Various loud noises on a model S

[Gillie321]

Hi all,
I’ve had a 2016 model S 75 for two weeks now and I’ve noticed various loud noises.

I have noticed them at home when the car is cold, parked or charging. It sounds as if it’s coming from the front left area, and it’s quite loud as I can here it from inside the house.

Theres another noise that I haven’t yet got a video of that almost sounds like rain dropping on metal, will try to get a video next time i here it.

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[JamstationP85D]

It sounds like your fan needs to be replaced. There are some other threads with similar sounds.

 

[dark cloud]

That would be my guess too. There are not a lot of moving parts in this car when it is stationary. Either the compressor for the air conditioning or the condenser fans; that is about it. The left condenser fan you can see just in front of the wheel. It will operate during charging at higher SOC levels for sure. You can confirm it is running by feeling air exiting the grill in front of the wheel.

Or you could keep it for a bad sounding pedestrian warning system.

 

[Ken7]

Almost sounds like a slipping compressor belt in an ICE car.

 

[Gillie321]

View attachment 501771

That would be my guess too. There are not a lot of moving parts in this car when it is stationary. Either the compressor for the air conditioning or the condenser fans; that is about it. The left condenser fan you can see just in front of the wheel. It will operate during charging at higher SOC levels for sure. You can confirm it is running by feeling air exiting the grill in front of the wheel.

Or you could keep it for a bad sounding pedestrian warning system.

Thanks for the replies! I've booked it into the nearest service centre on the app for mid next month. In the mean time do you think I should be worried and do you think it's alright to continue driving?

It's happening at home with ambient temperatures of less than 10 Celsius and charging at only 2kw so I wouldn't have thought much cooling would be necessary?

 

[geoffmanley]

I can't imagine it has anything to do with the drive units or batteries. If it suddenly stops making noise, I might worry, but not now.

 

[dark cloud]

Thanks for the replies! I've booked it into the nearest service centre on the app for mid next month. In the mean time do you think I should be worried and do you think it's alright to continue driving?

It's happening at home with ambient temperatures of less than 10 Celsius and charging at only 2kw so I wouldn't have thought much cooling would be necessary?

It's fine to drive. There are so many safety systems built into this cars battery management system it won't let itself be damaged. The car will shut down before that happens. Even if the fan seizes the other side is fine, yes? Worst case scenario if you were in the middle of summer and it needed cooling the right fan would work harder to compensate for the other one being out of commission.

These fans are coming on more frequently these days since the fires that Tesla is trying to put a handle on. If you charge to high levels (>80%) they come on, probably to balance the cell/brick temperatures. 2KW is really low but I suppose it doesn't matter. You are not trying to charge to high levels, like greater than 90% are you?

I remember this one guy charging beside me last summer, he had a small rock inside the fan shroud and it was making a hell of a pinging racket. Took a good 5 minutes before it shot itself out.

 

[Gillie321]

It's fine to drive. There are so many safety systems built into this cars battery management system it won't let itself be damaged. The car will shut down before that happens. Even if the fan seizes the other side is fine, yes? Worst case scenario if you were in the middle of summer and it needed cooling the right fan would work harder to compensate for the other one being out of commission.

These fans are coming on more frequently these days since the fires that Tesla is trying to put a handle on. If you charge to high levels (>80%) they come on, probably to balance the cell/brick temperatures. 2KW is really low but I suppose it doesn't matter. You are not trying to charge to high levels, like greater than 90% are you?

I remember this one guy charging beside me last summer, he had a small rock inside the fan shroud and it was making a hell of a pinging racket. Took a good 5 minutes before it shot itself out.

Thanks again for the replies. I've been charging close to 90% but never over it, I assume 80-90% should be alright long term?
Thank you for the reassurance and i'll have another look tomorrow to see if it's definitely the fan.

 

[dark cloud]

Thanks again for the replies. I've been charging close to 90% but never over it, I assume 80-90% should be alright long term?
Thank you for the reassurance and i'll have another look tomorrow to see if it's definitely the fan.

90% should be alright long term, but 80% should be better, and 70% better still. If you don't need the range from 70-90 daily then why do it? Save 90+% for long term travel.

But in light of the fact that if you don't go above 70% you won't hear that fan noise, that should be a good enough reason.

 

[jdw]

It could possibly also be a solenoid, perhaps the one that controls the louvres/air boxes for the radiators, although that failure is not normally a continous noise, but it does have a small plastic toothed gear that can make a sound like that. See here ...

 

[2101Guy]

Regarding charging limit: from the Man himself

Twitter

 

[dark cloud]

Regarding charging limit: from the Man himself

Twitter

"No issue going to 5% or lower..."

Tell that to these guys:

Shut down with supercharger in sight

Shut down with supercharger in sight

Power Shutdown and Bootloop at 6% SOC

Model S shut down at 32 miles, leaving me stranded - why?

 

[rooter]

It sounds like fart noises.

 

[Myfirstone]

If I’m correct the motor from the Fan is a Bosch and you can replace it. The noise looks like a malfunction gear.

Login on with you tesla account and find the part number

https://epc.tesla.com/#/login