Potentially buying a 2010, need a bit of guidance

[jimmyz80]

I'm currently shopping for a Roadster and have found one locally that caught my eye. I definitely don't want to make a mistake and pick up a potential land-mine, so I was hoping the forum might help me sanity check the decision and make sure I'm taking all the proper pre-buy steps.

The car is a 2010 2.0 with VIN# 5YJRE1A13A1000869. Supposedly the battery was replaced by Tesla in 2012 due to some sort of defect that was common on the earlier cars. Does this sound reasonable or familiar to anyone? Should I be worried about the replacement or should I be happy that it has a two year newer battery?

Currently the car charges to 182 miles of ideal range in the standard charge mode, but that's about all I have to gauge the health of the battery by so far. I assume I should get a copy of the logs, and if so, what exactly should I be looking for as red flags? Anything else I should be looking for aside from battery health?

Thanks!

 

[wiztecy]

@182 miles, which I presume is a Standard Mode charge the car and pack sounds healthy. You should see an upward of 152+ CAC on that in the logs. If you're familiar with the log parser as discussed in the forum you can see how far the min brick is from the avg. But all in all, the 182 is the the full range limited by the lowest brick. Tesla advertised 190 miles new, but some Roadsters new didn't charge up to that. My 1.5 / '08 Roadster that I picked up with 3k on it used private party, charged in standard at the time up to 188 ideal miles. So 6 miles off that isn't bad. Yes, some packs had issues where a sheet would go out faster than the rest. I haven't heard of any issues arising from the replaced packs. Its actually nice in a way since Tesla gave the car a once over look while replacing it.

 

[ggr]

I'm currently shopping for a Roadster and have found one locally that caught my eye. I definitely don't want to make a mistake and pick up a potential land-mine, so I was hoping the forum might help me sanity check the decision and make sure I'm taking all the proper pre-buy steps.

The car is a 2010 2.0 with VIN# 5YJRE1A13A1000869. Supposedly the battery was replaced by Tesla in 2012 due to some sort of defect that was common on the earlier cars. Does this sound reasonable or familiar to anyone? Should I be worried about the replacement or should I be happy that it has a two year newer battery? Currently the car charges to 182 miles of ideal range in the standard charge mode, but that's about all I have to gauge the health of the battery by so far. I assume I should get a copy of the logs, and if so, what exactly should I be looking for as red flags? Anything else I should be looking for aside from battery health?

Thanks!

Our battery was recently replaced with a refurbished one, due to a failed sheet, and now gets 180 miles on a standard charge. This is fine. Be happy.

 

[jimmyz80]

Thanks for the feedback so far; it's definitely reassuring. Should be a fun upgrade from my LEAF if I can snag myself a Roadster in good shape.

 

[wiztecy]

Thanks for the feedback so far; it's definitely reassuring. Should be a fun upgrade from my LEAF if I can snag myself a Roadster in good shape.

For sure, it'll be fun. I'm sure the Leaf was fun, but if you pick it up you won't have to be doing 55mph all the time and can pass up quite a few charging stations! But the biggest part is that you'll be able to take care of the battery better than the Leaf. The Leaf in order to actually make it useful you have to do a full 100% charge! You also need to drain it practically down to zero. Lastly there's no thermal management to the batter. All of those qualities makes a battery very unhappy very quick.

For my daily commute I charge the Roadster in standard mode, which charges about 84% of the battery's full capacity. Range mode is 97% (They don't do 100% charge since its stressful on the cells, Leaf may do the same) and you want to use that every so often since a higher State of Charge above 85% has been shown to add stress to any Lithium Ion cell. Tesla really did do their homework. So doing a 70 mile commute in my Roadster (charged in standard / 84% capacity) where I'm doing 50-80mph at times I can come home to about 55-65% capacity still left which is where the battery likes to be. Also since you don't have to discharge the battery below 50% as much as you had to with the Leaf, the cells tend to last longer.

 

[jimmyz80]

So here's a bit of a mystery. I have a copy of the latest logs from the car, and the logfile is dated as you'd expect for today "201412292356.tar". But when I run "./VMSParser -p -r DAY Tesla/201412292356.tar" to look at the CAC values and lowest brick data, the output ends on 05/05/2013. Is there any reason the daily updates to this data would have stopped way back then? Weird...

- - - Updated - - -

So here's a bit of a mystery. I have a copy of the latest logs from the car, and the logfile is dated as you'd expect for today "201412292356.tar". But when I run "./VMSParser -p -r DAY Tesla/201412292356.tar" to look at the CAC values and lowest brick data, the output ends on 05/05/2013. Is there any reason the daily updates to this data would have stopped way back then? Weird...

Nevermind, it was just a sorting issue with the output from the log parser...oops.

 

[wiztecy]

So how's it looking? If you can feel free to post the last few lines showing the CAC / info. No need to post vin, but it would give you more feedback plus us on the forum on how the packs are holding up.

