Last fall I had used Duncan's Automotive for the yearly NH state inspection for Jarvis.  I also asked to have the car aligned, and left detailed instructions for the technician due to the aftermarket suspension components that I installed.

Unfortunately, they did not listen, performed the alignment and handed me a sheet showing the alignment values.  The caster on the right front wheel was 9°, but I was told "it wasn't adjustable on a Tesla, and don't worry, that won't cause tire wear".  This proved they didn't listen to any of the instructions (and links to detailed videos on how to adjust) that I had given when I dropped off the car.  It's also quite obvious that the suspension is not original, with the bright blue anodized upper A arms.  I rescheduled a time when they could properly adjust the caster angle.  A couple months after, I started hearing a groaning/creaking sound coming from the right front wheel area.  When I switch from winter to summer tires, I always take time to clean and inspect the front and rear suspension.  What I found really pissed me off.  When they readjusted the camber they ripped the boot on this suspension pivot.  Now the spherical joint is rusting and creaking.  As these joints are sold in pairs, it'll cost me another $455 for a new set of joints, I will have to remove both lower rear arms, press out the old and press in the new joints, then take it to a competent shop for a proper alignment.  This will likely cost me $800-1000 for their failure to listen to simple instructions and poor quality of work.  I have informed Adam at Duncan's, but I have not received any response.  

Start by finding the part you want to order, go to https://epc.tesla.com/en/landingpage and login using your Tesla login information.  Browse to your vehicle, and look through the various sections to find the part you want to order.  

Once you have the part number(s) you can schedule an appointment through the Service tab of your Tesla phone app.  In the description for the service appointment, list the part number(s) of the items you want to order.   Mention if you want to pick up the parts at a local service center, or if you would like them shipped directly to you.  I chose the latter, and had the parts shipped directly to me.  

Before you are charged for the parts and shipping, the service center will send you an email with a PO listing the parts and the shipping cost, along with a estimated delivery date. 

While the process is a bit convoluted, it does work well, and I have used it a couple times now.  It's how I ordered the replacement inner and outer tie rod to repair the Curb Rash incident, as well as ordering replacement wipers.  I look forward to an update to allow you to simply order replacement parts directly from the parts catalog website, and I hope they are planning to do this in the future.

UPDATE 4/20/22:

I recently tried this process, and they directed me to email my local service center, which is the Dedham Mass. location.  So on 4/21/22, I emailed Dedham_Service@tesla.com and I am awaiting a response.  I had looked up all the part numbers on the website link in the first paragraph above.

UPDATE 1/1/2025:

You can also access the manual on how to service your vehicle, free of charge, found here:

https://service.tesla.com/docs/Model3/ServiceManual/en-us/index.html

6/26/22 - The driver side door latch (DOOR LATCH - FRONT - LEFT HAND- GL1 1500672-00-B) began to act up - sometimes the door wouldn't fully close and would bounce back open.  There were also times when the driver's window would jump down, like the car thought the door latch was being opened.  I investigated, and found that the latch was significantly corroded internally, and was sticking, and blocking the rotating latch from locking around the pin attached to the B pillar.  I found the part number, and ordered a replacement latch from the service center.  I found a few videos on disassembling the driver side door, and within about 20 minutes, I had swapped the latch out.  The new latch works like new again, and only cost $25 for a factory replacement.

I really have to highlight this point, this is a GREAT price for this assembly.  I had recently priced out replacing the latches in my daughter's 2012 Prius Plug-In, as only one power door lock was working.  The dealership wanted $250+ per latch, or over $1k to buy the parts for all four doors!  We wound up disassembling all four latches and replacing the DC motors for a total cost of $20.

UPDATE 2/6/23

The passenger side front door latch started acting up, exactly the same as the driver's door.  I contacted the local service center, ordered the latch, and got it swapped out in about a half hour.  The price did increase slightly, to $26.50...  Still, a great low price for a door latch with sensors and a motor installed in it.

UPDATE 7/17/24

The pin that the latch engages with was showing considerable corrosion, so I replaced it with a new one.  I also replaced the hardware at the same time.  I taped around the perimeter of the original pin before loosening the bolts, to allow me to reinstall the new one in the exact same position.  I know it has about ±1/4" of adjustment for door alignment.  I was also careful to only remove one screw at a time, as I don't know if the internal nut-plate inside the door jamb is retained in any way, and I didn't want to find out the hard way by dropping the nut plate down inside the pillar.

UPDATE 1/1/2025

It's acting up AGAIN.  The door intermittently won't latch when closing.  This time was at a supercharger in the middle of a 300 mile road trip to CT.  I keep lubricant in the trunk, and was able to lubricate the latch and actuate it a few times with my Leatherman, so it would properly latch again.  At this rate, I plan to order a spare latch and actuator, and likely swap it out annually as preventative maintenance.  I should have done a post-mortem on the previously failed two latches.  Perhaps I'll machine some stainless steel parts to replace the corroded internal components that are binding up and jamming the latch.

