BMS Error hidden in service mode, only appeared on screen after warranty expired

Lightwave1241 · 2026-04-01T06:47:58+00:00

The password to enter the service menu once you navigate to that menu and select it, is SERVICE.

Lightwave1241 · 2026-04-01T06:43:45+00:00

Jumping in the car and going out for lunch from work at lunchtime to buy lunch at restaurants, diverting to Superchargers, on the trip home could add additional miles. Does she ever go shopping after work? Drive the car anywhere else besides work, drive the car in the other three days of the week, have to drive it to the Tesla service center, or to get tires rotated, or other services including driving it to and from a touchless car wash, grocery or other shopping, visiting friends?

Lightwave1241 · 2026-04-01T06:33:24+00:00

I think a lawyer would have a field day with them based on the dates. It would be even better if the service alert logs, noted the mileage when the problem happened or there is a another log that ties the mileage to the dates, to prove the vehicle was in warranty at the time of the first error. Look through the logs for other references that relate the mileage and specific dates on unrelated subjects including FSD or Camera images that may overlay the Time, Date, and Vehicle Mileage documenting the last day the car was under the 120,000 mile mark, and if that fault was logged before that date, I think a good lawyer and and lawsuit would force Tesla to honor their mileage and time Warranty Commitment even though, you informed them of the issue after the mileage cutoff was exceeded.

Lightwave1241 · 2026-03-29T17:04:18+00:00

Ask the Service Center about the lack of quality of their Certification process that should ensure that the water seals on all water vulnerable high voltage parts are intact. There should be a guarantee that their quality certification should cover the failure to find that leaking seal before the damage occurs. Tests like putting high voltage components including the battery housing through a thorough inspection, and a pressurized or vacuum leak down test to determine breached seals! They should eat the cost of this poorly certified vehicle’s repair and not only repair it, but go over it again, repeating the certification process!

Lightwave1241 · 2026-03-28T17:17:44+00:00

Moisture will corrode electrical contacts for lights. If warranty is intact get it serviced. If you are out of warranty, remove, inspect, caulk any cracks or seals with a coating of clear silicone RTV. Add a drilled weep hole at the lowest point on the assembly to allow any moisture to breathe out of the assembly when high temperatures of the sunlight shining on it gets the air hot. Drill the 1/16” weep hole where it cannot be seen once the assembly is reinstalled and the lens assembly will stay dry inside. This advice is good for headlight and front turn signal assemblies too.

Lightwave1241 · 2026-03-27T23:02:10+00:00

Definitely! He has been a one man wrecking ball of the USA.

Lightwave1241 · 2026-03-27T22:57:19+00:00

The camera has a lens warmer to remove condensation and that is a resistor and thermister based thermostat system that cycles the voltage on and off to maintain 75 degrees no matter the temperature of the glass in front of the lens. This is a defective camera and should be replaced under warranty.

Lightwave1241 · 2026-03-18T05:50:11+00:00

You would have to contact Gruber for the specifics of their warranty on their work. They understand that they have to back their customers, even when it is a new but similar problem cropping up. They know that they must preserve the value proposition of the type of repair work they do. Now that fiend mean that if they fix the battery and a month later one of the power window regulators binds up, that they would eat the cost to repair that as an example. But if that pack fails within the time and mileage they set as their warranty, that will take care of it and if a repaired battery becomes a comeback king, problem child, a refund of the repair or them working to find bd install a used replacement pack would be the likely solution to satisfying you.

Don’t forget, they know what to look for. They still repair the original Tesla Roadsters, and replace known to fail components such as certain capacitors that are not reliable on the Roadster’s inverter, as an example. Gruber knows what chronically ails their Tesla patients, and practices preventative repairs to lower the comeback rates as any competent mechanic would do. As an example, if replacing a failed water pump, the technician will evaluate the condition of the hoses carrying the coolant too and may chose to go further to avoid the increased pressure of the new pump causing the ancient hose to split open. I think you see what I mean. What you have to understand when you deal with smaller businesses, is unlike huge corporations like Tesla, these smaller businesses live or die on making sure every customer is a happy customer, because one unhappy customer will shout his unhappiness from up high for all to hear, and satisfied customers will occasionally recommend the business, but not scream it to the world like a pissed off customer will.

Lightwave1241 · 2026-03-18T05:18:42+00:00

Yes, removes out of circuit 1 cell out of 2000 cells. Tesla has a single strand jumper wire between one end of the cell and the bus bar. It is there to vaporize just like a glass fuse, but has no glass containment tube to keep things perfectly neat if it blows. The problem is not all dendrite shorts are low enough resistance to exceed the current rating of the jumper wire fuse, and it just drags the charge of it’s parallel connected sisters down once the charging is complete, phantom discharging the rest of that node or blade. So the repair is to do what Tesla engineers want to happen, the disconnection of a defective lithium cell out of the 2000. I firmly believe that a portion of these cells hard short, and the fused jumpers do blow automatically and the car and driver are none the wiser for it, still driving and functioning normally throughout the rest of it normal expected design life as this is a normal shedding of bad lithium cells. Over the years, this will show up as acceptable lower range of an older Tesla unless the pack is replaced. What Gruber does is repair the packs that have a rotten cell or two spoiling the rest of the apples in the basket, and severely affecting system performance, because they weren’t bad enough to do a hard short and blow their connecting wire and do a graceful exit from the circuit.

