Been a big fan of Tesla and own 2 of them. My wheel fell off without warning yesterday, fortunately not on the highway. 2014 Model S with about 185k on it, taken in for service to Tesla every year without fail, most recently 6 months ago. Car is well-maintained and most people who see it or ride in it assume it is nearly new.
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My wheel literally fell off
- Thread starter mrspaghetti
- Start date
Rice&Curry
Member
dbeiler
Member
Your upper control arm ball joint wore out to the point where it separated. This is the reason some states have mandatory annual vehicle safety inpections. This is 100% avoidable by doing routine, common sense suspension inspections. Worn ball joints can usually be detected at least 20K miles before they fail to the catastrophic point of separation. Most manufactures clearly list the requirement for mileage based frequent suspension inspections in the owner's manual. Tesla doesn't even mention it. Fortunately, you're OK.
Ten years and almost 200K miles
That’s good, definitely gotten your money’s worth.. Time to get a new one 
This is the kind of thing the whompy wheels guy warned about. Glad that you're safe, OP.
Watts_Up
Well-Known Member
I was at a supercharger recently and a Model S was having this typical squeaking noise.
I talked to the owner and shown him the issue. He told me that he never really noticed or heard it.
Glad I mentionned to him, I hope he took an appointment to get it fixed.
As part of the annual service this past December, a 4-wheel alignment was done. Would have expected them to notice that, but apparently not.
Yeah, but I've had cars a lot older than this and never had a wheel fall off before.Ten years and almost 200K miles
In hindsight, there was an occasional noise while turning if I happened to also be going over a bump. But nothing alarming - certainly nothing to suggest the wheel was in imminent danger of falling off.
Early model Ss like yours, and honestly even pre-refresh model 3s have really bad suspension components. I'm surprised your wheels stayed put until 185k miles - you should have seen serious problems and creaking long before this wheel fell off.
It's not a you problem, though. This is on the supplier for producing bad parts, and on Tesla for using that supplier *and* not detecting the glaring issues on time during routine check.
its because we train mechanics to be robots that follow written procedures, rather than training them to listen / look / analyze.
NewbyMaybe
Newby1Kenowby
Just need the other wheels to do the same and a flux capacitor.
Cheburashka
Active Member
"Car was taken into service 6 months ago" for routine maintenance. What service was done on the car? You would think basic suspension inspection would have found a bad ball joint.
Teslas are technically sports cars.
At 100K ( or certainly no longer than 10 years ) i would naturally replace all major suspension components at all 4 corners
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