Wiring loom water ingress

[Rooster6655]

So they won’t accept it as a warranty repair and don’t have any courtesy cars “due to high demand”.
And they’re over an hour away from me.
What a ballache.

It is most definitely a manufacturing defect which was there at the time of purchase as their patch up job an general recall proves this, whether this is worth time/cost pursuing is another matter, I would be questioning as to whether there really is a need to replace the whole wiring loom unless some wires have been permanently damaged.

I find if you try and escalate to the service manager they can sometimes be helpful or at least more experienced. I would expect they will pay for a taxi or uber one way at a minimum for you if you having to spend £1.6k!

For the current situation I would be questioning whether you can run in some sort of service mode which disables the alarm, I don't see why they can't download firmware to your car for this!

 

[Jason71]

It is most definitely a manufacturing defect which was there at the time of purchase as their patch up job an general recall proves this, whether this is worth time/cost pursuing is another matter, I would be questioning as to whether there really is a need to replace the whole wiring loom unless some wires have been permanently damaged.

I find if you try and escalate to the service manager they can sometimes be helpful or at least more experienced. I would expect they will pay for a taxi or uber one way at a minimum for you if you having to spend £1.6k!

For the current situation I would be questioning whether you can run in some sort of service mode which disables the alarm, I don't see why they can't download firmware to your car for this!

There was a water ingress issue in the first RHD vehicles in 2019. but I can see no direct evidence that this is in any way related to that. The symptoms are completely different and its taken 4 years and 80K miles to show up. It is not going to be hard for them to claim it is in no way related and they may well be right.

I am pretty sure £1600 is not replacement of the entire wiring loom. That would be a lot more than expensive since it would take days to do. It is more likely a section. I do agree though if Tesla have genuinely found a connector with water in that could be fixed without replacing the entire sub loom but Tesla don't do fixing they just do replacing. They would not have the tools or the skills to replace individual wires or connectors.
Personally ( and I did actually work in quality control for a company making car wring looms many years ago)
I think it is more likely that they have found a grounding / short circuit issue where one of the alarm sensors is incorrectly registering as triggered and either
a) it is a known issue caused by water ingress
or
b) they can detect the short and just assume it is water related

either way the manual says replace loom. and to be fair you could rack up many hours at £100+ per hour trying to find exactly where the problem is so this might unfortunately be the most cost effective solution under the circumstance. assuming that does actually fix the issue.......

Last wiring related issue I had ( in a Skoda) racked up a bill of £1000 bill for labour without even finding the problem. Fortunately it was intermittent so I was able to trade in the car at another garage without them knowing it was prone to dying at random intervals.

 

[Rooster6655]

There was a water ingress issue in the first RHD vehicles in 2019. but I can see no direct evidence that this is in any way related to that. The symptoms are completely different and its taken 4 years and 80K miles to show up. It is not going to be hard for them to claim it is in no way related and they may well be right.

Fair enough if it isn't actually related to the original problem then would be hard to claim, my concern is then how its happened and whether the problem is wide spread, hopefully we will find out more in time!

 

[MrBadger]

I would also be enquiring where the water came from. One thing if it was a wet area like the original wiring loom issue, but if you have water ingress in an otherwise dry area, at very least it may repeat itself.

 

[Jason71]

Fair enough if it isn't actually related to the original problem then would be hard to claim, my concern is then how its happened and whether the problem is wide spread, hopefully we will find out more in time!