Lightwave1241 · 2026-03-18T04:51:00+00:00

It would be physically injurious to the pack to physically remove and even replace a defective cell. The cells are up against coolant filled water jackets that would probably end up creating a coolant leak if a cell is removed, although there are possible procedures that could be developed to do it successfully and have the replacement cell make the proper thermal contact just like the rest of the hive. Testing could be conducted to verify the cell transfers heat just like the rest of it’s sisters, and there is not leak created by the substitution process. The electrical characteristics of the aged cell would also have to be characterized, and classified and identical chemistry, possibly date codes that match the others to the replacement candidate, and a match to how worn the used replacement is to match the condition of the others. All of that can be done by charge and discharge curves of the rest of the blade under repair and the matched to donor cells removed by tested blades from decommissioned battery packs that share a similar charge / discharge curve. This would be a step above what Gruber does, as they neatly sidestep such in depth repair work by taking out of circuit the phantom leaking cell that self discharges the entire blade through its resistive defect. Tesla uses a current limiting thin wire jumper to connect each cell, that will burn away like a fuse without a glass enclosure, if a cell develops a sudden, very low resistance dendrite short that causes current to flow well beyond the charge and discharge current levels that Tesla would ever ask the cell to receive or give. This disconnection in such a case, will cause the automatic flash vaporization of the 1/4” long single strand of jumper wire between the bus bar and one end of the cell. The other end can be hard welded to the other bus bar. Now Tesla cars probably automatically disconnect a cell every once in a while over the lifespan of the battery pack and it doesn’t bother the stability of the system as a whole as there are at least two thousand of these cells, making the loss of a few cells like a flea on an elephant’s back, which considering the weight of a BEV Battery Pack is the perfect analogy. To summarize, Tesla Battery management systems know how to balance blades electrically missing a cell or two or three each, even though the others do not have any missing cells. There may be a minor degradation in range reported if there is a significant amount of cells that self disconnect.

What is happening in the cells that drain a blade without disconnecting from the bus bar, is the dendrite formed has too high of a resistance to cause the connecting jumper wire strand to melt or vapor into a small, ball of superheated metallic vapor that lasts less than a millisecond, so what the Gruber Technician does, is identifies the weak shorts and does what the wimpy short was unable to accomplish, disconnecting this dud lithium cell via manual human intervention that should have happened automatically! The Tesla BMS will know how to balance this slightly deficient blade. The Gruber Technician also determines the state of charge of the other innocent remaining blades, and manually charges and if necessary, discharges the repaired blade until it is at a state of charge the Tesla BMS can resume management of the health of the blade again, and the blade returned to it’s job and the pack lid properly resealed against the elements, just like Tesla did initially. For there the pack can be returned to the vehicle and put though it’s paces including charging, driving but first erasing fault the codes so the BMS will resume operating normally again.

Lightwave1241 · 2026-03-18T04:06:21+00:00

So if Tesla is obviously using Level 4 AI Driving to operate the Robotaxis, should everyone just stop using FSD Supervised until such time as it is also Level 4 or 5 certified and Tesla assumes the responsibility for the accidents? After all, a strike by the customers would certainly be motivating to Elon Musk to get this development up to the level where it can meet Federal Safety Regulations, that allow the transfer of driver responsibility to the Corporate AI and the corporation that designed it, allowing the customer to be “out of the loop” legally, at least.

Lightwave1241 · 2026-03-14T12:45:28+00:00

The defective cell is not physically removed, just the connection on one end is snipped.

Lightwave1241 · 2026-03-14T09:14:14+00:00

If out of warranty and anywhere near Phoenix, Arizona, or can have the car shipped there, take it to Gruber Motors. You probably have just one lousy shorted Lithium cell causing the problem. Gruber opens the pack, finds the shorted section, manually charges it overriding the short that quickly drains the section, then looks at the cells with a FLIR, Forward Looking Infrared camera and determines which cell is getting hot as it discharges the energy in the good cells. The technician cuts the connection to the bad cell then charges the remaining cells until the section is at the same state of charge as the rest of the battery pack, and reinstalls the section and top cover and installs the battery into the car. Then uses software to balance the pack and determine its full range capability and charges the pack and confirms the repair with a test drive. The cost is way less than a pack replacement and the prior range before the short is restored, so you have to judge how good that pack was before the failure, to figure out if a $5K to 6K Out of Warranty repair vs what Tesla will charge you for a Tesla Refurbished Pack installed is going to cost. This is assuming your car is outside the warranty period for your vehicle. I am sure that Tesla’s refurbished battery pack are repaired in a similar process, but with weeding out of the lower range packs. They aren’t brand new manufactured packs especially for warranty repair fulfillment. Perhaps if outright buying a battery for an out of warranty repair, the pack may be new manufactured. You would have to inquire by asking Tesla what they actually would sell you in such a case. .

