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Poor LED Performance - 1 Solution

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Hey, joelgjr: I did what you wrote, FABULOUS difference. But for me 3 turns was a bit much (people flashing me and not in that way) so I backed it down to 2. Perfect.

Thank You for helping figure out what is still a rather elusive topic to most (tried Googling it just now).
 
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I believe this thread is about the facelift LED lights while you posted about the original HID headlights on the nose cone pre facelift cars. Still informative nonetheless.

I addressed both. I have the LEDs and my instruction was for the LEDs, but I briefly referenced the nosecone HIDs because when I searched the forums on LED issues, only posts about HID headlights came up (hence my reference)
 
Hey, joelgjr: I did what you wrote, FABULOUS difference. But for me 3 turns was a bit much (people flashing me and not in that way) so I backed it down to 2. Perfect.

Thank You for helping figure out what is still a rather elusive topic to most (tried Googling it just now).

Sorry for the delay in response. What’s odd is I actually needed a whole additional full turn, so 4 total. I added the fourth turn after driving around for a while and it was still on the low side. But mine were dangerously low - I was out-driving my headlights at sub-highway speeds
 
Here's something to think about: With very cold winter nights, I get frosting inside both headlamp assemblies. I inquired to Tesla Service about this (still awaiting call from service manager to confirm all of the following) and it would appear that with LED technology the headlight assemblies are now ventilated and will absorb and release humidity with the natural cycling of heat/cold, rain or dry.

Issue with this is during cold nights the headlights get all frosted up... exactly when I need them to work well!! Case in point: yesterday night I had a close call with a deer strolling in the left lane of the freeway (fortunately I was in the right lane). Usually I would see them at the edge of the forest, at the tree-line, but yesterday I saw it with 1/2 a second of being at it's height, on the freeway. Good thing the deer wasn't in my lane or didn't jump in front of me!! But the frosted headlights failed me big time.

I hope this is not by design because if so, it has many inherent weaknesses:

  1. Cold frost at night hindering performance
  2. Accumulation of fogging and frosting cycles will leave smears and water stains inside the headlamp assembly progressively degrading appearance and performance of lighting.
  3. Possibly illegal design (basically law says we can't add film that would change the nature of the lighting, which fogging/frosting would do.
  4. Just the look of frosted headlight screams quality of fabrication issues: headlights being often the 1st part of a car we look at to recognize the car, Tesla cars usually attract a lot of looks and attention, and fogged up headlamps stick out like a sore thumb, you can see them from over 50ft away. This just isn't a good look for Tesla!

Here are pictures taken a few days ago with partial fogging:

IMG_20181207_2034388.jpg
IMG_20181207_2034445.jpg
 
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Reactions: FlatSix911
I had one headlight that was clearly way too high. SC used some lame excuse, cannot adjust headlight since you have air suspension. I found the adjust really quick and they have been perfect ever since. In either scenario though they have always been really good headlights and I always heard or read they were lousy. I really think that lousy comment came from previous generation of Halogen Magnifiers Headlights, not the HID magnifiers perhaps and definitely not in my case with the LED.
 
I had one headlight that was clearly way too high. SC used some lame excuse, cannot adjust headlight since you have air suspension. I found the adjust really quick and they have been perfect ever since. In either scenario though they have always been really good headlights and I always heard or read they were lousy. I really think that lousy comment came from previous generation of Halogen Magnifiers Headlights, not the HID magnifiers perhaps and definitely not in my case with the LED.
 
I had one headlight that was clearly way too high. SC used some lame excuse, cannot adjust headlight since you have air suspension.
Just goes to show you'll often get much more accurate information about your car on these forums than by asking the Service Center. I'm not going to say they sometimes mislead customers to avoid helping with them with their issue (for whatever reason), but it's borderline....
 
