I want to provide follow up on my battery repair experience in case it helps others in same situation.
Model: Roadster Sport 2.0, VIN #557
It started with alert
#259 battery problem while charging followed by
#1522 continuously and it was rendered not drive-able in August 2019. The battery was failing "bleed tests" and Tesla said it could only replace, not diagnose and repair the battery, however there were no replacement batteries available so that wasn't an option without waiting a long time. It would occasionally be responsive, but the errors always came back.
The car was towed to Gruber Motors in Sept 2019. Although it had to go on wheel dollies to Tesla fortunately it "woke up" in order to be driven onto the car carrier for the trip from Philadelphia to Phoenix.
Gruber motors made the following diagnosis and observations:
ESS pack failure to charge, erratic charging, range variations. Roadster software tools “bleed test” indicates out of tolerance voltage drop across bonding plate to BMB sense lead. User visible errors on the Roadster touch screen are “ID 7 Battery Service Required”, or Error “259 Charge Aborted-Battery, Problem Service Required”. In debug mode, errors are “ID 7 Battery Bleed Scan Failure”, and/or “283 BSM Isolation Fault, 286 BSM Isolation Fault While Contactors Closed, 287 BSM Isolation Fault Before Charge”.
Earlier models of Roadster ESS packs used an aluminum pop rivet BMB sense lead mounting method on brick bonding plates. Once it was realized pop rivet clamping force was unpredictable and some were working loose over time, this process was replaced with an ultrasonic weld. Secondarily, we found 3414 Loctite oozing into certain rivets affecting the quality of connection. Some rivets on affected sheets have liberal application of an anti-oxidant (Penetrol).
Here is how they fixed it after removing the battery:
Once brick bond plates are exposed, pop rivets securing BMB board sense wires can be drilled out with a 1/8” drill bit. Bottom portion of Pop Rivet can be extracted with tweezers, and care should be taken not to allow metal drill fragments to migrate into brick connecting points. The affected Pop Rivets are removed. Each sensing wire eyelet and bond plate entry point is cleaned and rivets are replaced with 6-32 x ¼” PC grade hex head bolts with anti-slip teeth, torqueing them to 20 inch pounds, and finishing the conversion with an application of Loctite.
View attachment 548147
Several rivets were thus compromised in a few of my Roadster's battery sheets causing the battery error. The battery was pulled from the car and we opted to replace all 121 rivets in the battery (11 rivets per sheet x 11 sheets) rather than just the originally problematic ones so as to not have the problem recur in other rivets. Total price for the battery repair excluding transport and PEM maintenance was $8220. I was told that this problem only afflicted earlier Roadsters - I'm not sure what VIN# the materials for the rivets changed. It returned home in April 2020 ready for spring and summer.