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Error code #1111? (My roadster is still needy)

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gregd

Active Member
Dec 31, 2014
2,714
1,916
CM98
Hi folks,

Last month I got a few power train errors (with the ominous "service required" message), and ended up with two visits to the SC. First one they spent an hour doing a bit of de-leafing in the PEM, followed by a second visit for a complete yearly service, 4 months earlier than planned. They said the cleaned out a bunch more leaves and stuff, and gave the car a clean bill of health.

Today on the way home I got what I think was an error ID of 1111. Hard to see while driving in traffic, and it want away on its own after a few seconds. Came back twice, also to disappear quickly. The table of errors (Roadster - Tesla Motors Club - Enthusiasts & Owners Forum) lists the earlier 1144, but not 1111. The issue occurred just as I was exiting the freeway here in town. The last few miles are up hill, then it's a nice down-hill exit ramp (40kw recharge for about 5-10 seconds). The first beep occurred right after that, and the next after turning onto the (level) street after the stop sign. All the temps on the VDS were well below the colored squares. The earlier 1144 errors seemed to occur after a hard acceleration, not regen.

So, two questions:

1. Does anyone know what the 1111 error code refers to?

2. In situations like this, where they JUST completed a service, what sort of "warranty" to they give on follow-up repairs? The car is out of warranty, overall.

These frequent trips to the shop are getting a bit annoying. My 21 year old ICE with 269,000 miles on it (Acura Integra GS-R) is much more reliable (though not nearly as fun to drive!). Seems like the car just wants attention.

Thanks,

Greg.
 
Hi folks,

So, an update... I pulled the logs from the car this morning and emailed them to the local SC guy. Drove the ICE into work. They took a look at the logs and decided that the fault should only be displayed when the car is in "debug mode". I didn't set that, so apparently they left it on by mistake after the early yearly maintenance last month.

What he said was that "It reads as memory lost type thing, so it probably didn't report something correctly and threw up that alert. But there's nothing wrong with the car, and it should be ok to drive."

I'll be stopping by the SC on Monday to have them reset the debug mode, and will probe him a bit more for what exactly the error is. Is there an easy way to verify what mode the car is in first? I don't want him to presume that debug is on, if it's not, and have him push some buttons to disable it (which would do nothing), and send me on my way with nothing changed and no real answer to what happened.

I don't see how the described fault could have been related to what I was doing on the road at the time... And, why, even in debug mode, would the "alert" be coded as "service required", if it's nothing to worry about? All the "debug alerts" I've ever coded have noted that they were informational messages, so as not to unintentionally annoy a customer who might accidentally encounter one (um, like me, in this case).

There's more here that I want to know. I'll let you know what I find out.
 
I wouldn't be sure they forgot to take it out of debug mode, even though it sounds like it IS in debug mode. I had an error whenever charging a few years ago on a road trip - took pictures, emailed the service center (which then was Menlo Park) - and got a phone call saying 'you shouldn't be seeing that, that's debug mode'.

I stopped over at the Seattle service center so they could check things out ... long story short, it was throwing weird debug errors, even though the car was running fine. And no one was sure why it was going into debug mode.

The guys in Rocklin are good and will figure out the problem. We're lucky to have the crew here we have.
 
An easy way to check if it's in debug mode is to go to the VDS screen with the temperature bars for the battery, motor and PEM. If you see numbers in Celsius you're in debug.

If that's the case, I might want to have debug-mode switched on all the time? Does a better job in letting me know when to be easy on the RS :)
Now I periodically check via OVMS-app if temps of the battery are running up to a level that I'd like it not to be and that's pretty illegal while driving.
 
An easy way to check if it's in debug mode is to go to the VDS screen with the temperature bars for the battery, motor and PEM. If you see numbers in Celsius you're in debug.

I believe that's only true on the 2.0 and 2.5 Roadsters.

Many of us like to keep our cars in debug mode because of the extra information it provides, such as actual temperatures. But there's a tradeoff - you get a few annoying messages that you have to ignore.
 
And, if you are a data junkie like me and want to have a complete log from your car, you have to remember to download every week or two rather than every month or two because the debug (AKA verbose) mode writes some additional records into the log at a higher rate. There is some interesting data in those records.
 
