Wanted to see if anyone else has run into this and how they approached it. My Tesla Model 3 2018 Heater has failed twice. Once 9 months ago, it was a slow fade out, each day a little less heat. Sometimes no heat, then a few days of heat, then all gone. Finally took to the SC and they replaced the PTC Heater which seemed to fix things. Then 9 months later, the heat failed completely. Reboots nothing, just error message indicating the climate keeper and heating failure messages with cold air blowing. Now I took to the SC and had to pay for a second repair, this time it was the Heater Wiring Harness that needed to be replaced. Since the warranty had expired, and they claim it was a different component of the heating system, the SC refused to pay for the second repair.
Now between April and January only left a few months of true heating use as the first failure took place at the start of spring, and the second failure was at the middle of a mild winter.
A couple questions seem to arise.
- Wouldn't you want to replace the wiring harness when you replaced the PTC Heater? It seems that the shorting of a high voltage component such as the heater could have damaged the wires itself.
- Could the SC have damaged the wiring harness when they reinstalled the the new PTC Heater? The damage does not have to be significant to compromise a wire or start a series of events that can later cause the wire to melt or fail completely.
- Now that I replaced my wiring harness, should Tesla have also replaced the working PTC Heater? Could the damaged wiring harness have started new damage to the new PTC Heater?
- Is there something Tesla could be missing to better root cause my issue? Water intrusion due to failed seals? Lack of protection of heating wires?
And an important warning for other owners, if you have any sense of problems with your heating system in an older 2020 Tesla (without a Heat Pump), I would run as fast as you can while still under warranty to get your PTC Heater replaced before you fail completely off warranty. I've seen tons of threads here and around the network about PTC Heater failures especially in colder climates. They seem to be very unreliable parts that fail just as the warranty period ends.
Now between April and January only left a few months of true heating use as the first failure took place at the start of spring, and the second failure was at the middle of a mild winter.
A couple questions seem to arise.
- Wouldn't you want to replace the wiring harness when you replaced the PTC Heater? It seems that the shorting of a high voltage component such as the heater could have damaged the wires itself.
- Could the SC have damaged the wiring harness when they reinstalled the the new PTC Heater? The damage does not have to be significant to compromise a wire or start a series of events that can later cause the wire to melt or fail completely.
- Now that I replaced my wiring harness, should Tesla have also replaced the working PTC Heater? Could the damaged wiring harness have started new damage to the new PTC Heater?
- Is there something Tesla could be missing to better root cause my issue? Water intrusion due to failed seals? Lack of protection of heating wires?
And an important warning for other owners, if you have any sense of problems with your heating system in an older 2020 Tesla (without a Heat Pump), I would run as fast as you can while still under warranty to get your PTC Heater replaced before you fail completely off warranty. I've seen tons of threads here and around the network about PTC Heater failures especially in colder climates. They seem to be very unreliable parts that fail just as the warranty period ends.
