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Late 2016 / Early 2017 S Owners: How Are Your Daytime Running Lights Holding Up?

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Done earlier this year.
 
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So my tech was right. About $1k. What does that $420 adjustment mean?

Elon discount?:confused:

It was one month out of warranty from last one replaced. They offered discount. I was also getting 72 amp onboard charger installed at a $$. So it was quite a bill.

Just kind of funny that 2 of them are $2800 retail. Tesla provided me a trade in offer for $36k for my car. With the miles I drive those lights will be 10% of my cars value very soon. :p

I would also add many don't pay full retail for them. It is kind of a thorny topic with the techs. My mobile guy comes in with the sheepish look on his face. It is downright embarrassing that my car has had or is in need of $5600 worth of headlight replacements over its current life.
 
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What are you going to do with the bad light? I would absolutely love to see a teardown and to find out what's the thing that lights up that DRL and how it works. Maybe we could even find out how/why it breaks.

Not sure yet. I may be willing to work something out if someone is skilled enough to tear it apart and see if they can make a DIY solution. Is anyone here interested? I know there was a guy on the forums that was "upgrading" the old HID lights.
 
Has anyone attempted to take apart the headlights and repair them?

I see threads with older headlights being taken apart and painted black and upgrading components but nothing on these current headlights.

I mean someone has to have made an attempt right?
 
Not sure yet. I may be willing to work something out if someone is skilled enough to tear it apart and see if they can make a DIY solution. Is anyone here interested? I know there was a guy on the forums that was "upgrading" the old HID lights.

Good idea but beware... the guy who was upgrading the HID lights was a scam artist and has been banned.
 
My October 2019 MS LR just had its driver side burn out. I think I went through 3 on my 2016 MS. I know at least two, but I think the passenger went out twice. And this is doing the same thing as one of my old ones where my left turn signal doesn't work 100%

This is stupid
 
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And so many MSs I see are driving around with them burned out. Normal people with more important things on their mind than are their drls burned out :D But it really makes the car look dumb. It’s so badass but the burnout makes it look broken. It’s a really bad reflection on the brand. And what’s worse, all they have to do is put a software switch to turn it off. The old headlights you can turn them off. Why not these? And they have the control cuz range mode turns them off. Not required in US. Honestly, if I could turn them off, I would and I’d never call for a replace. Instead, someone in the supply chain is going to spend a bunch of money replacing lights that bring me zero benefit. No benefit cuz they’re so dim they really don’t IMHO increase visibility

very frustrating
 
Onto my 9th replacement... Drivers side went out again. At least it's still under warranty because they were replaced less than 12 months ago.

This is getting properly embarrassing. I wonder how we could get more public visibility on this, otherwise Tesla is not showing any signs that they care to admit or try to rectify the problem.

Besides all the reports from here, almost every time I go out, I see a few Model S-es in traffic with the half burned DRLs. I'm sure there's a great number of owner who just don't care, some may even be unaware and do nothing about this.
 
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Are both of these on the way out? How uniform are the lights normally? I think they've been fading gradually, so i don't really remember.
I had one of them replaced already in the past because one of the LEDs completely died, but i wanted to make sure these merit contacting Tesla. I did take a picture of both of the lights back then and the driver side one looked more even, but it's hard to compare without matching the exposure settings on the camera.

20200723_200513.jpg 20200723_200509.jpg
 
Are both of these on the way out? How uniform are the lights normally? I think they've been fading gradually, so i don't really remember.
I had one of them replaced already in the past because one of the LEDs completely died, but i wanted to make sure these merit contacting Tesla. I did take a picture of both of the lights back then and the driver side one looked more even, but it's hard to compare without matching the exposure settings on the camera.

View attachment 568207 View attachment 568208

Probably close to worn out. When new the light is uniform over the whole length. They should replace both.
 
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Reactions: PhilDavid
It's interesting that they haven't revised the part (or have they?) to address this problem. It seems appropriate of Tesla to not care if the part takes 4+ years to fail, but for them to fail multiple times within the warranty period has to cost them a fair amount.
 
It's interesting that they haven't revised the part (or have they?) to address this problem. It seems appropriate of Tesla to not care if the part takes 4+ years to fail, but for them to fail multiple times within the warranty period has to cost them a fair amount.

I don't think they care too much. It's been a problem for almost 4 years now since these facelift headlights were put in cars.

My theory is that they're using very cheap parts and labor to make them so it probably makes sense (in a very wrong way) for them to keep replacing the whole units. Most likely they went cheap on the R&D too, just look at some tests, these have among the worst light pattern/output compared to other manufacturers.

My last replacements had late 2019 build date on the stickers (made in Mexico).
 
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When I spoke with a Tesla service tech during my last swap out of headlights, they said that they were told that the issue is most likely due to how the lighting power supplies are designed in that version of the car, and not the lights themselves.

So I’m not holding my breath that Tesla will ever remedy the issue with this version of the car.
 
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