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Reactions: JayyyDeee
Here's something to think about: With very cold winter nights, I get frosting inside both headlamp assemblies. I inquired to Tesla Service about this (still awaiting call from service manager to confirm all of the following) and it would appear that with LED technology the headlight assemblies are now ventilated and will absorb and release humidity with the natural cycling of heat/cold, rain or dry.

Issue with this is during cold nights the headlights get all frosted up... exactly when I need them to work well!! Case in point: yesterday night I had a close call with a deer strolling in the left lane of the freeway (fortunately I was in the right lane). Usually I would see them at the edge of the forest, at the tree-line, but yesterday I saw it with 1/2 a second of being at it's height, on the freeway. Good thing the deer wasn't in my lane or didn't jump in front of me!! But the frosted headlights failed me big time.

I hope this is not by design because if so, it has many inherent weaknesses:

  1. Cold frost at night hindering performance
  2. Accumulation of fogging and frosting cycles will leave smears and water stains inside the headlamp assembly progressively degrading appearance and performance of lighting.
  3. Possibly illegal design (basically law says we can't add film that would change the nature of the lighting, which fogging/frosting would do.
  4. Just the look of frosted headlight screams quality of fabrication issues: headlights being often the 1st part of a car we look at to recognize the car, Tesla cars usually attract a lot of looks and attention, and fogged up headlamps stick out like a sore thumb, you can see them from over 50ft away. This just isn't a good look for Tesla!

Here are pictures taken a few days ago with partial fogging:

View attachment 360282 View attachment 360283

Perhaps you should tape over the vents during the winter weather... :cool:
 
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Reactions: sauce
Just goes to show you'll often get much more accurate information about your car on these forums than by asking the Service Center. I'm not going to say they sometimes mislead customers to avoid helping with them with their issue (for whatever reason), but it's borderline....


Sorry of the double post as after all that, it was still wanted me to post again. The air suspension I reasoned stays pretty much in one place at speed so that reason was weak for sure.

I used my garage door to aim the headlights properly. At least they are the same height now and no flashing high beams at me.
 

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To be fair my car is "probably" one of the very first refresh front end cars April 2016 build. The headlights housing has quite few notes written by somebody in the green marker seen throughout under the the plastic on these cars. So not exactly sure when refresh cars were made from orders, but this car was not ordered by anyone. It was showroom, so who knows what the heck was happening to it. I cannot say anymore. I can say its a good car.
 
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Perhaps you should tape over the vents during the winter weather... :cool:
Good point. The vents should be taped permanently. Just make sure not to close them up when the housing is full of humid air, then see them frost all up again! Relative humidity must be really low to avoid frosting at -20C (-5F).

I am not a good tinkerer so I'll discuss this solution with my Service manager and see if they can implement it.

Because when those headlights are clear, man do they just light up everything!
 
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Reactions: FlatSix911
Just goes to show you'll often get much more accurate information about your car on these forums than by asking the Service Center. I'm not going to say they sometimes mislead customers to avoid helping with them with their issue (for whatever reason), but it's borderline....

I was told my inventory March 2017 model s was uncorked but I knew only cars made after June 2017 were uncorked(also called into head office to confirm). Also with the loaner I received when taking my car in for warranty repairs it had the super tight charge port issue when I told the tech about it he said all Tesla's come like that now... of course I knew about the bad batch of cars.
 
I think I'll have to have a play around with this adjustment too, I can't stand the low beams in my 2017, the highs are fine though. If only Tesla had driven an X5 (my wife has one) before designing the Model S headlights to see how it is done properly.
 
I think I'll have to have a play around with this adjustment too, I can't stand the low beams in my 2017, the highs are fine though. If only Tesla had driven an X5 (my wife has one) before designing the Model S headlights to see how it is done properly.
Essentially any car on the market today has excellent LED headlights. Oddly enough BMWs suffered for a few years from early HID projectors that aimed too far down and thus not far enough down the road.
When Tesla came out with the refresh in 2016, LED headlights were still pretty high tech. It’s understandable in 2016 they didn’t get the LED headlights as good as the 2018 LED lights are now
 
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