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My $9241 XMAS 2021 & New Year 2022 Repair Bills

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I paid 2 repair bills totalling about $9242 within 3 days. The Model S was bought used inventory and had a 4 year warranty expiring in 2023 (just before Tesla reduced their coverage to 1 year). This warranty was on top of the battery and drivetrain warranty First, let me just describe a bit of background since others may find this useful if it happens to them.

Just before christmas, Dec 18th I had a warning light : "Vehicle coolant is low". I booked an appointment for service and was scheduled for January 2022, the car sat in my garage connected to charger unused, then on December 20th, the vehicle would not charge and I sent a message to Tesla service through the tesla app. The service adviser asked me if I could come in the same day. The service center on Railside in Toronto was 18km from my home so I agreed to drive the car in.

Not long after I entered the highway, the car entered safe mode, where it would take 1 minute to accelerate from 0 to 10kph (it was stop and go on the highway). Within a few minutes, there was a warning sign to pull over and I exited the highway. Car crawled another 300 meters or so past the first traffic light and then says "shutting down now". It stopped completely and would not move out of Park. Outside temperature was about 0C. (32F).

I was blocking the right lane of a 2 lane street shortly after the exit of a highway at rush hour so in spite of the emergency 4-way flashers, a lot of drivers were still annoyed at me enough to lean on their horns (some repeatedly). The tesla app "Roadside Assistance button" was not working at all for me, I messaged the service advisor and was given a number to call. To cut to the chase, I was extremely lucky as the nearest flatbed truck available was supposed to be 40 minutes & 50km+ away but one happened to be at the same tesla service center I was heading for - it took him a mere 15minutes to show up just after another tow truck (non-flatbed) showed up and offered his services which I had to decline --- one primary reason for a flatbed (according to the flatbed truck driver) is that the battery is low and may get damaged if towed any other way.

I was then told over several escalating estimates within the app (which you had to approve for them to continue) that the car needed lots of parts : suspension front and back, LH and RH, condensor, radiator, condensor, valves, radar replaced. As the reason they quoted was impact damage. I was surprised as the only thing I can recall was mounting the curb in an underground garage at low speed a week prior, but I suppose it was possible so I didn't think much of it. The final invoice which I had to approve totalled $6581.27 P&L . I figured it was just one of those things and agreed to get them all repaired. However as they had to order a part from the US my estimate for completion kept changing every couple of days until it finally was finally fixed on Jan11th which was the day I picked up the car. On the drive back home, just before I was to exit the highway applying the brakes gave a very loud repeated grinding sound - I could have driven the car back to the service center but instead just used the app to book a service appointment. I described the problem, making a note that I had just taken the car back from service.

Brought car in back to them asap and then had a message with an estimate of full brake service with f&b L&R brake pads, rotors etc.

Anyone who has driven a Tesla knows with regen braking, cruise control and the weight of these cars knows how rare it is you have to apply brakes at speed. Just releasing the accelerator would slow the car down within seconds, and braking typically would start below 20kph. Besides that the car was driving flawlessly before I brought it in for service.

When a service advisor called me, I asked for someone to inspect the car at the ramp first to ensure that everything was tightened and reassembled properly before they replace these parts. I also reminded him of two things (1) There was no mention of the brake issues when they returned the car to me and (2) the car was driving perfectly when I dropped it off before Christmas. 30 minutes later I had a call that the mechanic confirmed that the car needed all brake pads replaced and the estimate was $2000+. In spite of my repeated request that someone lift the car up to take a look before any work starts, the service advisor stated that the mechanic was certain the car needed new brakes.

Instead of this continuous aggravation, I just said, fine, I approve the work, just return the parts to me so I can enlighten my friends at the TMC with a nice tesla christmas story. And so the work was completed the next day, I came in morning 10am and picked up the car, enjoyed a couple of days preparing to document this tale to the community.

I measured brake pads and looked at the rotors ---- the pads had 8-9mm of depth. - I added a picture where I measured 8.69mm of depth. To me the rotors and the pads looked fine, though there was a fresh new pit on one of the rotors - I can't tell how the pit was caused - and I have no evidence if it was caused by a hammer after removal or if a loose brake assembly was moving and rattling in that few minutes of driving I did after it had completed service. Or perhaps it was legitimate and something caused the rotor to get a new pit in that few minutes I drove the car.

There's pictures below.
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[Moderator note: Changed initial drop-off date from January 20th to December 20th.]
 
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That's an upsetting turn of events, I definitely would've pushed to see some proof of the damage to the radiator etc being impact related and not something else. Its really tough to tell if anyone is really in the wrong here, looks like it was just bad luck that something hit your car from the under side at the perfect angle.