 

[jimmyz80]

Here are the last few entries in the daily log:

12/22/2014 22:52:40 | 1419306760 | DAY | odo = 19873.3 range soc = 83%, brick ave 151.524Ah, brick min 147.420Ah, min Ah brick 32, CAC 147.74 Ah
12/23/2014 22:52:41 | 1419393161 | DAY | odo = 19880.0 range soc = 82%, brick ave 151.524Ah, brick min 147.420Ah, min Ah brick 32, CAC 147.74 Ah
12/24/2014 22:52:41 | 1419479561 | DAY | odo = 19880.0 range soc = 85%, brick ave 151.524Ah, brick min 147.420Ah, min Ah brick 32, CAC 147.74 Ah
12/25/2014 22:52:42 | 1419565962 | DAY | odo = 19880.0 range soc = 85%, brick ave 151.524Ah, brick min 147.420Ah, min Ah brick 32, CAC 147.74 Ah
12/26/2014 22:52:43 | 1419652363 | DAY | odo = 19894.3 range soc = 84%, brick ave 151.524Ah, brick min 147.420Ah, min Ah brick 32, CAC 147.74 Ah
12/27/2014 22:52:44 | 1419738764 | DAY | odo = 19901.4 range soc = 85%, brick ave 151.524Ah, brick min 147.420Ah, min Ah brick 32, CAC 147.74 Ah
12/28/2014 22:52:45 | 1419825165 | DAY | odo = 19905.6 range soc = 85%, brick ave 151.524Ah, brick min 147.420Ah, min Ah brick 32, CAC 147.74 Ah

I'm still not sure what the deal is with the parser output, since it starts with June 2014 and has every day until today. Then after today the next row is Sept 2010 which I assume is when the car was made, and then the rows continue to 05/05/2013 and stop. So 2014 is mistakenly displayed at the beginning, and then there's a bap between May 2013 and June 2014. Odd... Is there a file in the RAR I can look at directly to see if the data is there and the parser is just hosed, or if the data is legitimately missing.

The lowest brick does seem to change periodically, although it only seems to change every few months rather than every few weeks. Starting after the gap in the logs though, it looks like brick 32 has been the lowest since the logs resumed in June 2014, aside from a brief period of about two weeks in august when brick 95 took the lowest spot and then returned it to brick 32. Is this something I should be worried about?

 

[TEG]

Can you post some pictures of the car?

 

[wiztecy]

Can you post some pictures of the car?

By the way, if anyone can find any history of a Roadster, it'll be TEG! If something bad happened to it he'll be able to dig up what he can as well as if any famous people owned it

As for the missing data, I'm not sure why'd you be missing data. I usually run the VMSparser with the -b option by itself. I ran the parser the way you ran it and I get all the data from back to 2009 when the Roadster was built. If you can make another dump of the log file I'd try that. Also ensure you have the latest revision of the VMSparser which I would believe you do. But double check that. The tar file can be unzipped, but it won't tell you anything useful once you do unless you have experience from it.

 

[jimmyz80]

Would the missing data really be all that useful, or more of a nice-to-have item? Can we make any conclusions from the recent data I posted? I'm not sure how far below average the lowest brick can be, before it's something worth worrying about. Or does such a threshold really even exist?

 

[wiztecy]

Would the missing data really be all that useful, or more of a nice-to-have item? Can we make any conclusions from the recent data I posted? I'm not sure how far below average the lowest brick can be, before it's something worth worrying about. Or does such a threshold really even exist?

From what you mentioned, seeing the lowest brick get rotated out every three months is good. Its when it doesn't rotate out where that's an possible indication of an issue. Also your delta between your avg and min brick is not all that much and within a normal range so that's also good as well as an indication its rather healthy. Any idea many miles are on the new pack and overall on the Roadster? Tesla tries to be consistent on the CAC when replacing the packs. Ultimately they try to do their best to match the CAC or better with the original pack they replaced. As for the missing parts of the logs, the latest is the most important and some history in the recent past so you can do a comparison against over time. So its not a big deal, you have enough info that allows you to see the health of the pack.

 

[jimmyz80]

Awesome, thanks. It's really helpful just to have confirmation that the values aren't way out of whack. Here's one photo of the car for reference. I don't believe there is any history of celebrity ownership since the current owner pretty much knows the whole history. It was however shown on The Price is Right TV show, but wasn't won by the contestant.

 

[TEG]

...It was however shown on The Price is Right TV show...

 

[jimmyz80]

Hahaha that was the first thing I did when I heard the history; pulled up YouTube.

 

[shrink]

Other things to keep in mind - looks like the car is a 2.0. I have a 2.0 some of the things I miss from the 2.5 are the back-up camera (visibility in the Roadster is not exactly stellar) and the Double-DIN stereo opening. I already added the former and I'm converting to the latter because I want Apple CarPlay compatibility and an all around updated and better stereo. The cost and hassle of doing the latter has been substantial.

Looks like you have the stock wheels and that's fine. The forged wheels are light but cost $3200 new from Tesla. Check the remaining tire tread. The stock Yoko AD07's have great performance but poor life span. I think most people are switching them out after 5000 miles (+/- 1500 miles) or so. I hear Michelin Pilot Super Sports have been a great alternative with much more durability.

Also try to find out of the car has the awful stock halogen headlights (which tend to peel and have provide terrible visibility) or the upgraded Xenon headlights. You're going to want the latter, which is a costly $2600 from Tesla if available. I've been waiting to install the latter for 3-4 months. Tesla is apparently moving remaining Roadster parts to a new warehouse and it's taking forever.

Good luck. Despite the above quirks, I love the car. I came from a LEAF, then a Volt, to a Roadster and Model S. I let my wife drive the Model S :smile:

 

[smorgasbord]

At 4:15:

"288 hp 110 volt electric sports car"
"features a solar guard windshield"

At least he got to touch it.

 

[jimmyz80]

Well, I think it's official that I've got the Roadster bug in my system. I test drove the car a few days ago and it seems to be in great shape. The seller has a deposit from me, and I should be picking up the car this weekend if our travel schedules jive. In the meantime I've already ordered the DDM 55w HID kit and a set of AX6 pads for the car haha.

 

[bonnie]

Congrats . The only cure for that *bug* is exactly what you're doing. Enjoy!

 

[bobinfla]

Congrats Jimmy and welcome aboard!