I have my test drive scheduled for this afternoon at Menlo Park. However, it's pouring with rain at the moment, and doesn't look like clearing. Do you think it's still beneficial continuing with the test drive today, or should I reschedule?
Of course it is! You won't be able to test the performance limits of the car on city streets anyways...
haha, right ;> WTF are you talking about? just can't floor it below 40mph without TC/ sideways I'd say go for it. The car is pretty good on wet. before I broke in my tires I would barely break traction even when I tried!
The loop they take you through at menlo park doesn't really go through any high speed or crowded roads. So you'll be ok.
When I lived in Vancouver, we had a saying: "If you don't do it in the rain, you're not going to be doing it very often". Go for it.
It's coming down hard this afternoon. Stay safe on your test drive; hope the wipers are good enough...
Thanks for all the advice - I went ahead, and I'm really glad I did. What a great car. The Tesla guy let me take it on the 101, so I got to open it up There was one point when a buzzer came on, and I was told that was because the Traction control engaged, however, just after that, somehow I managed to put it into neutral, so maybe that's what the buzzer was for!!. It was a weird feeling, putting my foot down and yet the car was slowing down. I even got to drive in the color that I'm going to reserve (green). Now that I've driven it, there's no turning back
The wipers were fine. When we arrived at the showroom, the rain was torrential, however, by the time we'd checked in and sorted out the paperwork, the rain had let up a lot. We did raise the ride height to "Very High" to go through the flood water just outside the showroom.
Congrats and welcome to the forum! My wife knocked it into neutral last week. Turns out the wipers in her Jeep are on the right so she swiped at that stalk in the rain and bumped the car into neutral. She said the same thing, that is was weird to be pressing the pedal while the car slowed down...
I took some advise offered on this forum to try Aquapel on my windscreen. Some thoughts: (a) water beads up nicely and really helps with light rain which does not activate the auto wipe feature, but (b) it now makes the driver side (large) wiper chatter a bit. Did I do something wrong or is this to be expected?
Justa suggestion, double check that the blade that chatters is at a right angle to the glass. Does it chatter in both directions or just one?
Just drove home 550 mile from picking up the S, and about 525 were in the rain. I don't know if it's the aerodynamics of the car, but water doesn't seem to blow off the glass like other cars I've owned, which made for lots of distortion, even with the wipers on. It was almost like the wind spread the water out, but not off the glass. I'm going to have to try Rain-X or Aquapel. Coupled with the bad visibility even in light rain was the fact that the auto-wipers didn't seem to detect water until the windshield was impossible to see through. Lastly, the path that the water takes off of the windshield onto the side windows, at least for me, makes the entire side mirrors unusable. Anyone else?
I have not noticed any of these concerns on my car. The auto wipers worked great yesterday. The side mirrors are very visible. The only thing that kind of sucks is the backup camera gets wet and is unusable. The visibility of the car sucks. But I have gotten used to it. I'm going to Rain-X everything, all windows, mirrors and roof. Should make a huge difference.
I believe the chatter occurs (a) when at right angle to glass, large blade coming close to vertical, and (b) primarily occurs on the wipe to the left (driver side) not on the return stroke to the right. Do you have a suggestion about what this might mean?
Sounds like the blade has a "preferred" flexing direction. It is folded more or less flat moving right, and being "bent against the grain" moving left. It catches and releases rapidly and repeatedly, thus chattering. Sounds like reducing static friction with a Rain-X type treatment might stop it (no more seizing up/static friction grabbing).