7/17/24 - While I was ordering other parts from Tesla, I wanted to replace the gas springs that hold the trunk open as they have started to rust.  While I have not had any issue with the strength of the springs, the ends were starting to rust.  Once I had removed them I was happy to find that the ball joints attached to the car are fine, and the majority of the rust was due to the spring clips on the ends of the plastic sockets.  Unfortunately, these cost $105 each, so this was an expensive repair for some crappy rusted clips.

I made sure to grease up the ball and socket joints with lithium grease to hopefully protect the clips and slow the corrosion of the clips.  I hope to clean and repaint the original parts to keep on hand as spares should this happen again.

7/17/24 - It happened a second time...  Someone was getting into the front passenger seat from curb height, stepping down into the car.  Their foot caught the seat controls and snapped off the post that controls the up/down adjustment of the front edge of the seat.  I had replaced this module once before, with a used one when the same exact issue had happened a few years ago.  This time I went with the $110 new part from Tesla to replace this entire module.  I'm certain this will happen again, so I have disassembled and reverse engineered the faulty component, and plan to get a replacement metal 3D printed to ensure it won't break again.  I also plan to reverse engineer the caps that pop onto the posts as well, as they are also quite fragile.

6/26/22 - As we still have the original 12V lead-acid battery, and we have nearly 4 years and over 70K miles, I figured it was good preventative maintenance to replace this item.  We had not yet gotten any low voltage warning, but I have seen cars with half the mileage have issues, so I figured it should be done.  Here is a link to the video I used as a reference on the process to replace the battery:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgCiaXqrSmU

For those interested, the factory battery is only $85, and is listed as: 

ASY,12V BATT AND VENT PLUG,M3    1129182-00-B 

$85 is a great price; for reference an almost identical factory 12V lead acid battery for my daughter's 2012 Prius Plug-In Hybrid cost nearly $400.

I had considered purchasing an aftermarket Ohmmu Lithium 12V Battery for the longer life and ≈18lb weight savings, however at over $400 AND some reported Tesla software issues, and it being "out of stock", I just went with a factory battery.  I have a feeling that the "Out f stock" is really due to the Tesla software rejecting this type of battery.   I wound up picking the new battery up at the same time as the latch above.

In February 2022, the charge port door stopped opening when touched.  It will open from the app, the button on the charging cable, and from the touch screen.  I did some digging, and the most common problem here is the small diamond shaped "target", circled in red on the left, is glued inside the corner of the motorized flap.  There are several YouTube videos about this item falling out and how to glue it back into place. However, our target is still in place, so I suspect the sensor that reads this target is the real issue, which I believe is part of the Chargeport assembly.  I am using the request service feature in the app (see process lower on this page) to check the prices for the replacement parts:

Description:                                                                    Part Number:

SENSOR TARGET ASSY, MCPD,GEN3M3   1473503-00-B

CHARGEPORT, NA,CP,ME/Y 1490374-10-E

UPDATE 6/28/22:

The charge port is working just fine, the only function not working is that the door does not open when the flap is touched.  It may have been a problem for months, as I always used the button on the charge cable to open the flap.   I will simply ignore this for now.

Update 7/17/24:

Finally I broke down and ordered a replacement motorized charge port door.  Not only has the touch sensor stopped working a couple years ago, the small weak motor that strains to open this flap has not been able to overcome the internal friction in the hinge.  After 6 months of manually puling open the flap with several clicks, I spent $140 to replace this assembly.  I taped off the area above the flap on the outside of the car to protect the paint, then was able to access the mounting screws from within the trunk.  I had to move the charge-port (female receptacle) itself out of the way within the trunk, then it was fairly easy to remove and swap out the motorized door.  I will be disassembling the original motor drive to see if it can easily be repaired, and if there is a simple cheap solution to this issue.

20" Rims and low profile tires don't mix well with the pothole filled roads in New England - especially Massachusetts.  MA roads are HORRIBLE.  I have had to turn off the lane departure warning so I can swerve around them all without the car yelling at me and trying to center itself in the lane.

At the beginning of the 2021 summer, our original performance tires were at end of life, so I ordered a new set of Michelin Pilot tires.  When I checked the rims before getting them installed, I found that two of my original rims already had slight bends in them from the previous fall, from a trip driving across MA.  I held off on installing the new tires.

I started looking into getting them straightened.  In this area, work to straighten a rim costs about $300/wheel - not worth it in my opinion, as it will likely happen again soon.  I started looking for used wheels, and found a full set of the same wheels and tires with low mileage in great shape.  When I bought the set it also came with two additional rims - both with bends on the inner part of the rims.  Not a good sign. So I now had 6 good rims and 4 with bends on the inner lip, along with 4 brand new tires.

