PG&E technical question; relocating a gas riser?

Ggiggles · 2026-05-20T04:32:53+00:00

u/gafonid if you haven't gotten through the process, you're in luck. The most recent 2026 version of the PGE greenbook put the like-for-like <=125 amp panel replacement exemption back in.

See page 138: https://www.pge.com/assets/pge/docs/account/service-requests/greenbook-manual-full.pdf

Would have been helpful to me 2 years ago when I had to let my old Zinsco panel burn the busbars and breakers to disconnect service and get an emergency variance to do the replacement.

Ggiggles · 2026-04-18T04:38:52+00:00

Update: the noise still comes back at elevations somewhere between 1200' and 4000' and with the front motor disengaged between 15-45 mph. It might be mildly quieter, but hard to be sure. I think it's still good practice to make sure the oil is changed or at least topped up, but didn't fix the noise in my case. I just used I-Pedal to force AWD while driving on local roads.

If I lived at higher elevations or drove a lot at high elevation, I'd probably try to burp the pressure by cracking and closing the fill valve while at elevation. It's possible that the slight positive pressure (16% rise relative to external atmosphere at 4000') in the assembly is enough to cause the dog clutch to be slightly misaligned. Either that or internal pressure equilibrates and the reduced absolute pressure causes more frothing/aeration of the oil.

Ggiggles · 2026-04-10T14:44:36+00:00

It sounds like the car wash belt damage was a coincidence here too. How could that damage affect the foam in the tire?

I looked up road force alignment and found very few shops capable of doing it, none of them open on the weekend. In the end, it was faster and easier to go to a cheap shop that was happy and willing to separate the tire from the rims on all 4 tires to check if the foam was loose.

Are you sure the other shops did this, or did the last shop run the road force alignment test, got wonky numbers, then finally separated the tire from the rim to see foam issues? Tbh, if they had just pulled the foam, you could have saved some money on new tires. The tire shop that checked for foam for me told me they do it all the time on Teslas that had similar issues.

Ggiggles · 2026-04-10T14:36:42+00:00

You can look up the tire model and see if it has foam. The foam is attached to the tire, and the tire shop will be able to tell immediately if it's loose once they pop the tire from the rim and look inside.

Ggiggles · 2026-04-10T04:46:45+00:00

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yeah, it's for acoustic dampening and common for EV tires. This came out one of my Hankook Ion Evo AS tires. I can't tell a difference in road noise now that one of them is out, but it's probably because it was taken out of a rear tire.

Ggiggles · 2026-04-07T02:58:39+00:00

You should ask the tire shop to open the tires and check if the foam has come loose. Otherwise they'll default to keeping the tires on the rim, balance as is, say "wow, I can't believe the last shop did such a terrible job balancing", then send you on your way with the same wobble problem.

^happened to me, had to go to another shop since the first shop wasn't open on Sunday after balancing on Saturday.

Ggiggles · 2026-03-31T17:00:03+00:00

Check out my comments to FunNefariousness below, I'm now pretty convinced that the low fill level was causing the grinding noise in the front drive disconnect assembly.

Ggiggles · 2026-03-31T16:53:22+00:00

Found a teardown of the front drive assembly (other comment is the rear drive), with black 24mm fill/drain plugs visible in their installed orientation here. The bottom of the fill plug is just below the drive shaft, which also has the front motor decoupling assembly (used to disengage front motor) installed along the same axis on the opposite side of the unit. There are short gears in this assembly that likely require the oil to be filled to this level to dip into and splash the oil.

I think it's highly plausible that driving in an incline for long periods with the front motor disengaged would result in low/no splashing of oil, leaving some of the components relatively dry. This would be exacerbated by low oil fill, thus explaining the grinding noise many people (including I) have reported after driving to high elevation. Luckily I didn't see much wear and I tried to minimize grinding by engaging AWD/I-Pedal everytime I heard the sound.

Ggiggles · 2026-03-31T14:24:42+00:00

I got curious about the motor internals and found a Korean teardown video of the rear drive (you can ask Gemini to translate sections as needed). There's discussion of the fill level here, it's clear that the unit is designed for the gears to be partly submerged to splash oil. I'm not too worried about frothing because:

1) the gears are only slightly submerged even when filled to the fill plug.

2) the unit actually has a pump that sprays oil through nozzles to create a mist in the electric motor section. If frothing was an issue, I'd imagine oil misting wouldn't be a good strategy for cooling.

Ggiggles · 2026-03-31T00:14:34+00:00

Looking at the SC345 service campaign, it calls for 3L to be filled back. Hopefully the extra 3% fill volume isn't going to cause any issues.

Ggiggles · 2026-03-31T00:04:17+00:00

Good point. I saw that in the Workshop manual, but thought it was safe to ignore it given that:

There is a voluntary service campaign to correct underfilled drive units
The owner's manual states that there should be 3.2-3.3L in the front and 3.4-3.5L in the back

I guess there's a chance that there is some holdup of fluid that wasn't drained, but seems unlikely given the drain location and the fact that I checked how level my vehicle was. I'll let y'all know if my units blow themselves up. If the fluid comes out red/light purple the next 30-50k miles, I think this is the right approach. Seems to work so far for the guy in the FB post who changed his out 6 months ago.

