While I’m overdue for an update on our 2020 Tesla Model Y, it’s currently at 5,558 miles without any significant issues and has settled in to the garage as “just another car”, not being treated or looked at much differently than any of the others. Which is a good thing, I’ll hasten to add, it just gets us around well. The regular non-winter tires are back on it and I do have a roadtrip to Minnesota planned with it next month. I intend to report back after that as it will entail multiple Supercharger stops for the 1000+mile journey each way, much of it across the Middle Of Nowhere, USA. Along with four days near Minneapolis it should enable me to generate some good range data.
However, and more to the point of this particular post, for the last month a rattle inside the car has been driving my wife nuts. Oh no, Lordstown 2.0, drunken disgruntled assembly workers, union agitator sabotage, what could it be? It sounded like something rolling around on the floor and she dispatched me, Mr. Fancy Big Red Tool Chest Man, to figure it out. I therefore went out to the car, opened the rear door and found an Advil pill on the rear winter floor mat, clearly it had been rolling around there. Triumphantly I returned to the house, the great problem solver. Until the next day, when I was informed of my failure; the noise was still present and still annoying. I then drove the car, was able to replicate the noise, and sort of isolated it to the right side of the car. We loaded our son into the back seat, then the cargo area and tried to localize it more, and I myself rode laying on the rear floor with my wife accelerating, braking and turning hard until I almost barfed to realize it was actually under the floor.
Before that though I thought perhaps it was under the rear seat so I pulled that cushion up (no bolts, just spring clip pressure holding it in). Nothing seemed amiss under here and the wiring you see is for the three rear seat heat positions – this is a rarity, most rear seats that have heat only have it for the outboard positions.
One of the negatives in a Tesla (at least the Y and 3) is that engaging the rear seat heat requires someone in the front to enable it via the touch screen or verbally. I find this as(s)inine, I would (due to false modesty perhaps?) never ask the driver to turn the heat on or off under my ass. At least it has it, I suppose, but a set of buttons for the rear occupants makes sense here. While I like the car and think it does many things extremely well, I have no problem criticizing aspects of it I find annoying or poorly designed, such as this. My kids love heated seats, always use them when my test cars are equipped with such, but never ask for them to be engaged here. Yeah…
Asking about my noise/rattle issue in the Tesla Forums revealed that there are floor ducts for ventilation (in addition to the ones in the rear center console, interestingly they apparently only flow cold AC air if a rear seatbelt is fastened, that’s how it knows someone is back there that may need air). In any case, they are ducts as in some other cars with a large opening but in this case no cover whatsoever on them. So stuff can on occasion roll in there, especially under hard braking.
From the underseat opening, these ducts angle down into the floor and then sort of curve under the center console where they are attached to a central duct coming from under the dashboard. It appeared that something may have entered the duct and was now rolling around and trapped in there.
The forums suggested backing up at high speed and slamming on the brakes as well as using an unfurled wire coat hanger with a sticky gob of duct tape to either dislodge or catch the offending item, I tried both, neither worked. The next option was to start disassembly of the interior to get to the duct (since I was loathe to take it to the Tesla service center and have them do it and potentially and rightfully charge me if it wasn’t a Tesla bolt or screw or something that was found).
So the first step was to use a T45 bit on a ratchet and unbolt the seat. Four bolts and five minutes later the seat was undone and resting tilted back onto the back seat, the wiring is all in one wire bundle with a lot of slack so no issues there. The next step was to get under the carpet, removing the seat frees the overlapping velcro-taped joint between the front and back sections, now the sides are what’s holding it in.
The door sill panel unclips with light pressure up until where it goes under the dash, that clip didn’t want to move but the piece was flexible enough to move around. The carpeted side panel of the console is held on with almost a dozen clips and just basically pulls off with light and careful pressure as seen above with it removed.
Two small clips whose heads pull out slightly to release them unfastens the carpet at the front of the door hinge area and under the center console panel, however the lower main section of carpet is glued to some large styrofoam pieces that are underneath it and form the flat floor above the metal skin that separates the passenger compartment from the battery below that floor.
The styrofoam sort of holds everything including the ductwork in place and presumably provides both a flat floor surface as well as noise and temperature insulation, the chunk pictured above is from the firewall area, the oval cutout area at the bottom is the joint to the floor area (it’s several pieces), the carpet is folded back here and out of frame.
