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Suspension rattling sound turned out to be a loose bolt!
- Thread starter buyehara
- Start date
In your 2nd image, it looks as though the weld nut for the bolt that backed out has sheared off. That could be because the bolt itself loosened up over time and as the control arm was flopping around, it put a tranverse load on the nut. I'm thinking that if this is becoming a common occurrence, it might be good practice to apply blue loctite on those threads before retorquing. If anyone decides to do this, just keep in mind that the required torque will be lower with wet threads due to less friction. I'm going to crawl under my 3 tomorrow to see if my bolts have backed out.
My case seems to be a more extreme version of this problem. After cruising Flagstaff Arizona and Sedona Arizona for three days in my Model 3, highways at over 90mph, and through intense mountains just feet away from steep mountainous drop-offs, we heard some strange unidentifiable noises from the front of the car. Arrived home Sunday night. Then, Monday morning as I was backing out of my driveway I heard a loud BANG and the front left of the car dropped a couple of inches. I found nuts and bolts on the ground under the car. My whole family was a hair away from getting killed had this happened in the mountains or at high freeway speeds. After seeing this forum I was incredibly angry because this could have been avoided with a timely recall and an admission of the problem. I guess Tesla is waiting for someone to get killed first.
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This just happened to me today. 2 bolts fell out off the bottom of my model 3 my car only has 3600 miles on it. Tesla is trying to say this was a “road accident” which it wasn’ti didn’t hit anything at all. I pulled up to a QT before work and when I put the car in reverse I heard a terrible noise when I looked under the car it looked like the control arm was falling apart it was about an inch off the ground. This is extremely frustrating for a $52k car. Not we will see how Tesla responds to this it should clearly be covered under warranty.
Gonna be checking my car. Tesla denys warranty if they think they can pass it off as something that could've been your fault. Really shady business model. Been burned too many times by tesla warranty.
BigNick
Infamous Fat Sweaty Guy
Suspension fell apart
I just had an issue with my 2021 model 3 LR my car only has 3600 miles on it. I pulled into QT gas station to make a call and when I put my car in reverse to park it I heard a loud crank noise coming from underneath. I put the car into park and noticed a huge bolt on the ground. I looked under...
teslamotorsclub.com
heavyD
Member
I hope people never accept improperly torqued fasteners as road accident or user error. I would escalate things if a service department actually had the gall to insult my intelligence with a reply like that.
Update: Tesla Service was great and fixed it for me within a day. I told them to torque all the bolts on the rest of the suspension parts down as well and put loctite on everything and by the looks of the new paint pen marks, I'd say they did! I feel a lot more safe and secure driving on the road now. It was out of warranty though 
but it was only $100. Could have been a lot worse.
but it was only $100. Could have been a lot worse.
Oh gosh, very disappointed to see these defects are still happening. This looks like a recall job or at least a service notice to owners to have their bolts re torqued. Thanks for sharing...My Tesla fix (the original post) is still holding strong. And they did have to replace the stabilizing arm when it was repaired as my alignment was off after the repair.
Literally happened to my wife. BOTH… or they single bolted it. The bolts lost their nuts and gravity did the rest with quite a bit of damage. They tack weld at least one nut to the frame and blast it with a wrench from bottom up through. I found one nut with 3 tack welds roll out as the tow truck winched it up. This nut had thick black paint with these tack welds. Poor workmanship. Tent made 2018 LRRWM3
For sure! This happened to my wife yesterday in the school pick up. The bolts were gone. I found -1 black painted nut with 3 very poor tack welds as it was winched up the tow truck!
The upside down bolt is absolutely stunning in this scenario.