For the brakes it sounds a lot like they messed something up and charged you to replace the brakes at all four corners, that's something I would've definitely pushed back on.
 
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The depth of the brake pads were from 8mm to 9mm. This one measured 8.69mm (just the pad portion.

The entire brake pad part was about 16mm thick including the pad portion that was still almost new.

Note the rotors look like they still had lots of material on them.
 

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Here's the 2nd repair bill.View attachment 757449
I guess I am still back at square one. You said you have a warranty on the car expiring in 2023. I deduce from your explanation that Tesla is telling you:
1) The coolant leak and all of the parts to repair that is due to an accident/ curb hit that you had a week before? I ask this because I had a coolant leak on my 2016 MX (purchased used from Tesla with a warranty expiring in 2023) and it was repaired under my warranty.
2) I would guess any work on the braking system would be outside the warranty as they would consider the brakes as a wear ite.
Your experience is very disturbing. There seems to be an incredible amount of stuff they did to simply repair a coolant leak. And you are correct. If the brakes were working just fine before you took it in for service, why did they start grinding when you got the car back.
Disturbing for sure.
 
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I did notice there was pitting in one location on one of the rotors - I can't tell what caused this pitting. It is either (1) something caused the pitting during the few minutes I drove it off the tesla service center on my way home. (2). some tool impacted the rotor during the last service at Tesla or (3) it had hard impact with some material after it was removed from the car before it was placed into a cardboard box in my trunk.

Any experience mechanics care to comment what under what possible reasons this could happen?

Note the rotors looked barely used.
 
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I read articles in China that noted Tesla was persuaded by the very persuasive Chinese authorities to honor a recall on their suspension. There was an. argument that chinese roads were in bad condition and that a lot of Tesla cars in China had damaged suspensions. Tesla claimed wear and tear was not part of warranty. No similar recalls were in Canada or US and I've had 2 Benz Model S before that I kept too long and understand their suspension repairs of $10K+ will happen at some point. Given the lockdowns, this car was rarely driven the last year.
 
I guess I am still back at square one. You said you have a warranty on the car expiring in 2023. I deduce from your explanation that Tesla is telling you:
1) The coolant leak and all of the parts to repair that is due to an accident/ curb hit that you had a week before? I ask this because I had a coolant leak on my 2016 MX (purchased used from Tesla with a warranty expiring in 2023) and it was repaired under my warranty.
2) I would guess any work on the braking system would be outside the warranty as they would consider the brakes as a wear ite.
Your experience is very disturbing. There seems to be an incredible amount of stuff they did to simply repair a coolant leak. And you are correct. If the brakes were working just fine before you took it in for service, why did they start grinding when you got the car back.
Disturbing for sure.
Yes the car was still under warranty. Tesla just noted there was an impact that caused loss of coolant, so it is possible the radiator was damaged when the car mounted the curb in the underground parking garage.

It is still possible that mounting the curb would cause that loss of coolant, but I'm not certain either way. Perhaps experienced mechanics could comment on the work?

The suspension work could be SOP when Tesla believes there was some damage, though i can't feel the car driving funny - not that it's easy to tell if a suspension was damaged through casual driving.
 
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That's an upsetting turn of events, I definitely would've pushed to see some proof of the damage to the radiator etc being impact related and not something else. Its really tough to tell if anyone is really in the wrong here, looks like it was just bad luck that something hit your car from the under side at the perfect angle.

For the brakes it sounds a lot like they messed something up and charged you to replace the brakes at all four corners, that's something I would've definitely pushed back on.
Note that I am a huge Tesla fan and have successfully persuaded some friends to buy one. All previous work (door handle, rear hatch door, charging port door, MCU eMMC slow death followed by streaming hangs, corrupted icons and eventual black screen) were replaced covered by warranty. I was just surprised to go from 0 to 9000+ of work in a year when the car was hardly used (we're working from home in Toronto most of 2021, and the car had weekly grocery runs and a few long weekends of driving to hiking areas).
 
It wouldn’t surprise me if a caliper was sticking after sitting for a couple of weeks. It’s a known issue for Teslas. That would have required 1-2 hours of labor to clean and lubricate all the calipers. Pretty commonly done in the rust belt. I have no idea why they replaced those visually acceptable looking pads and rotors.
 
Sounds like an insurance claim to me.
I'm a lot more concerned about the 2nd repair on the brake pads and rotors because (1) The shop did not test drive the car before returning it the first time (2) There was no note on any noise issue with brakes it was immediate and obvious once you braked on a red light - which I noticed when driving home and I automatically filed a service request after arriving home. (3) The mechanic clearly did not even jack up the car to look for the root cause and relied on some SOP manual : Noise when braking ==> replace all pads and rotors. (4) the service guys did not jack up the car even after I asked for someone to report after he had a chance to inspect the brakes, and instead called back within 30 minutes to repeat that his mechanic confirms it’s the brakes and rotors and I need all of them replaced.
 