An easy way to check if it's in debug mode is to go to the VDS screen with the temperature bars for the battery, motor and PEM. If you see numbers in Celsius you're in debug.

You see numbers? All I see are the bars, and I don't see any screens to change what is displayed... Is that behind the Diagnostics screen (for which I don't have the PIN)?

CAM00389.jpg
 
So, another update... Confirmed that the car was NOT in diagnostic mode, just as we thought. But the car seems to have them a bit stumped. On the way over to the SC yesterday, I got several more alerts, which at a glance I thought were more of the ID 1111's. Turned out that there were a couple of 1144s (which we thought were taken care of by the early yearly service clean-out of leaves and stuff), and a new one, ID 1146 which indicates a low fan speed (according to the wiki), but also shouldn't be displayed in non-Diagnostic mode.

The SC has a case open with the higher-ups, so we're waiting for some sort of silicon tablet to come down the mountain with an answer on it... But to me, the fan speed thing sure makes sense as the core issue. None of the alarms were at freeway speed, so maybe the natural air flow helped keep things spinning. Then when I came off the freeway, and the breeze stopped, the weakness in the fans became apparent, triggering the alarm. Just a theory...
 
Ok... So kudos to the Rocklin SC and the engineering folks back at HQ somewhere. "Final" diagnosis of the root cause is that there's a connector on the PEM - the square one at the end of the underside surface, with 4 pins - that has a bad pin / socket mating. Because of the weak connection on one pin, the current flowing through, which I guess drives the fans, heated the metal, caused the connection to develop a higher resistance, causing an intermittent and inadequate supply of current for the fan to provide proper cooling. You could see that it is slightly discolored. That's the good news.

Bad news is that it's not a "part" separate from the PEM and wiring harness.

Good news is that they're going to see what can be worked out for a repair of just the connector, instead of replacing the entire otherwise-healthy PEM. Apparently, this is the first car to develop this fault.

Bad news is that I will be without the car for some days or weeks, depending on what they come up with. Might have to join the thread on Roadster Withdrawl...
 
Final update (I hope!)...

I got the car back today, with a delivery right to my door. The final solution was that they swapped the PEM with a refurbished unit (so I have a good connector on that end) at almost no cost, and rebuilt the connector on the wiring harness that mates with it. A tad under $800, nearly all of it in labor. I haven't driven the car (except to park it back in the garage), but all indications look good.

BTW, the refurbished PEM says "Roadster Sport" on it. I have a regular Roadster 2.0 (#834)... I presume no difference, right?
 
{sigh}

So, the error is back. Got a bunch of them yesterday on the way home, while driving in a very sane and sedate manner (Bell road, between I-80 and Hwy 49, for the locals). Talked to the service guys this morning. Since the PEM itself is new, the only thing left is to replace the PEM Fans (the under-car ones in the back).

The car goes under the knife next week. Fingers crossed...
 
I just blew one of the 20A fuses to my PEM/Motor fans. The fans were a bit louder than normal and then... nothing. The fuses are located under the small access cover on the PEM not far from the 10A fuses for the battery heater. I blew two of those last winter because it was colder than hell. I'm not doing well in the fuse department.
 
I thought hell was supposed to be hot?

I used to think that, too. After last winter I know better.

Actually it kept the snow in good shape late in the season for all kinds of skiing so it wasn't so bad.

Took my PEM out today. A fist full of leaves in the intake. It appears the bottom pan has pulled away from the snow dam, allowing stuff to get in there... Tesla did a crappy job of installing it. I found 2 of the screws in the trunk under the floor. Jeez...
 
Final update (I hope!)...

I got the car back today, with a delivery right to my door. The final solution was that they swapped the PEM with a refurbished unit (so I have a good connector on that end) at almost no cost, and rebuilt the connector on the wiring harness that mates with it. A tad under $800, nearly all of it in labor. I haven't driven the car (except to park it back in the garage), but all indications look good.

BTW, the refurbished PEM says "Roadster Sport" on it. I have a regular Roadster 2.0 (#834)... I presume no difference, right?

Glad to see your roadster back and working!

I thought the PEM firmware is the location where if it's knows it a sport model or not, so maybe you have more power now?

The next time you take the roadster in for annual maintenance, I would ask to see if your PEM has latest firmware that's running the roadster sport firmware :)