One off defects happen. especially in wiring. There are nearly as many separate components in a car wiring loom as the rest of the car put together.
each wire has a crimp on each end and possibly a seal. Too much crimp presure and eventually vibration breaks the wire. Too little and eventually the crimp falls off. miss one seal or have a bad one or assemble it badly and water can get into the whole connector block of 2 to 20+ wires.
Fail to push one connector all the way into the block so it locks and eventually it works its way look and disconnects. Hopefully prevented by an "anti back out" piece in the connector block if fitted
Most wiring harness's are still assembled by hand so plenty of scope for human error. No one has yet designed a machine that can do it cheaper or better than a human as far as I know. Company I worked for had some work done in prisons so not the most motivated workforce!
It actually amazes me we don't have more problems.
The point is. Given all that and the fact that this is the only example of this I have heard on the forum. Its not time to panic yet. unfortunate as it is for the op it is quite possibly a one off
I had a handbrake servo fail on my M3. Never heard anyone else report the same thing.
Sometimes Sh1t happens.

 

[ACarneiro]

Yes, I rather suspect mine is a bit of a one-off. I am not aware of lots of people reporting faults similar to mine.
I am slightly worried about the acumen of the technician, mind you. He didn't seem especially certain of what was going on, what had actually failed (other than finding water where water shouldn't be) or where the water ingress could have come from. There was an awful lot of shrugging when I asked him questions.

As they had no courtesy cars in Chester, I ended up moving the service to Birmingham so I am hoping for a bit of a second opinion from them. I find it odd that water ingress would cause such a binary fault. One day it was fine in the morning and then in the afternoon it started happening EVERY time. I would expect water damage to cause more inconsistent and spurious problems (and not just limited the one system).
I don't know, I'm not an expert by any means but this just doesn't sound quite right.
I have a sneaking suspicion that I may well end up spending £1600 and the fault won't be solved :/

 

[Jason71]

Yes, I rather suspect mine is a bit of a one-off. I am not aware of lots of people reporting faults similar to mine.
I am slightly worried about the acumen of the technician, mind you. He didn't seem especially certain of what was going on, what had actually failed (other than finding water where water shouldn't be) or where the water ingress could have come from. There was an awful lot of shrugging when I asked him questions.

As they had no courtesy cars in Chester, I ended up moving the service to Birmingham so I am hoping for a bit of a second opinion from them. I find it odd that water ingress would cause such a binary fault. One day it was fine in the morning and then in the afternoon it started happening EVERY time. I would expect water damage to cause more inconsistent and spurious problems (and not just limited the one system).
I don't know, I'm not an expert by any means but this just doesn't sound quite right.
I have a sneaking suspicion that I may well end up spending £1600 and the fault won't be solved :/

Based on the evidence I can see this could be a wiring issue water related or not. But equally it could be a faulty alarm or sensor. Lets hope Tesla know some thing we don't.
I agree it is a very consistant issue for something water related in such dry weather. Maybe ask a few questions as to their evidence....

 

[CKwik240]

Yes, I rather suspect mine is a bit of a one-off. I am not aware of lots of people reporting faults similar to mine.
I am slightly worried about the acumen of the technician, mind you. He didn't seem especially certain of what was going on, what had actually failed (other than finding water where water shouldn't be) or where the water ingress could have come from. There was an awful lot of shrugging when I asked him questions.

As they had no courtesy cars in Chester, I ended up moving the service to Birmingham so I am hoping for a bit of a second opinion from them. I find it odd that water ingress would cause such a binary fault. One day it was fine in the morning and then in the afternoon it started happening EVERY time. I would expect water damage to cause more inconsistent and spurious problems (and not just limited the one system).
I don't know, I'm not an expert by any means but this just doesn't sound quite right.
I have a sneaking suspicion that I may well end up spending £1600 and the fault won't be solved :/

Water intrusion into wires and terminals cause corrosion over time. Once the corrosion eats away at the last bit of wire, it becomes an open circuit. Intermittent problems from such an issue usually occurs in moving sections of wiring and/or high current wires.

 

[Rooster6655]

Yes, I rather suspect mine is a bit of a one-off. I am not aware of lots of people reporting faults similar to mine.
I am slightly worried about the acumen of the technician, mind you. He didn't seem especially certain of what was going on, what had actually failed (other than finding water where water shouldn't be) or where the water ingress could have come from. There was an awful lot of shrugging when I asked him questions.

