Brillant video, flip out the speed sensor disconnect by hand when out and replug before refitting saves breaking the tab. 110,000 miles on my P85 motor, clean sensor lust a trace of grease, went in with a $4 endoscope from Ali express, its all clean, ill be doing a coolent delete in the next 5,000 miles.
Vibration and cogging is definitely not a good sign, especially if it takes more power than normal to start from a stop, or if the car won't free-roll in neutral... Based on what you described, it sounds like your drive unit could be starting to seize, which could leave you stranded and render your car un-drivable with basically no warning.
Thanks for the video. My car 2018 MXP, is out of warranty, but still has the battery and DU warranty. Is this failure covered under the drive unit warranty or has Tesla cited some sort of loop hole for those who've experienced it?
Hi Alex, I pulled my speed sensor from my 2015 model S 85, no water droplets at all but smelt and felt to be trans oil on it. Not sure if this is normal? The car drives and sounds perfectly fine.
Can you just pull out the metal tube and seal off the coolant for the rotor altogether? I always drive in chill mode and have drops on my speed sensor after only 90.000km on my remanufactured LDU.
Great video. I have a 2014 S85 and I want to check the health of my engine. Is this the only way? Is there any noise or any other symtoms to be alert to? Thank you
Generally speaking, this is the only way to check for internal coolant leakage. There are usually no symptoms for this particular issue until it's too late (e.g., the drive unit is un-rebuildable). If your drive unit makes a "milling noise" that could be a symptom of worn out bearings though, which can potentially lead to a worn out seal eventually.
@QC CHARGE - When doing a rebuild, what do you do with the "shaft grounding ring" (I mean the "brushes" - designed by Aegis I guess - Aegis has a ("the"?) patent on that and I assume Tesla did not violate that - do all LDUs have them)? How do you prevent gunk to get on it while removing the rotor (I guess it should be removed while keeping it axisymmetrical enough - or does it not matter?)? Do you clean it? if so, how? How does it stand up against high mileage? The fiber wear length is designed to last 200,000 hours according Aegis' specsheet, but that may assume a clean shaft under lab conditions. If not cleaned, attached gunk may reduce conductivity, in turn leading to currents choosing another path, in turn increasing transmission bearing / gear fluting wear *again*, canceling out a bunch of your hard work.
@@QCCHARGE The rotor housing has a breathing vent (I assume that's the hole's function) behind the speed sensor. This vent largely prevents breathing *through* the bearing. Do you plug that vent in a rebuild?
@@QCCHARGE Okay, so let's assume electrically insulating ceramic balls around the rotor and no (working) Aegis brush to carry away currents. This means that the currents may "choose" to damage the rotor's spline/gears/etc instead (no oxygen needed for that, it just vaporizes the metal locally). Does the rebuild include measures to avoid this, and if so, which?
@@diyEVguy Tesla themselves actually eliminated the brush ring on the drive units in ~2015 (at the same time that they started installing ceramic bearings in the drive units). To date, we have never encountered one of these revised "gen 2" LDUs that had issues with the splines, the only motors we have encountered with spline issues (and we've rebuilt hundreds of them) were early (2012-2014) "gen 1" LDUs.
@@gatoraudio1, all Tesla drive units built between 2012-2014 were the “570 amp” Large Drive Unit (LDU). Prior to that, they were motors that were purchased for the 2008-2011 Tesla Roadster.
Hi Jose, we have not yet done any work on Nissan LEAFs, but we have been wanting to do a battery swap. It's possible to put a "stock" 24kwh battery back in, or upgrade it to a larger 30, 40, or 62kwh battery. The biggest issue with doing battery upgrades on LEAFs is actually finding a suitable replacement battery... If you want, we can try to find a battery, or if you found one yourself you could bring it to us to perform the swap.
Thank you for the informative video! I have a 2016MX I recently purchased. Do you know if there is a way to check if the drive unit was replaced with the newest "U" unit? Like a serial # or marking on the LDU?
There should be a sticker on the bottom of the drive unit which contains the part number and serial number. The last digit of the part number denotes which revision the drive unit is. The latest "U" rev LDU has only been out for a few months at this point.
We perform a complete drive unit overhaul, which involves replacing the affected seal, as well as replacing the rotor bearings that the coolant would have come into contact with (we use hybrid ceramic bearings for the rotor) and cleaning up any corrosion buildup that may have occurred as a result of the coolant. In addition, we make a number of modifications to the drive unit which should prevent a leaky seal from causing irreparable harm in the future. Assuming that the drive unit was still operational and can be rebuilt (aka, the inverter is not damaged, splines in good shape, etc.) the full overhaul costs about $4,000.
Nope, just on the LDU. The motor potion of the SDU is actually oil cooled, so they don't even have a coolant seal to fail. In comparison to the LDU, the SDU is practically a bulletproof design (we actually have an employee with over 430k mi on his car's original rear SDU, and the front one lasted 375k before it was replaced).
Wondering if I shouldn’t be worried, I noticed coolant under the right side of my Tesla model y, front and back wheels, but it had already dried up and I haven’t seen an active leak. At one point when I first got the car, there was a sound coming from the front of the car, Tesla fixed it. That said, the leak isn’t active and I can’t see staining under the car. If the diagnostics doesn’t say fluid is low, should I still have Tesla look at the car, or just ignore it? It’s on the right side of the model y, front and back tires.
Are you sure it was coolant and not just A/C condensation? The car will drip water underneath with the A/C running, especially on a warn day... It's possible a valve or a hose connection point could be the cause of a coolant leak, but it most likely wouldn't be "intermittent".
@@QCCHARGE it’s blue, but I haven’t seen it active - it was dry. Stuck a camera under the passenger wheel well and can see blue staining on the super Manifold. Scheduled an appointment. Just sucks because I hate giving up my car to service, takes forever to get it back.
Is there anything that can be done to delay seal leakage? Can you spray WD40, or some kind of oil, into the housing, for example? I find this Tesla design flaw absolutely shocking.
Not really, the only thing you can do is check it periodically, and repair it when you see an issue. Spraying oil in there is likely to not end well, as you don't want to contaminate the seal... It really is shocking, especially when you consider how long they continued to use this motor for despite it being a clear issue. We have an LDU torn down in the shop right now with a serial number close to 1.1 million. Not sure how many miles on it, but probably less than 15k, and it's under 2 years old.
A little bit of grease is to be expected if the speed sensor has never been checked/cleaned before. (The sealed bearings on the rotor always have a little bit of grease squish out during the break in period).