The carpet easily untucked from behind the glovebox but remained fast under one section of the center console which others have recommended removing but I was loathe to do today, instead just lifting it and working my hands under it.
Working the carpet and the styrofoam revealed that the styrofoam was actually several pieces that sort of jigsaw puzzled together and eventually it sort of folded up and out of the way for me and I was able to get the duct out. Note how it has an elevation change, if something gets in there and drops down it is unlikely to extricate itself.
That duct section just pressfits into the section that feeds it from under the center console, made out of thin black plastic it is almost exactly how the dashboard ducts were in my Porsche when I took that apart to replace the ignition switch some years back, just separate sections that slip into each other. Apparently this part of the duct is in fact different (larger) here than in the closely related Model 3, so either it’s a running change that the newer M3s have as well or there was a realization that the rear volume is larger in the Y, so more air would be welcome.
I was dismayed though to realize that there was nothing in the duct save for a small piece of lint, it’s possible it fell out during disassembly or it got under there some other way. So with everything sort of akimbo and the passenger seat resting on the backseat I drove around the neighborhood and again heard the offending item rolling around, more clearly than ever in the passenger footwell. After heading back home I crouched on the driveway and ran my hands around the metal floor, under and around every wire bundle, but to no avail.
So I got back in the car again, and when I turned I heard the item rolling towards the door again. I pulled over immediately and from the passenger side once again ran my hands around and under everything and within a few seconds felt and grasped the offender! It turned out to be a somewhat stale looking yellow jellybean candy.
Heading back home in real triumph this time I displayed my bounty to the family, none of which fessed up to being the offender. But I have my (usual) suspects, I don’t think it’s been there from the assembly line. It only took about ten minutes to reassemble the carpet, clips, panels, and remount the seat and tighten the bolts.
Note that the T45 socket and ratchet were the only tools needed beyond a small pick to unclip the clips and maybe a panel tool would have helped to undo the other clips too, although my fingers worked just fine as well. The days of millions of screws for trim are long gone in modern assembly. It’s easy to see how they can put these together so fast. No rattles so far (that weren’t self-induced) after seven months.
After reading more about the situation I ended up ordering a set of grilles from Etsy, it appears that someone 3D prints these and sells sets for about $12, they just clip or tape on to the ducts and solve the issue according to the reviews on the forums, a couple of vendors on Amazon sell similar items apparently. I’m still not completely convinced that the jellybean was actually inside the duct or if it just entered under the carpet just to the side of it (it doesn’t fit all that snugly to the carpet), but it ended up under the passenger floor area.
The way these ducts are shaped to conform to the underfloor area (i.e by angling down right after the opening) makes them hugely susceptible to having small items enter them, some sort of grille should have been standard from Tesla to prevent this. My grilles should arrive next week, until then I’ve asked everyone to refrain from eating anything in the car.
Related Reading:
COAL Update: 2020 Tesla Model Y – It Arrived! (First Impressions)
COAL: 2020 Tesla Model Y Dual Motor AWD Long Range – Seduced By Elon, Order Placed, Now The Wait
Nice to know your Tesla isn’t a lemon, but merely has a weakness for lemon drops.
Nice job hunting it down. Yes, that vent could use a grille. It looks like an invitation for loose hard objects.
This might be a difference between Tesla which is still new to the game of car design, and other carmakers who have forgotten more than Tesla knows. Depends on what they forgot, though.
Had the same deal last week on our newest bus. Driver comes in complaining of a clank on acceleration/braking. Jumped in the bus with the driver and heard the issue before even leaving the lot. It was an aluminum water bottle rolling around in the square base frame of the drivers seat.
The tension! What will the offending item be? A bolt? A small watch battery? A lost flash drive? A dead mouse? Ah! No more eating in the car for the (usual) suspects! I can relate with the never-ending quest to fix some small annoyance.
The Tesla folks would have charged and laughed at you at the same time.
Way to get in there and get the job done, Jim!
What a nightmare. I’d sooner torch it. I can’t adjust my dash vents and apparently the repair involves pulling the dash. The dash is staying where it is.