As they had no courtesy cars in Chester, I ended up moving the service to Birmingham so I am hoping for a bit of a second opinion from them. I find it odd that water ingress would cause such a binary fault. One day it was fine in the morning and then in the afternoon it started happening EVERY time. I would expect water damage to cause more inconsistent and spurious problems (and not just limited the one system).
I don't know, I'm not an expert by any means but this just doesn't sound quite right.
I have a sneaking suspicion that I may well end up spending £1600 and the fault won't be solved :/

Just wondering how you got on with them fixing your car, did they manage to do it all without problems?

 

[ACarneiro]

Just wondering how you got on with them fixing your car, did they manage to do it all without problems?

Thank you for your interest.
I moved the appointment to Birmingham in the hopes that they had a courtesy car. It’s lucky that they did because they damaged one of the coolant pipes during the repair and had no parts to replace it so it took them almost two weeks to give me my car back (I was also away on holiday for a period so that probably delayed things by a couple of days).
They squarely blamed it on the power frunk/trunk kit installed so that’s egg on my face.
I now have a non-functional power trunk and dashcan as they obviously didn’t tap into the wiring loom to power those again, but at least the alarm problem was fixed.

I think it was a lesson for me to think carefully before making after market mods (even if installed by professionals) as there is never a zero-chance of problems.

 

[Billbrown1982]

Thank you for your interest.
I moved the appointment to Birmingham in the hopes that they had a courtesy car. It’s lucky that they did because they damaged one of the coolant pipes during the repair and had no parts to replace it so it took them almost two weeks to give me my car back (I was also away on holiday for a period so that probably delayed things by a couple of days).
They squarely blamed it on the power frunk/trunk kit installed so that’s egg on my face.
I now have a non-functional power trunk and dashcan as they obviously didn’t tap into the wiring loom to power those again, but at least the alarm problem was fixed.

I think it was a lesson for me to think carefully before making after market mods (even if installed by professionals) as there is never a zero-chance of problems.

That reminds me actually....when my car was in last week for a washer pump fluid sensor and a driver seat refusing to calibrate the tech also changed out the HV charge loom as that was throwing up a fault (that was supposedly not important but they did it anyway)

After he powered down to replace the cable and fire it back up the other 2 faults had cleared themselves. He gave me the whole "i'm not saying it is, but it could well be down to your aftermarket frunk modification"

I'd dispute this if it came down to it but I do wonder if its worth the hassle...I thought i'd use the frunk loads after putting in the mod but in reality, I just don't...I might remove it soon. Would also make me less worried about the 12V dying and not being able to release the hood to change it.

 

[ACarneiro]

The annoying thing is that I really did use the trunk all the time.
It looked cool as hell but it’s fairly in the “I won’t die if I don’t have it” camp

 

[ACarneiro]

(That should be “I used the frunk all the time”)

 

[Jason71]

(That should be “I used the frunk all the time”)

Maybe it will come as standard on project Highland and you can upgrade.

 

[ACarneiro]

Maybe it will come as standard on project Highland and you can upgrade.

I think I’ll keep this one until it dies. Hopefully another 10 years from now

 

[Rooster6655]

I moved the appointment to Birmingham in the hopes that they had a courtesy car. It’s lucky that they did because they damaged one of the coolant pipes during the repair and had no parts to replace it so it took them almost two weeks to give me my car back

Classic Tesla service!

They squarely blamed it on the power frunk/trunk kit installed so that’s egg on my face.
I now have a non-functional power trunk and dashcan as they obviously didn’t tap into the wiring loom to power those again, but at least the alarm problem was fixed.

I think it was a lesson for me to think carefully before making after market mods (even if installed by professionals) as there is never a zero-chance of problems.

Thanks for the update, that might explain why water ingress isn't a widely reported problem, definitely put me off the after market mods too!