No GPS After LTE Upgrade (And Other Work On Car)

So I received my car back from its 12,500 annual service today. I had scheduled the LTE upgrade to take place at the same time. It turns out I also had some major issues, discussed elsewhere, involving bad wiring done by an aftermarket installer, the result of which was that my main wiring harness had to be replaced. (I mention that in case the GPS issue could be related to that, and not to the LTE upgrade.)

The first thing I noticed that was odd was that my air suspension didn't adjust at my driveway. I didn't think much of it, and figured the setting had been cleared. I adjusted the suspension manually, thinking it would create a new setting. Later, I noticed the same issue. Looking more closely, I realized my Homelink setting for the garage door also was not presenting. And when I manually selected the Homelink screen, the setting for the garage door was not green. I realized at that point I had a GPS issue. To confirm, I started the nav system, and that indicated I was still at the service center.

I tried the scroll wheel reset, as well as the other one (the IC reset, using the buttons above the scroll wheels), and neither helped. By this time I needed to get to an appointment and did not have time to call the service center at that time, and also thought that perhaps leaving the car outside and parked for some time might help, even though it had been outside for the four-plus hour trip from the service center to me, while on the trailer. When I still had no GPS connectivity over an hour later, I did call the service center. They said they would try to look into it remotely, and called me back a couple of hours later, just a little while ago, to say that someone would call me tomorrow.

My best, uneducated guess, is that somehow some GPS antenna or something did not get hooked back up properly. Does this sound plausible? Would the GPS antenna be disconnected during the LTE upgrade?

Thanks in advance for any light anyone here may be able to shed on this for me while I wait until tomorrow to hear back from my service center.

glhs272 said:

Not sure if this helps, but I recently had an issue with my GPS system where it began to get "stuck" or just not operate, like yours is currently doing. The GPS antenna system is located in the rear of the car with the antenna in the rear window itself. The service center is able to see through the car's diagnostics the number of satellites that it is receiving. With my car, when they wiggled and twisted the harness going into the back hatch window glass, they were able to get the car to go from 6 satellites to 0 satellites and back. So basically the harness/connection to the rear window was flakey/bad. Unfortunely, to fix this the rear window had to be removed and reinstalled to replace the bad antenna harness. That is a bit of a labor intensive job so it cost a little more than I had hoped. I am not sure if this issue relates to what they did to your car, but if that rear window glass/harness had been messed with it may be related.

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Thanks for that insight.

They did replace the main wiring harness, so I guess it is possible that somehow the connection between it and the antenna in the rear window didn't get made properly.

I did look at my invoice, and there is GPS stuff noted on the LTE upgrade section of it, so I still think that's probably the more likely culprit.

I think it is unlikely this is something that is going to resolve itself, or be something they can walk me through fixing myself, so they'll probably either have to send a ranger, or come for the car again. They're going to love that!

So Tesla is going to have to pick up the car again, take it 200-plus miles away, fix it, and bring it back to me. It's pretty frustrating, considering they had my car basically two full work weeks (picked it up on a Monday, brought it back two Fridays later), but I guess stuff happens.

andrewket said:

Where do you live again?

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Ithaca, NY.

The nearest service center is in Mount Kisco, NY.

jerry33 said:

I also don't know how close Andy's VIN is to mine, or if that makes any difference.

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My VIN # is in my signature, so feel free to compare it to yours and comment if you like.

jerry33 said:

Note: I had none of the other problems Andy mentions in the opening post, just the GPS which has been working fine. Had they fixed it the first day, I would never have known. Actually, my car has been quite trouble free.

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I'm not sure what you mean about the other problems I had. Those were just the issues I noticed that helped me realize I didn't have any GPS. Had you driven your car any where, and assuming you have air suspension, you would have experienced the same if you had no GPS connectivity.

jerry33 said:

But if you don't live near an SC and get the upgrade, you might want to check that the GPS is working before you leave.

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I agree completely. I made that very point in the other thread. I should have made it here, too, so thanks for pointing that out.

jerry33 said:

I was looking for it in the status where I have mine, not the sig. Why I expect everyone to put it in the same place I do, I don't know

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And I didn't think to look there for yours, so that makes us even!

jerry33 said:

I was thinking of the wiring problems in the first paragraph, and yes, I have air.

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Ahhh, OK. The wiring problems almost certainly had nothing to do with the GPS issue, unless the tech just failed to hook something up properly. The cause of the wiring problems certainly had nothing to do with the GPS issue, but rather with my choice of an incompetent installer.

Sparrow said:

So Andyw2100, did they ever tell you what the fix was for this GPS problem? I did all the rebooting things and pulled fuse 51 for 10 minutes with no luck. My car is likely to go back to the service center tomorrow unless they can fix the firmware via the WiFi connection that is still working.

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The car had to go back to the service center. I don't know what they did while it was there. Unfortunately I'm guessing your car will probably need to go back as well.

Sparrow said:

My repair for the GPS and LTE not functioning immediately after installation was:

"Found a loose connection in the Center Display"

Apparently the connector was not fully seated.

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It wouldn't surprise me if it was something along those lines in my case as well. Of course for me, the car had to be trucked about 450 miles round trip to tighten the connection, if that's what it was, or to fix whatever it was the problem turned out to be. Definitely something that I expect they will not forget to check and maybe even double-check in the future. (It was clear it had never worked, as the GPS indicated my car was at the service center.)