Official service plans

[hallvardr]

I drive my Roadster every day for work, which means that I will have to go to service 2 a year according to the display of the car. Tesla have a service center pretty close to my house, but are to lazy and stupid to educate a person to be able to service my car there. Instead they want me to drive for 8 hours to Oslo and do it there. Needless to say, I'm pretty disgusted by their lack of service, and am forced to try do it somewhere else. My local garage which has done a lot of services on other electrical cars and Lotuses say they can do it, but it would be very practical to know a little bit better what they need to do.
For instance, is the PEM cleaned every service?

 

[MileHighMotoring]

AFAIK cleaning the PEM is the main part of the annual Roadster service. I'd think twice about not having it done at Tesla, given the repair/replacement cost of that component, personally.

Have you contacted the local service manager and perhaps a district service manager to discuss your concerns and frustration? That's a serious bummer, especially considering the Roadster can't drive 8 hours to the other service center...

 

[Stefan T]

Do it by your self, i did't to day after work, took only less than 2h
But it is dirty work, gasmask is recomeded

 

[snd92]

What is the cost of this annual service with PEM cleaning?

 

[hallvardr]

Do it by your self, i did't to day after work, took only less than 2h
But it is dirty work, gasmask is recomeded

Only 2 hours? that's impressive! If I can do it that quickly then I would definitively consider it.
I would still wanna take it into Tesla sometimes, but if I can clean the PEM my self and make sure the battery is ok,
I see no reason to waste time and money going to Tesla.

I have been in contact with many people from Tesla that show no interest in helping at all. But I grew up with a guy that I contacted on Facebook yesterday. He told me to send him a mail, and he would see if he can help.

I have heard that the service cost 6000NKR and I would do it twice a year it looks like. My local garage said that they could do it for about 1500NKR. And if I can check the battery in the service menu and clean the PEM myself, that is a lot of time and money saved.

 

[gregd]

The "annual service" is primarily a cleaning of the air channels that cool the PEM and motor. It's more important for the 2.x cars than the 1.5, as the 2.x design tends to pick up more debris from the roadway, packing it into the PEM and motor cooling fins. My 2.0 car, used for a 50 mile/day round trip commute, needed to have this done about yearly, but I've read that some 1.5's can go longer with little accumulated junk. It's a matter of what kind of car you have, and where you drive. I don't think any car would need to have this done 2x per year, unless you regularly drive on very dusty dirt roads.

One thing to be very careful of is that there are some connectors between the PEM and the car that are marginal or under-sized for the load they are carrying. This is especially true of the one that drives the cooling fans. Repeated disconnects of this connector can wear the contacts, leading to a failure. Replacing the PEM-side connector can be difficult (the standard procedure is a whole PEM swap), so I would do this service only when needed, so to not cause more contact wear than necessary.

Finally, it's a good idea to regularly (monthly is good) pull the car's logs onto a USB stick. Save them for recording long-term trends (e.g. battery health), and check for any error codes that might get logged indicating something going bad. (Search this forum for instructions on downloading the logs, and for where to find viewers.) Not everything gets reported to the driver via VDS display alerts. My car's challenges with that fan connector, and with one of the motor sensors were found and diagnosed via the logs.

Don't forget to check the normal stuff - your tires, brakes, washer fluid, etc.

 

[hcsharp]

I drive my Roadster every day for work, which means that I will have to go to service 2 a year according to the display of the car. Tesla have a service center pretty close to my house, but are to lazy and stupid to educate a person to be able to service my car there. Instead they want me to drive for 8 hours to Oslo and do it there. Needless to say, I'm pretty disgusted by their lack of service, and am forced to try do it somewhere else. My local garage which has done a lot of services on other electrical cars and Lotuses say they can do it, but it would be very practical to know a little bit better what they need to do.
For instance, is the PEM cleaned every service?

I second Stefan's advice, and gregd. It takes me about 3 hours to clean the PEM and motor cooling. The first time it took me more than 4 hours. I might be slower than others because I'm very thorough.

The most important service is the PEM cleaning. You should also check and possibly charge the A/C system. Every two years you should flush your brake fluid, although I'm finding I can go 3 years now that I'm using higher quality brake fluid. Replace the batteries in your key fobs, pull the logs to make sure you don't have any issues. Your Lotus shop can do all this if you don't want to do it yourself. They might have to read some threads here on TMC.

To make sure you do everything Tesla does, be sure to replace your good quality wiper blade with a crappy one.

 

[hallvardr]

Thanks for all the good tips here. I was actually starting to think I might have to sell the car, but I feel encouraged that this should be possible. I have a 2011 2.5 car btw. I work as a photographer and do a lot of real estate work, so I drive "everywhere" which is pretty fun when you have a fun car to drive, but it's also pretty tough on the car.
Has anyone seen a official list of stuff to check or do on a service from Tesla?

 

[dhrivnak]

I too have done the PEM cleaning and 2-4 hours is a good range. I would recommend a friend for the removal as at 100lbs it is tough for one person.

 

[sethr]

Thanks for all the good tips here. I was actually starting to think I might have to sell the car, but I feel encouraged that this should be possible. I have a 2011 2.5 car btw. I work as a photographer and do a lot of real estate work, so I drive "everywhere" which is pretty fun when you have a fun car to drive, but it's also pretty tough on the car.
Has anyone seen a official list of stuff to check or do on a service from Tesla?

I have a copy:

 

[hallvardr]

Awesome sethr, just what I was after!
I see here that one step is resetting the service interval indicator to 20 000km or 12 months. Is that the normal intervals most people follow? I think that my car must be on shorter intervals.
And also change battery coolant every 4 years, I though that was done every year. This was very useful.
After looking through it, everything is just normal maintenance except battery logs and PEM clean.

 

[Msjulie]

I see here that one step is resetting the service interval indicator to 20 000km or 12 months. Is that the normal intervals most people follow?

Is it possible to reset that yourself? The interval I mean or in my case, the car just had 3.0 upgrade this spring and they said they would 'do the service' while it was apart but clearly didn't reset something and it's tell me service in 19days or something..

 

[thefortunes]

Is it possible to reset that yourself? The interval I mean or in my case, the car just had 3.0 upgrade this spring and they said they would 'do the service' while it was apart but clearly didn't reset something and it's tell me service in 19days or something..

Yes it is - with access to the diagnostic menu. I would confirm that they did clean out the fans/ducts/PEM/motor before I reset it.

 

[hallvardr]

Do most people here clean the PEM by service intervals, or when the notice a change in temperature?

 

[ion_1]

Do most people here clean the PEM by service intervals, or when the notice a change in temperature?

Personally, interval definitely. When you see a marked change in temp behavour, localized temps may be quite high already. As noted on the parallel PEM thread, the display temp may possibly be an average of at least three readings, and even those readings aren't the localized temp of the IGBTs etc. However, I am not sure why Tesla would post the average of the 3 readings. I would rather have the highest temp posted. Regardless, goal is to keep clean so you don't see the rise in temp. Also you would like to keep your cooling fan area clean so they don't strain. This you can do very easily in less than an hour by dropping the rear pan and quickly cleaning out the fan area (most of the garbage just drops out when you release the pan. Of course, if fans aren't disconnected, don't put your hands in the mechanical rotation in case they kick on for some reason.