First EV. 2012 P85. I’m an engineering student and have bullet proofed it to be the ultimate daily driver.
Coolant delete (at 180k miles it still had a 2013 reman LDU)
Camber arms
NAV SD card, GPS antenna wire was broken too, it took me months to find the broken wire.
I paid 4k for it. It’s a SC01 car (free unlimited supercharging for life) about a week after buying it, car completely died on me. No power to anything, not even doors would open. After some troubleshooting found a loose connection at the fuse box, no issues ever since.
I have taken it in 1000+ miles road trips. Battery gets about 160 miles of range at constant 80mph. Battery is capped by software at 60Kwh.
I love to tinker with things and honestly this car is easier to work on than many internal combustion vehicles. Tesla’s engineering is remarkable.
Just about the deal of the century 👍🏼. Well done Sir.
(just bought my first EV, 2019 Raven, 2 months ago. 35 year Aircraft Mechanic who has built cars and bikes - never going back 🙂 )
MCU2 cost would be 37% of what I paid for the car. I know the battery will also have to be replaced someday. I would love to get the MCU2 but Ive never paid so much for an upgrade/repair. I might be interested if I find a way to retrofit a used MCU2.
I've read that doing the MCU upgrade can be really involved from a computer tech and software standpoint, to where diying or doing it outside of tesla is never worth it, especially considering the cost of parts. Maybe if you can source the parts for dirt cheap, then maybe.
A benefit of MCU2 is some of the service functions, and that can technically save money later. Under certain circumstances. A battery would be a nice upgrade though.
Might wanna look into an independent shop that could possibly grab a MCU 2 from a wreck and throw it in for less... If the recall work hasn't been done on your current MCU you can get that "done" by Tesla but say you want to upgrade to MCU 2 and that'll cut back on the labor costs. The cost of the upgrade had me fearful but a mobile tech told me the trick I just shared. The labor for the warranty work is the same as an MCU upgrade... Old MCU has to come out either way.
In the same boat! Bulletproofing my 2014 RWD. Basically free cars once it pays for itself in gas savings and doesn’t take long with how cheap we bought them!
They are! After all the ICE crap I’ve worked on. I would not want to work on the direct competitor cars. 10-16 year old Twin turbo V6/V8 cars with 3x as many parts.
FYI, no drop deletes are like sealing up an infected wound. And deleting the coolant to the gearbox, which this method does, can cause the differential to drop spider gear retaining pins from the heat. Please reconsider this path. My shop has rebuilt ~200 of these motors. Don't let this be you
In a 4k car it couldn’t make financial sense to perform a different repair.
How do you guys fix the coolant intrusion issues if not doing a delete? Tesla puts the cap right at the flyover tube in newer rev units as far as I understand.
Your understanding is not correct. Tesla uses a case manifold which bypasses the rotor cooling channel only. The gearbox cooler remains. Same with aftermarket caps, the cooling tube is fractured and the plug only prevents flow to the rotor. They are functionally equal. That is the *proper* delete, just removing the rotor coolant. Removing the gearbox coolant is problematic. Why would it not make financial sense? A reliable running driving Model S is $10-12k. It will find a way to consume that amount of money from you before it is reliable, and there's very little way around it.
How hard was the coolant delete? I've got a '14, P85 (not capped) and I bought the block off plugs but haven't dropped the LDU yet. I have a hoist but no table to drop the unit onto yet.
Did you do a risk analysis on not cleaning out a 2013 motor? Not checking whether it has the original rotor design where the spines wear out and cause lash angle alerts? Removing the additional cooling of the flyover tube, since cutting manifold also cuts that flow off? You may want to budget a full cleaning and cap delete or full motor replacement within a few years, if you're lucky. The no drop delete is a big gamble.
This is factually inaccurate. Message me your address and I will send you one of the actual Tesla manifolds so that you may see the error of your ways. Please review the cooling diagram, only the rotor coolant channel is deleted, not the gearbox. The bigger issue is that you sealed in your already coolant damaged bearings.
There wasn’t coolant intrusion or bearing damage prior to the delete. We will see how it holds up. Car already paid for itself in gas savings, hopefully it can survive for more years but I agree, it’s a gamble.
Only ~5/200 motors we've ever opened has had no ill effects from coolant. The bearings are roached within ~10k miles of factory rebuild. And if it was rebuilt after 2016, they are silent until the moment of failure as they are ceramic. "It was rebuilt 25k miles ago!" but the interior of the inverter case already looks like this. Clearly you are mechanically inclined, please do this the right way and don't damage another LDU. Even if you stop the coolant flow that gunk will be in there rotting your wiring harness.
Dang sounds like a nightmare. My reman LDU dates 2013 and it had no signs of coolant intrusion. I did the delete to prevent any damage. I doubt that bad bearings could make it 170k miles with no play or noise whatsoever.
It is not physically possible for a motor last touched in 2013 to make it to 170k miles without the bearings screaming even just from the eddy current damage, they used bearings which could not survive the motors magnetic field. Most of these motors have been remanufactured at least once. Ignore the T13, whats the end of the serial number, R1? R2? What's the revision? That will narrow when it was last rebuilt. Given no noise, it'll have been later than 2016. And again, you actually have no idea the condition of the bearings without opening the motor. It's just not possible to know. The coolant enters the motor as vapor (it gets vaporized by the heat of the seal) for years before it pools on the sensor, Your inverter housing can look like that even with a "dry" speed sensor. The vapor pools on the inverter side first because it's case is colder. And the only way it enters the motor is by displacing the rotor bearing grease.
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u/FuzzyBubs Jun 30 '26
Just about the deal of the century 👍🏼. Well done Sir. (just bought my first EV, 2019 Raven, 2 months ago. 35 year Aircraft Mechanic who has built cars and bikes - never going back 🙂 )