I installed mine last week with my daughter shooting the entire installation on a gimbal. I haven't posted a review yet because I am having an issue which I'm hoping can be resolved but I'm not sure if it's just me or if there's really an issue. Before I get to that, I'll add some of my notes to
@khorton 's install.
My installation didn't go as smoothly as the Teslalaunch video. In all, it took about 2 hours. If I were to repeat it, it could be done in 30 minutes now I know where the pitfalls are. Some of the pitfalls are skipped in the video. When I post mine, I'll leave them in because I think it will help folks get through it faster.
Fit and Finish
As previously mentioned, the upper column shroud doesn't quite match the stock color of the lower shroud exactly even thought it matches the back of the steering wheel better than stock.
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The quality of the plastic for shroud is superior to the stock one in my opinion. It is very soft touch and feels way nicer than Tesla's part. It's very much like the soft touch plastic used in our 2007 Lexus before Lexus cheapened their interiors. I wish Tesla would make all their plastic parts like this.
I gave my feedback to Teslaunch last week about the color match and they're looking into the color match. Not a big deal. These things ca be very hard to match perfectly and I suspect it can't be done if you want to retain the soft touch quality that their part that the Tesla part lacks.
The stalks themselves appear to be stock M3 including all the labeling.
Installation
As previously mentioned, you
MUST disconnect the HV and LV power before removing the airbag. It only takes about a minute which includes removing the middle cover under the hood that has the air vent near the windshield. I disconnected the LV and. then the first responder loop.
The airbag comes out easily by pushing a suitable tool into the two holes. You don't have to do them both at the same time. You can release one side and then the other. Be careful not to pus the airbag back in on the first side you release.
I did use cordless impact wrench to break the steering bolt loose. I'd estimate it was somewhere around 250 ft-lbs of torque to break the thread lock.
I had quite a time getting the wheel off. The installation video shows it easily sliding off. It will not come off that easily. It requires rocking back and fourth while pulling hard to finally work itself free.
Removing the top shroud - The service manual says you have to remove the the screen and a bunch of stuff on the main dash just to remove the top shroud around the steering column. It's totally not true and I'm not sure why the service manual includes an extra 3 hours of labor to remove stuff that isn't necessary.
Removing the top shroud from the lower shroud is harder than in the installation video. If you look carefully at the video, you can see there's already a space on the left side showing that the clips have already been released. It took quite a bit of force to release the clips. I thought about pushing my plast trip release tool into the space after looking at the same part on ebay from behind to see how the clips work but decide that it would mare the space between the cracks. Ultimately, I gave a good yank using my finger pressing in on the top left back of the stock shroud to get it to release. The right side released easily.
Careful on the lower shroud to not move it down more than necessary. I pulled mine away for more than needed and somehow ended up adding fold or something to the vinyl fabric. trim piece that hides the gab between the lower back shroud and the lower dash. When I put it all back together and adjusted the steering wheel all the way in, it ended up pulling 3 retaining clips that fasten this cloth with 3 slits on each side to the inside of the lower dash. I thought I'd broken something but it turned out to nothing. I did have to remove the knee airbag panel below the lower dash in order to fit the concealing fabric back on it's 3 tabs and the press the retaining clips back on. I feel like this is a little bit of a freak occurrence and unlikely to happen if you don't move the lower steering column shroud more than necessary.
The left turn stalk clips in without any screws.
The right PRND stalk requires two Torx screws. Someone previously said the screws weren't a standard Torx size but I did not find this to be true.
The Y CAN cable provided was a little different than the one we seen the video. The video shows a Y cable with equal length connectors. The provided cable unequal length connectors. One is very short. I used the sort side on the PRND stalk and the long one on the turn signal stalk.
The upper shroud replacement went on easily without any issues.
Function
As previously mentioned, there doesn't appear to be any difference between 1 and 2 clicks on the turn stalk. The M3 half detent triggers a 3 second temporary signal while a full up or down triggers until canceled or auto canceled. The question is does the software in the car know how to do the temporary mode. Is it a different function in the protocol? If missing from the S/X, the only way you could get it back would be to fake it the controller on the turn signal device itself and to send a cancel after 3 seconds.
They should come up with a variation for the 2024+ with the airbag horn. We'll all want the brights to activate when you pull back on the left stalk. It would be cool if these could be field upgradable.
I had my wife test drive it and she got very excited and said "It's like a REAL car now". This just goes to show how Musk's decision to go stalkless is very bad idea. I'm convinced some of Tesla's sales slowdown is not just because of interest rates. This is bolstered by the fact that I personally know over half dozen coworkers who swear the reason they're not ordering ANOTHER tesla is because of the lack of stalks.
The stalks don't bock the view of anything. The PRND stalk does overlap the display by about a half inch BUT both yoke and wheel already overlap the display in the same spot so the only thing you lose if if you have the yoke and it's turned to the right to NOT block the left edge of the display, then in that case the PRND stalk will block a tiny spot on the left side of the screen.
Other than that, the stalks perform and function just like you'd expect except for one issue which I alluded to in the beginning. Its the reason I've been holding the video review because if it's a solvable problem, I don't want to stick a video on Youtube showing an issue that might put off buyers especially if it's solvable either through firmware of just a device replacement.
So the issue I'm having and now posting here since others who have done the installation can either confirm happens or doesn't happen is the following:
About 15% of the time the stalk functions don't activate. So going into drive or reverse occasionally fails despite full pressing up or down on the stalk. Same with the turn signal which has a slightly more complicated behavior. When going half way, it fails to activate about 15% of the time. When going all the way, about 15% of the time it flashes once and then stops.
It seems unlikely that both stalks are malfunctioning in an individual failure since these are both independent devices that are on the CAN bus so the fact they are both doing the same thing tells me I either have problem with my car or there's some sort of timing issue in the protocol. I'm not an expert on Tesla's protocol but all devices on the 4 wire bus have to cooperate and that means occasionally failing to get an ack and then resend in ms time frames, if the controller in the stalk isn't handling retry responses are lack of ack, then it could be this. It could also just be a harry edge timing issue. Again, all complete speculation.
One last odd thing when I did the install. After I re-enabled LV/HV power, I got a warning that the drivers side DRL was not working and needed service. I checked and indeed it was off. I restarted the car and pulled all power too which made no difference and then repeated with the stalk cable unplugged. Still no difference. I realized that I'd probably have to remove the entire installation and return to stock because I know Tesla would blame any third party devices on their CAN connector for the problem. Fortunately, the next morning the problem vanished and the DRL was back on.
To be clear, I'm NOT blaming this product on that issue. I'm sure it was not related to the installation itself. It was probably a glitch related to removing all power but I don't think Tesla would agree as they like to blame anything they can including third party devices on their CAN.
@khorton , have you had ANY misses / failures to activate when using the stalks? I'm very curious.
We've got some exciting news to share! The long-awaited Model X/S Gear Shift Stalk Switch Turn Signal Lever Kit has finally passed the test and is officially launched for sale, meeting everyone's expectations
. This product meets our daily needs and conforms to our muscle memory.🛡
