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Rear camera blacks out intermittently
- Thread starter citivolus
- Start date
Soul Surfer
Cancervivor, tech geek & musician
I suggest to keep very close track of time and date of hen these occur. You should then submit this as a service request. I had similar issues and maintained that it was the MCU (main computer unit) that was failing. They finally isolated this to a voltage drop in the MCU and replaced it. You will need the time stamps to help them to help you.
Yes. It took my P3D about 4 years for the rear camera to start blanking out. Then it got worse and worse.
My issue turned out to be the wiring harness between the trunk lid and the vehicle on the passenger's side. You can clearly see it when you open the trunk.
The backup camera's wire goes through that harness and breaks after opening and closing the trunk hundreds of times. Tesla has a recall on the wiring harness, however they like to send out the remote maintenance folks to install a rubber piece that keeps the harness from bending at a 180 degree angle when the trunk closes. However if you are losing your camera view....then the wire is probably broken.
Now I changed my harness out myself. I knew exactly what to do. Took me about an hour. On a scale of 1-10 (10 being difficult) it's about an 8 for a novice to change out.
Some people have found that their harness has totally failed once Tesla replaced it and let them keep the old one.
One of the main reasons I changed my harness out was because FSD won't work if the rear camera is not available.
Thanks folks for your replies and suggestions. Looks like multiple possible root causes. I wonder if the issue with the voltage dropping to the camera is logged anywhere by the MCU so it can be diagnosed easier? Or if I schedule a service appointment, can they easily confirm if the wiring harness is broken with a simple continuity test?
Yes, it is definitely logged. If you go into the service menu you can see every time the rear camera is unavailable. Many errors won't show on the user's screen.
If you don't know how to go into the service screen - Tesla Customer Support can help you in listing any errors that are present or past.
If it happens when you're backing out of your garage, it could happen because your car is still booting up. When the car is fully asleep and has barely woken up, if I try to go into reverse, I usually get black screens for all the cameras. So I have learned that when I wake the car up from sleep and hear the HV battery connect, I need to take a few extra seconds and wait for the car to fully power on. When I do that, no black screens on the cameras.
Thats a great suggestion and its true that the boot up takes about 12 seconds to complete once you hear the main Contactor close. (big clunk under the back seat).
The only issue with that is that the cameras all boot at the same time. If there is one camera missing.... then it's not a boot up issue.
Lastly if you go into the service mode you can reboot all cameras without having the car go to sleep.
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Thanks, I checked out Service Mode. Where exactly would I see the logging of camera availability?
355rockit
Member
There is a service bulletin for the rear camera harness due it possibly getting damaged by trunk closure. Tesla will replace the harness per the TSB. I had my Model 3 camera harness checked during my end of warranty inspection last year.
OMG no. That has nothing to do with the camera.
Thats a low voltage 12V issue. Your 12V battery is going bad.
FYI, I've installed 3 12V batteries so far. I purchased them from Tesla and installed them myself. If you choose to do it yourself, please follow the power down/up procedure.
Well Tesla just called me to say that they are cancelling my appointment. They said that the 12V battery is fine and is showing healthy, and that I would receive a Customer Alert in advance of it failing so no need to replace it now. Regarding the camera, they said this is a known software issue with 2022 and 2023 Model 3 and Model Y since two months ago and it is being worked on. The service tech said it will be weeks before the fix is deployed. When I referred him to the log event of my specific event, he said that it said "stream ended" and was consistent with the software bug. Who knows but I will have to keep monitoring both issues.
