If you read the story of our recent transportation mishaps then you know that when I took Timmy the Titan in for new brakes, HA took Joulee the Free Salvage Tesla into town and didn’t make it due to a flat tire. We got Timmy back on the road, but after she got new tires Joulee made a horrible and expensive-sounding noise. We had to leave her at the shop in town, where the staff spent a couple of hours trying to diagnose the problem and in the end thought it was a drivetrain issue that only Tesla could fix.
Tesla is difficult to contact for service. You can only send a short text message via the app. I did so, and explained that I needed to know what the procedure was for getting service as there are no Tesla service centers on this island. The response I got was that they gave me a time to drop the car off in Honolulu, several hundred ocean miles away. Not really helpful. Then they sent me a message saying that remote diagnostics indicated that I needed a $20,000+ dollar repair. Also not helpful. When I tried to respond in the app saying that the battery issue was bogus (I’ve been through this before on the mainland), the app wouldn’t let me add the information. Frustrating. I decided I would have to use the social media trick of writing up my response, taking a screen shot of it, and attaching it as a picture.
Before I could jump through those hoops, though, someone from Tesla actually called me! Cool! I was able to explain the situation, and he offered helpful advice as to how I might be able to get a mechanic on this island to look at it. Then he offered to have a Tesla mobile technician come by and check it out, at least to be sure it was safe.
I made an appointment with mobile service for next Tuesday, the 17th. Then yesterday, a week early, I got a phone call from the tech, Rick. He said he was in my neighborhood (something that likely doesn’t happen often as we’re… rural). Would I mind if he came that morning, instead? Heck, no! I had to leave, but I could stay long enough to meet him, explain what I knew, and introduce him to HA.
He ended up working on the car for about four hours. He eventually found a wheel-balancing weight that had come off the wheel when they were working on the tires and had lodged in the brake caliper housing. I had described the sound as something that would drag along a moving part like a drive shaft, then suddenly be thrown off. Now that made sense.
I should probably replace the brake pad and rotor, as they’re at least a little damaged, but the $600 for Rick’s time was far less than it would have cost to ship the car to Honolulu for service, and worlds away from the $20,000 repair that Tesla had initially recommended.
—2p