I’m glad my wife’s Mazda doesn’t have vents like that, it would be like driving around in a gumball machine. She has cancelled a credit card before, and I subsequently found it in the piles of trash in her car.
Cherchez la femme.
https://youtu.be/eKmf0YjZXqo
Stereotype:
Guys: apartment a disaster, neat and clean car
Women: neat and clean apartment, disaster area inside their car
I admire your willingness to pry open the passenger footwell on your new Tesla and put it all back together so cleanly.
That hidden rattle even felt satisfying to track down vicariously. Thanks for the tale!
Awareness is when you notice Elon flashing his occult hand signs and then you notice the Tesla logo is a goats head…
I admire your work! These trim pieces and clips can be finicky. I recently had a similar mystery noise in my 740e PHEV I wrote up. I reluctantly asked the dealer to look into it at the 20K mile service. If it was a warranty item, I was in good shape. If it was not, then I might be on the hook. I told them I thought it was coming from the leading edge of the glass sunroof opening, which seemed odd but that’s what it sounded like to me. The sound was like a nut or screw rolling around as I made turns. They found a loose screw above the headliner. It had to have been left there at the factory. Which was super disappointing, but, it is fixed and under warranty, so all’s well that ends well.
We are beyond kids now. Our cars are silent runners…..
From now on the only snacks allowed in the Tesla are chewing gum or popsicles. Nice job finding the culprit!
Jim,
Great story. When you were lying on the floor as your wife went through the speed and directional changes, it’s good you didnt vomit into one of the vents.
It’d be hard to convince Tesla that it came from the factory pre-vomited. Maybe a 70s Ford built on a Monday morning, but not a Tesla.
Respect for sticking with it until you found the culprit.
In a black color and in sitting in the hot sun the candy might have just melted itself to the surface and gotten quiet on it’s own.
Very well done. You deserve a large bottle of Sapporo after that successful afternoon…
Years ago my Volvo C30 developed a random unnerving creak in the drivers seat. I could tell it had to do with the mounting chassis so I proceeded to spray half a can of very expensive bicycle chain lubricant with wax so it would stay in place. Of coarse that didn’t fix it so I checked my trusty online forum and found the exact spot I somehow missed the first time. Never creaked again for 200k. While these little things can drive a person up the wall it’s a testimony to how far cars have come in terms of quality.
I laughed at “Mr. Big Red Toolbox” as I literally just finished assembling my first rolling tool chest but it’s orange.
So you’re saying that it’s possible to take a funnel, a length of tubing and a fistful of BBs to produce an enhanced surround-sound version of your experience? Good to know because there is a guy who lives up the street and likes to whip his Tesla coming and going by.
I enjoyed feeling the suspense of “What the hell is making that godamned noise?”. And it was gratifying to see someone partially demystify a Tesla by peeling back the thin veneer of magic to reveal the not so awesome underpinnings and welds, the voids packed with Styrofoam and all covered by multiple layers of various plastics held in place with clips, tabs and Velcro.
Leaving the factory without a grill is really piss poor on a car that expensive and sophisticated. Great work finding the gumdrop! Rattle would have driven me nuts! Looks like the Apollo command module in there!
That jelly bean on the hood reminds me of the story of the Gordon-Keeble and the tortoise!
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/automotive-history-british-deadly-sins-60s-edition-part-3-gordon-keeble/
There is something about having an X and Y chromosome that brings said carriers of them great joy in the little victories. And, in my case usually indifferent stares when I share them with my double X mate and our offspring.
I bought my daughter’s 2015 Dodge Dart out-of-state, and loved my drive home. After driving nothing but large family haulers for many years, the Dodge was, well, Darty.
Joy came to an end the next week when something caused the steering wheel hub to rattle loudly over Every. Damn. Bump.
Locating the noise was not hard, holding the hub steady stopped it. But, Dear Lord, what was it?
Removing the airbag hub seemed intimidating, and I can only imagine what the dealer would charge. But, eventually I had to scratch the itch.
Youtube proved removing the hub would be fairly easy. The culprit? A small sticky rubber pad, under a square inch, had fallen from the gap between the bag / hub assembly and the contact to activate the horn. I had some 3M 50 lb sticky rubber tape in stock and replaced the offending sticky tape with what amounted to scrap material.
Cost? Zero. Adulating eyes? Zero.
Oh well.