I ran this used set of good tires/rims all summer, until a trip down to Connecticut to visit a ill relative.  I hit a large pothole when merging from 290 to route 90 west.  The front tire was pinched and blistered the outer sidewall, ruining a Michelin tire with 3/4 life left.  The inner part of this same rim also bent.  The rear rim also wasn't lucky, as the inner side of that rim hit the same pothole, and created a bend.  So now, I have a ruined tire and 6 or 7 bent rims our of 10.  On the top right are the two ruined 19" winter rims, just for fun.  Those are headed to the metal recycling yard, as there is no saving them.  

I just swapped over to the 19" winter rims and new Nokian snow tires.  Over this winter, my plan is to dismount all the summer tires, inspect all the rims, choose the four straightest rims and install the new tires so I start fresh next spring.  I have started designing a rim inspection/straightening tool that should allow me to measure how round each rim is with an indicator, and with a bit of heat and force, allow me to straighten out the bent rims.  I really have nothing to loose.  

If I am successful, I'll have a set of straight factory wheels with new tires, along with a full set of used tires and rims for screwing around, possibly trying my hand at SCCA racing - something I've always wanted to try.

Or, perhaps I'll just sell them all and be done with troublesome 20" wheels.  I've been eyeing a set of lighter weight performance forged 19" rims from FAST EV that look similar to the Model 3 Track Package wheels.

Update 3/20/22:

I had all the tires dismounted from the 20" wheels, and chose the best five to measure with an indicator.  Jacking up the car and removing a front wheel allows you to mount each rim and rotate it by hand.  Aligning a 1" travel drop indicator on the bead, you can measure how out of round the wheel is.  The outer tire bead seats measured great - all under ±0.010".  It turns out that all 10 have various degrees of bend on the inner rim.  The best five were between .050" and .090" of distortion.  I had a local garage, Brutus Auto, straighten these five rims so I have at least one set & a spare to start the spring with performance tires.  Unfortunately, they charged about $100/wheel.  As this will be an ongoing issue with these wheels, I am in the process of designing my own version of a wheel straightener to repair the other 5 rims that I have, and likely repair future bends on the 5 I just had straightened.  I created an accurate CAD model of the wheel in SolidWorks, and now it is on to designing the straightener and machining/fabricating the tooling.

A known issue on many Model 3's built before mid-2019 is that the upper ball joints can corrode and start to squeak due to salty water causing corrosion within the upper ball joints.  Unfortunately, our car was at about 50,400 miles before I heard it start while we were on a trip out of town.  When I sent in a request for a warranty issue, the mileage was at 51k, and I was 1,000 miles out of warranty.   I pushed back somewhat, explained that it is a known issue, but they would not cover it.  I checked into ordering the parts directly from Tesla, using the process shown below, and the upper A arms including the ball joints are $165 each.  

I was already considering making some changes to the car anyway, so I took a look at aftermarket performance upper A arms, and there are a few options available.  Mountain Pass Performance, Unplugged Performance, and Redwood Motorsports are the three I investigated.  I will be going with MPP upper A arms for a few reasons; the ball joints are replaceable, they allow quick camber adjustments if I every try autocross with Jarvis, and least important, they are blue (to match the car).   At the same time, I plan to replace the lower lateral link bushings with their spherical replacements, and add the inserts to the rear bushings of the compression links.   These changes should tighten up the already impressive steering and handling of our M3P without adding NVH (Noise, Vibration and Harshness) to the ride.  With all of these suspension changes, we plan to get an alignment at Electrified Garage once they are all installed.

UPDATE 9/7/21:

The MPP parts are backordered about a month (!)  Clearly they are a popular upgrade to replace this known design issue.    To eliminate the squeaking issue in the mean time, I purchased a grease needle at Autozone for $5.  This allowed me to poke it through the rubber seals, and give about 5-7 pumps on the grease gun, until I saw the rubber boot swell up a bit.  It immediately stopped the squeaking and as a preventative measure, I greased the other upper ball joint as well to prevent it from starting squeaking.

Update 1-22-22:

The parts are now arriving:

https://sites.google.com/view/tanyaandkeithstesla/modifications#h.i5okjygxfdlr

I will install them in March, and have the whole front end aligned professionally by Electrified Garage at the end of March at their new location in Massachusetts.

It's that time of year again, pull out the winter wheels & tires.

The factory 20" performance wheels run 235/35ZR20 Michelin Pilot Sport 4S performance tires (See header image above), while the winter wheels are 19" ASA GT14 Gloss Gunmetal Silver Painted rims with 235/40R-19 Pirelli  Winter Sottozero Serie II snow tires (left upper image).