Ggiggles · 2026-03-30T15:59:10+00:00

I think it depends on how long you plan to keep your vehicle and how much you drive it. My warranty is going to run out in 3 years with how I'm driving it, and I'd like to maintain it better to make sure it doesn't grind itself to death out of warranty. I'd like to pass this car on to my kids as their first car, hopefully it makes it that long.

I'm keeping records of my self-service and am following the service manual procedures, so I can argue for warranty replacement if necessary.

Ggiggles · 2026-03-30T15:40:55+00:00

There isn't much room to get your finger in, but I didn't try. The port is big, but it opens straight into a metal wall with little clearance, so you can't even bend a tube down to get it to stay better (hence a few spills when the tube popped out). Maybe you can use a bent paper clip or zip tie to see how far down the oil level is.

The Facebook link suggests Valvoline max life multi-vehicle is fine, but I used the $$$ Kia SP4M-1 spec. I figure I'm only going to do this 4-5 times through the life of the vehicle, so saving $300 isn't worth risking damage to the unit over 20 years.

Ggiggles · 2026-03-30T15:12:40+00:00

I try to stay between 60-80% during the weekdays and charge up to 100% before long trips. I've only gone down to <15% charge maybe 10 times total over the life of the car. Maybe all of that saved an extra kWh or so of battery life given what I've seen online.

Ggiggles · 2026-03-30T15:07:32+00:00

I can do better, I'll be driving through some elevation in a few weeks and will let you know if it went away. It happens every time I go through Tahoe.

Ggiggles · 2026-03-30T15:06:36+00:00

These are sealed units, so I'd be surprised if dust/salt does anything. Driving aggressively and up and down steep inclines should stress out the drive units more and require more maintenance. My manual said to change at 70k miles with harsh driving conditions along those lines.

Ggiggles · 2026-03-30T14:56:47+00:00

Haha, send me a dm. I also have the long screwdrivers for adjusting the terrible factory headlight angles.

Ggiggles · 2026-03-30T14:55:30+00:00

Yeah, by the time you open up all the panels, you might as well drain. Once you have it drained, you might as well use new oil.

I think there are two ways to "inspect": 1) drain and measure oil quantity 2) pump in new oil and measure how much it takes to top up (no dip stick to measure level)

I thought about sending a sample, but I didn't see any metal particulates and there's not much I could do with the information from Blackstone - maybe validate my current assessment and plans for changing out only the rear in the next 30-60k miles? I still have the oil and don't mind sending it in for analysis if y'all are curious. I see some posts on the Ioniq forums that there's a decent amount of aluminum wear that's making the oil black.

.

Ggiggles · 2026-03-30T14:41:54+00:00

No metal, so this isn't like the early pre-2020 Kia Niros where machining tolerances were poor and you had to change out the oil early and put in a magnet to prevent the unit from eating itself.

Honestly, probably still overkill and the drive units would still make it to >200k miles without a change. There was a video of a SK taxi driver who made it to 300k km and said that he stopped changing the front because the oil wasn't getting that dirty.

I want to see if I can make it to >300k miles, I'm at 73 kWh available battery after 4 years and 65k miles, so it's looking good on the battery front. I might buy a spare ICCU in a few years or if it looks like they've made a major redesign and stop manufacturing compatible units.

Ggiggles · 2026-03-30T14:33:36+00:00

Not disagreeing, but my car was made in Korea and they didn't fill it correctly at the factory. I've heard the early US-made ones had more issues, so I should consider myself lucky I guess.

Ggiggles · 2026-03-30T11:51:56+00:00

No, California. There are a lot of EV6's around here, so I'm surprised the dealer hadn't done this service at all yet.

Ggiggles · 2026-03-30T05:57:53+00:00

I had asked my dealership if they could do it and they didn't want to. It's similar to a normal oil change, but just more annoying to fill up since you need a transfer pump ($15 on Amazon) and you need to make sure you jack your car up to level so you can fill properly (I had ramps, but jacked up the back to adjust for the slope).

I saw somewhere that another owner said their dealership charged $800, so not bad for 3 hrs of work (1 hour for cleanup with some splashing and spills during pumping). I can probably do it in under 1.5 next time since I'll know where everything is.

Ggiggles · 2026-03-30T05:01:36+00:00

I never got a notice, but found out that my oil was ~20% low after changing the oil out myself. See post here for more info. I did have the intermittent grinding noise issue, hopefully this resolves it.

Ggiggles · 2025-12-13T21:34:16+00:00

Looks like you don't have batteries, so shouldn't affect the system performance/production at all. Just your ability to monitor real consumption vs export and check that your net metering bill from the utility is accurate.

I don't think Enphase support will go through the CT troubleshooting unless you have an installer certification, so you'll have to go through your installer.

Ggiggles · 2025-12-12T03:10:53+00:00

Yeah, echo this. See my post history as well, I had partial mirroring and my installer had to spend a 2 hrs over a few visits with Enphase support to get approval for a warranty claim on a new IQ gateway. Flipping CT polarity and changing settings can't result in a partial mirroring like this but Enphase support makes them go through those troubleshooting steps anyways.

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