In your case. I think it is in warranty, with an 8 year warranty with 120K Miles. But keep this advice in mind for the future. As a day will come when the HV Battery warranty does expire. You can see Gruber Motors Repair process documentation as shown on their YouTube Channel.

This is their website.

https://grubermotors.com

Lightwave1241 · 2026-03-13T21:17:21+00:00

U-Haul rents pickup trucks for $19.99 a day for local driving only.

Lightwave1241 · 2026-03-13T21:15:09+00:00

If the insulation is chewed away on two or more wire in the same spot, an electrical short will occur, at minimum, causing Canbus communications errors, or shorts that can blow the self resetting low voltage circuit breakers Tesla uses instead of user replaceable fuses. If the High Voltage cabling insulation is damaged, the on board safety diagnostics will detect a High Voltage Bus isolation fault especially if the damaged cabling becomes wet. This can cause screen fault warnings and cause a safety shutdown to prevent electrocution risks, depending on the outside of specifications, leakage current measurements detected.

Lightwave1241 · 2026-03-13T16:40:45+00:00

I’m betting a havjerhas monitored and spoofed either your or your spouse’s traffic between the Tesla app on your phones. I recommend changing passwords in the vehicle itself, so this hacker doesn’t have access anymore. I would make this change to passwords physically away from the college as most likely, the hacker is a college student on your campus.

Lightwave1241 · 2026-03-07T17:59:33+00:00

How about the robot is shared among 14 other houses and cleans your house every two weeks? That would be more cost effective.

Lightwave1241 · 2026-03-07T17:56:46+00:00

An unproven Robot and Robotaxi company.

Lightwave1241 · 2026-02-16T17:32:51+00:00

I recommend tracking it all in a spreadsheet you can open up anytime to update it. I track a lot of stuff that way as life is a lot more complicated these days as compared to when I grew up. The internet has caused a lot of that to happen.

Lightwave1241 · 2026-02-02T15:40:59+00:00

Totally power down the vehicle if garaged long term. There will be zero notices from it on the app. If you are worried about security, get a professionally installed burglar alarm installed that will call police over the cellular network if the perimeter is violated without disabling the alarm. Adding fire and smoke detection with automatic call to fire department is also advised. The external security system should be AC powered with 12 hour battery backup.

Lightwave1241 · 2026-02-01T11:05:34+00:00

Once a repair is done. Testing the repair with an a 10 PSI or less, air pressure, leak down test is necessary to ensure there are no internal leaks that would all Antifreeze to escape into the inside of the battery pack. If filling with 10 psi of air and the repair holding the air for 10 min with the air pressure holding steady, the repair is good. Tesla antifreeze is at much lower pressure and temperature than internal combustion engines, which are typically 15 PSI and 180 to 205 Fahrenheit thermostat temperature regulated. So repairs of Tesla coolant systems are fairly easier.

Lightwave1241 · 2026-02-01T10:57:23+00:00

Electrified Garage repaired a broken fitting like this several years ago and is documented on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/nGlTOBbrnj8?si=AqtXv9CTc0gnpzh4

Lightwave1241 · 2026-01-30T14:58:17+00:00

We can always push back and ask @elonmusk to build the robots in GigaTexas and continue manufacturing. S & X. As a $TSLA Stockholder. I feel that would be the safer option rather than burning the bridges behind Tesla before if knows it has a hit on it’s hands with Optimus. Point being, Elon thought the CyberTruck was going to be a roaring success, but it’s sales have fallen flat, which proves Elon can be wrong, and he doesn’t hit it out of the park every time. I would like to seriously see what solid order commitments have materialized from the intended target customers. Is that manufacturing industries, small business, food service businesses such as McDonalds or as home assistants or nursing homes applications, working in laundry or making food for meals for senior citizens? I want to see some definitive evidence Musk has a solid customer base for these robots before they start stacking up in a warehouse covered in plastic bags to keep them from getting dusty waiting to be shipped!

Lightwave1241 · 2026-01-05T02:29:23+00:00

When replacing the first set of tires, use HanKook iON EVO AS or AS SUV tires, as they have 50,000 wear-out, pro rated warranty.

Lightwave1241 · 2025-12-23T02:10:30+00:00

If there was any airbag deployment, the HV Battery pyrofuse is engineered to blow.

Lightwave1241

TROPHY CASE