It wouldn’t surprise me if a caliper was sticking after sitting for a couple of weeks. It’s a known issue for Teslas. That would have required 1-2 hours of labor to clean and lubricate all the calipers. Pretty commonly done in the rust belt. I have no idea why they replaced those visually acceptable looking pads and rotors.
I’m not sure if this is a systemic process issue facing Tesla repairs or if it’s a one time lapse in a location that had fallen too far behind on their process queue, or just one mechanic who could not find the time to drive a car after a major reassembly of the suspension parts. Either way, I’m hoping that someone in Tesla does a post Mortem with this one repair to improve any lapses so that they can Minimize such wasted repair costs for in the future for other Tesla owners.

I’ve had similar experiences in large repair costs with Benz model S (two of them) before I gave up on buying German cars (btw Better on luxury and comfort but they drink gas lol).

I believe I’ve documented the evidence sufficiently to show the brake pads and rotors are almost new and should not have been replaced. I wonder if I can contact anyone at Tesla to submit my evidence to so they can decide if they wish to address this issue with that service center.

Btw, It wasn’t sitting parked for a long time during the repair, in fact, they had been working on the car the day before I took it back as the parts had just arrived according to the service person who called.
 
Your knocking, grinding brake noise issue was 100% caused by those pad imprint marks on your rear rotors. The main friction pads left a severe imprint but the parking pads left a deep imprint as well. This is not something that happened overnight. It most likely happened when the car was parked for weeks at a time, maybe before you took ownership. It wasn't necessary for the mechanic to raise the car to figure out where the brake noise was coming from. Those pad imprint marks are so severe they would have been visible through the wheels.

The tightwad in me would have sanded down the brake pads a mil or two with some 80grit sandpaper and attempted to have the rotors turned (resurfaced with a brake lathe) before replacing them. Mechanics aren't always too willing to turn rotors with pad imprinting as it can require deep cutting to remove all imprint and then the rotor ends up failing spec and being susceptible to warp. Customers won't be too happy if they pay to have the rotors turned only to have them fail spec and then have to purchase new rotors anyway.

I don't see anything obviously wrong with the front rotors. Have you done a rotor runout check or made sure all measurements pass spec?

Pad imprinting on the rotor is going to become a common issue as manufacturers ditch the good ole' parking pawl used in the automatic transmission in favor of E-actuated calipers clamping pads onto the friction brake surfaces of the rotor. Clamping a brake pad up against a scorching hot brake rotor and leaving it sit in that same position for weeks will cause pad imprinting. Most manual trans vehicles circumvented this by using drum-in-hat parking brake designs.

If you didn't notice any braking issues beforehand or specifically request a brake inspection before your service began, you can't knock the mechanic for ignoring the condition of the brakes. They work on maintenance deferred vehicles every day; they can't spend all day noting every single issue on every car. They can't pay their bills by working for free.

I wouldn't consider you a difficult customer by any means. You're simply trying to understand what really happened to necessitate all these repairs, correct?
 
That's crazy!

Over the past few decades, I've changed quite a few brake pads (and rarely rotors, but I have a new set waiting to get installed in my garage) and have never seen that kind of imprinting nor would I have thought it was likely!

Pads too hot? Rotors too hot? Pads too hard?

Sounds like a major screw up with how your Tesla was set up. I also have swapped tires on the Tesla (winter / summer set) and when washing the car, still also look at the rotors. Never seen that happen but this is just me.

I'd check out the pad composition (metallic, semi-metallic, ceramic, organic) and go for the softest set I could get anyhow as we use regen braking to slow down and not really brake pads. Same thing with the rotors, get them swapped out if you can't sand them down a tad to remove the marking and see if it comes back.

But to leave markings that aren't oxidation? Got me...
 
Your knocking, grinding brake noise issue was 100% caused by those pad imprint marks on your rear rotors. The main friction pads left a severe imprint but the parking pads left a deep imprint as well. This is not something that happened overnight. It most likely happened when the car was parked for weeks at a time, maybe before you took ownership. It wasn't necessary for the mechanic to raise the car to figure out where the brake noise was coming from. Those pad imprint marks are so severe they would have been visible through the wheels.

The tightwad in me would have sanded down the brake pads a mil or two with some 80grit sandpaper and attempted to have the rotors turned (resurfaced with a brake lathe) before replacing them. Mechanics aren't always too willing to turn rotors with pad imprinting as it can require deep cutting to remove all imprint and then the rotor ends up failing spec and being susceptible to warp. Customers won't be too happy if they pay to have the rotors turned only to have them fail spec and then have to purchase new rotors anyway.