When we picked up our car in November 2018, the first thing I did when we got home was to go on tire rack and order a set of wheels, snow tires & TPMS sensors.  They arrived mounted & balanced, ready to install.  It was easy to jack up the car, once I made a plastic adapter for my jack that fits into the jacking holes.  We also opted to get wheel/tire covers with the Tire Rack package for when the unused wheels are in storage.

Unfortunately, due to the terrible roads around here, we have had one winter rim receive a nasty bend, right where the valve step opening is.  See the flat spot in the upper right image.

Also due to the crappy roads, I had been feeling a slight vibration at highway speeds.  When I recently swapped over to the winter tires I closely inspected the summer 20" wheels to find that two of them have slight flat spots on the inner wheel flanges.  Time to find a good wheel straightening shop...

Also, every time I swap between wheel sets, I use a sharpie to mark the inside of the rim so I can keep track of what corner of the car it was on and when it was there.  This allows me to rotate the tires when they go back on the car.  At the same time, I take the time to remove the clips behind the front fender liners (inner wheel wells) and clean out the accumulated dirt that winds up there.

Note that the image on the lower left was after one NH winter, and I had cleaned this out the previous fall.  I also had the molded style mud flaps installed at this time.   I made sure to order a bunch of the extra  plastic push rivets, as sometimes these can break even when using the proper tools and techniques for removing them.

The rear plastic tray also can collect sand and dirt, so I take the time to tap it with a plastic hammer and use my shopvac to clean it all out.  Usually you don't have to drop the tray if you use a vacuum to clean it.

I also take the time to clean the moving parts of the brakes, and also use some rust preventative spray on all of the exposed fasteners that I can see, such as the suspension adjustment points.

We have been using Manchester Nissan to perform the yearly NH state inspection.  As Nissan sells pure EV's, they are used to dealing with EV's.  They are fair on pricing ($45 in 2020) and they are quick, usually getting it done in about 30 minutes.

Unfortunately, at this time, Electrified Garage is not a certified NH state inspection garage.  

In the first weeks of spring 2020, my wife backed out of the garage, and saw a strange glint of light as she moved into the sunshine.  We looked closely, and found the rear glass had a stress crack in the outer layer, starting in the right rear and reaching near the center of the glass.  I confirmed that it was only the outer layer that was cracked, and we were told it was safe to continue to drive.  I scheduled a service appointment right through the phone app, and a week later we brought it in.  We dropped the car off at 9:30 AM, and it was done at 2 PM.  They did a wonderful job with the replacement, and I'm very pleased with the result.  It was covered under warranty, as there was no impact.  There is a bit of a history with the earlier 2017/2018 Model 3's having an issue with the rear glass.  Apparently, they have changed vendors due to quality issues. 

In the summer of 2019, after a period of some rain, we noticed that the RR taillight had some moisture trapped inside.  It went away after a few days, but returned again with the next rain.

I scheduled another Tesla Ranger visit, who quickly replaced the assembly and also finally installed our carbon fiber spoiler (about 6 months after we took delivery).

While the car has been fantastic, there have been a few problems.  The first issue we ran into was the winter of 2018/2019.  This was when it was reported that some people's M3 windows were freezing shut and sticking to the seals attached tot he body of the car.  A software update was issued with a week or two, that wold slightly drop all four windows, but maintain a seal, when the outside temperature is below freezing.  This was to prevent the glass from dragging on the trim when the door was open in the case where the motor couldn't drive the window down quickly.  In our case, the right rear window would drop a couple inches instead of about 1/4".  This led to one incident when we were at the movies and it was snowing heavily.  We returned to the car to find snow on the rear seat.  We scheduled a service ranger to come to our house a few days later to check on it and replace the rear window track and motor (called a regulator assembly).  He finished up about 6 PM.  I drove my daughter to Karate, then returned home about 9:30 PM, parked in the garage as usual, plugged the car in and went upstairs.  Sometime in the night, the rear window glass exploded as seen in the pictures on the left.

Unfortunately, the paint was chipped along the top of the RR door due tot he falling glass.  A few days after the exploding glass, another Tesla Ranger came to our house to replace the regulator mechanism again and also install a new piece of glass.  I chatted him up while he worked, and I even helped find the root cause for the breakage.  When the previous Ranger had replaced the regulator assembly, he reused the rubber lined metal clamp plates that grip the glass.  When they were tightened, the rubber tore and a corner of the steel plate was touching the bare glass.  Unfortunately, the second ranger had a new regulator and glass, but no replacement rubber lined metal plates, as they are a separate part from the regulator or the glass assemblies.   I found the official part number online, and he was able to order the parts overnight from CA, and he installed them the following day.   A few weeks later, Today's Collision, the only Tesla Authorized body shop in New England, did a great job repairing the damage at no cost (aside from a week without the car) to us.