a good example of something that is clearly common on our Model 3s. We get reports all the time. So the design is weak, or the batteries are already overloaded by normal use. Either way, I think that makes it really clear you don't want to add yet another drain there and make that problem worse.
Conversely, including your great info from the installers, it's pretty clear that using the penthouse is not a problem. Assuming we avoid the in-rush problem, we almost never hear of anyone having problems with that connection, which is why the reddit story stood out. Given the power handling ability there in terms of max amps, and the protection/breaker/fuse circuitry on the penthouse, I think it's the best choice. Even if Tesla doesn't OK it.
For me personally, I've decided to use the penthouse connector. But I'm also going to add the resistor+relay (plus normal fuse) as a safer approach to avoiding the in-rush short detection. It's cheap and has no drawbacks that I can see.
The Hansshow subwoofer not working, and their total lack of competence in getting it working after the sale is why I'd discourage you and anyone from going with their stereo. They are either incompetent or unmotivated to fix problems after the fact. That's why I encouraged you to go with @todd2fst4u after-market stereo instead. Your call of course, but after having read this entire thread I'm personally not buying anything from Hansshow. You can also install you own aftermarket stereo, which is what I'm doing. Or you could have a good car-stereo store do an install for you. Model 3's are common enough now that it won't be a unique or strange thing for them, and their expertise in doing car stereo will be good.
I'm going to be doing a more complete write-up, but I've been doing some more extensive profiling of the SR stereo, and can offer some more concrete suggestions because of that. One is that a full stereo upgrade is actually not necessary to get great quality sound. The stereo in the SR is actually pretty good, with a couple of fairly obvious problems. Here is a profile I took using a RTA with a calibrated Umik-1 microphone and REW.
That's measuring it a couple of different ways, including pink noise and frequency sweep. This is a stock SR stereo, EQ set to zero. No immersion, no after market harness.
The red bar is the most interesting as the sweep. You can see the signal is actually pretty flat overall, very good relative to a lot of stereos. Bass is boosted because it's what your average buyer likes. And the bass is actually OK down to about 30Hz.
Two fundamental flaws here that don't exist in the premium LR stereo. That dip around 180Hz, and spike around 260Hz is really bad. That's a full 10db swing, which will poke a hole in the bass response. Second problem is the high end dies around 14KHz, with nothing above that. That's because the tweeters are disconnected as we already know.
So this graph suggests that you don't actually need to do anything very heroic to get excellent sound.
1) Add a subwoofer like the NVX, or anything really. As long as it can go up to 200Hz, that will fill in that hole, and also take it a bit lower.
2) Add the wiring harness to activate the tweeters. Skip the imaging speakers.
3) Tweak the EQ to lower the bass response and pull down that 260Hz peak, and probably lower a tweeter spike around 12K once they are on.
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