I don't see anything obviously wrong with the front rotors. Have you done a rotor runout check or made sure all measurements pass spec?

Pad imprinting on the rotor is going to become a common issue as manufacturers ditch the good ole' parking pawl used in the automatic transmission in favor of E-actuated calipers clamping pads onto the friction brake surfaces of the rotor. Clamping a brake pad up against a scorching hot brake rotor and leaving it sit in that same position for weeks will cause pad imprinting. Most manual trans vehicles circumvented this by using drum-in-hat parking brake designs.

If you didn't notice any braking issues beforehand or specifically request a brake inspection before your service began, you can't knock the mechanic for ignoring the condition of the brakes. They work on maintenance deferred vehicles every day; they can't spend all day noting every single issue on every car. They can't pay their bills by working for free.

I wouldn't consider you a difficult customer by any means. You're simply trying to understand what really happened to necessitate all these repairs, correct?
The key issues for me are that (1) this was not an issue before I dropped off the car Dec 20th. I have heard a loud clunk on any movement if the car was parked for a few days but the braking were normal each time. (2) because the braking noise started within minutes after I paid for that major suspension work on the drive home, I suspected something happened during the installation of the suspensions. (3) I thought initially it was something as simple as a brake caliper was loose or some so was surprised that all the rotors and pads had to be replaced.

Also it became obvious that on the first repair the mechanics likely did not even test drive the car before releasing it - or they would have found the noise and contacted me. Note that I filed a service request after I reached home instead of going back to the service center immediately, but the timing of my service request and the notes I gave them made it clear they released a car after replacing suspension without even a test drive. I can’t imagine how that would be acceptable practice for any repair shop.
 
That's crazy!

Over the past few decades, I've changed quite a few brake pads (and rarely rotors, but I have a new set waiting to get installed in my garage) and have never seen that kind of imprinting nor would I have thought it was likely!

Pads too hot? Rotors too hot? Pads too hard?

Sounds like a major screw up with how your Tesla was set up. I also have swapped tires on the Tesla (winter / summer set) and when washing the car, still also look at the rotors. Never seen that happen but this is just me.

I'd check out the pad composition (metallic, semi-metallic, ceramic, organic) and go for the softest set I could get anyhow as we use regen braking to slow down and not really brake pads. Same thing with the rotors, get them swapped out if you can't sand them down a tad to remove the marking and see if it comes back.

But to leave markings that aren't oxidation? Got me...
If I leave the car parked for many days, upon restarting, there will be a loud clunking noise that I've grown used to as others have noted before, it's a common known behavior. In spite of this very loud noise, the car as driven normally every time.

My main issue is basically not that eventually Teslas need new rotors and/or pads (although the regen braking and the weight of the car means deceleration is so rapid, by time you apply brakes, it's almost always below 30kph - should last almost forever), but the timing of the 2nd repair (after taking car back) and (1) no brake noise issues when I dropped off the car the 1st time; and (2) no report by the mechanic after the 1st repair; and (3) I examined the pads and rotors and they were almost new - the pits on the one rotor was very slight but all 4 rotors and all 4 sets of pads were replaced.

#3 above indicates that probably this service site was following a standard operating manual (my guess) without spending time to localize and isolate the issue based on the car instead hence causing excessive repair costs for the owners.

IMO this is not the first time that a tesla owner has overpaid for unneeded service. I'm just sharing my own experience.

Btw, the recall in China was about suspension work --- which according to Tesla China was caused by driver abuse (and?) poor road conditions ruining MS & MX suspensions. If I remember, there are many parts of NY state that will have major potholes and even where I am near Toronto Canada, every spring, we see roads deteriorate rapidly over winter --- so I doubt our road conditions are any better than those roads in China.

I also understand a Tesla is much heavier than a normal car, so the stress on the suspension is harsher, but other than expensive exotic cars, suspension work on most cars won't run into $6000, so this type of costs should be factored in for owners especially if it's not covered even if car is still under warranty.


 
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I was having stuck pad issues, on both MS's. Electrified Garage has a video, where Chad goes over it. When you order new rear pads, the stainless steel backing no longer wraps around the top/bottom sides of the pads making them slightly less apt to bind as they float w/in the caliper. There's also a grease you want to use, that helps mitigate this source of uneven pad where. Not saying that issue is involved here (very uneven pad wear). Last time in, I flipped a pad wearing diagonally.

I wouldn't mix pad compounds, but so long as rotors are reasonably ungroved belt sanding, flipping pads, are ways to get better life out. What's insane with Tesla's, is how the used market for calipers so frequently comes with 70-90% unworn pads, for about the same price as a fresh set.