Suspension broken?

Earlier this week I was in Cornwall and had to take the car over some pretty rough roads.

When I was driving back on Wednesday night I slowed from 70 mph for a junction when I heard a bang (like something hit the underside of the car, followed by metallic rattling for a second or so).

The car sat right down on its suspension on both sides.

I'm puzzled as to what could break to cause both sides to drop.

It's in the London service centre at the moment so hopefully they will have it fixed this week.

I thought the ARB would be the only common component, but I am still not sure how that failing causes the back to sit down and the ride to become too hard.

So they said that it was ok and that they are checking the alignment, however they did find a bolt that had pierced the mudguard. That might have explained the metallic rattling.

When I get back to the service centre tomorrow to pick it up I will be taking a look at everything very carefully. Hopefully there is another Roadster there to compare to, but checking back through old photos it doesn't appear to sit that low when unloaded normally.

So I picked the car up this morning.

Tesla said there was nothing fundamentally wrong with it. They checked all the joints and road tested it a couple of times.

Driving it back, it seemed to me things were a lot more taught and predictable - i.e. like normal. The splitter is at normal height and it seems the camber angle on the rear wheels is less severe. I'm thinking they may have just tweaked some stuff.

They also thoroughly cleaned the car inside and out, even the PEM looks clean.

Total cost was £0.00 so I certainly can't complain about that


Here's the offending bolt (apologies but the TMC server has turned the pic upside down)

It'd better be road debris or I will not be happy.

I think the bolt is incidental - other than it may have been the source of the rattling I heard. The point is that they tightened everything up, said there was nothing fundamentally wrong and on the drive home it felt better. No you are not missing anything.