Steering Rack Replacement for Loud Noise from the front and Steering Wheel Vi...

Steering Rack Replacement for Loud Noise from the front and Steering Wheel Vibration Only Under Autosteer

Following up on the posts below from the Firmware 7.0 thread, when I took my late-Dec-2014 P85D for the LTE upgrade last week, I mentioned this to my service advisor at Tesla Burlingame and then took a technician for a ride-along this week to reproduce the issue.

The service center folks hadn't heard of this issue before and opened a case with Engineering who've now recommended that the Steering Rack be replaced as that noise and steering wheel shudder shouldn't happen under Autosteer+TACC. It was so unpleasant that I was choosing not to use Autosteer if the real speeds were in that nasty band of about 25 mph to under the set TACC speed (of, 65-70 mph on the freeway).

Burlingame is getting the Steering Rack from Fremont and my poor car's going in from some extensive work after the minor LTE upgrade work last week.

Heads up to the posters below and others who may have experienced this.

jgs said:

Is anyone else experiencing a vibration not unlike the old 4 mph D shake when they use autosteer at low (35 mph ish) speeds? I get it almost every time. It's nasty. (Might also be at highway speeds too but I haven't tried that yet.)

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MarcG said:

I've sense that too in the steering wheel only though, when holding it while autosteer is engaged. I never got the 4mph D shake so I don't know what that was like, but turning off autosteer gets rid of the vibration. I wonder if that's expected in some situations?

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sataponw said:

I have the same issue!! I can actually hear the vibration, it's not as loud as the lane departure warning but audible. I did notice that the sound goes away whenever the wheel is turning (ie. not straight)

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gg_got_a_tesla said:

This, this! When I had Autosteer going with TACC set to 70 on the freeway, but, was actually doing 35-40 with traffic being slow, there was a loud drone from the front motor and significant vibration through the steering wheel!

Mistook it for the AC compressor first and turned HVAC off but, that only made the noise even more noticeable. Once the speed got up to 70 and also, after I turned Autopilot off, there was no more noise.

It was loud and unpleasant. It only appears to come on with Autopilot on at low speeds.

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Got the car back with the steering rack replaced. Works perfectly now; no more shudder and noise while on Autosteer at speeds lower than the set TACC speed. Great service from Tesla Burlingame!

jdw said:

I updated to 2.7.106 this morning and it seems to have fixed the vibration.

Yesterday I was at the SC getting winter tires installed and mentioned this issue and thread. They seemed to feel that it was a firmware issue and advised patience until the next update ...so far they appear to be correct. The usual stop and go traffic that always triggered it did not today.

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Interesting. Thanks, jdw. They had 2.7.77 available when I took the car in but, that didn't address the issue.

Weird though that the rack replacement fixed the issue for me, even with the older firmware.

Maybe, the source of the problem was slightly different in our two cases?!

After a few days of driving, I'm experiencing the noise again - at a much lower volume than before - and some vibration through the steering wheel (again, a lot less than before) in the speed band of 25 to 45 mph with TACC ON at 65-70 mph and Autosteer ON.

So, the steering rack replacement helped but, there's something else at play that a firmware update may cure.

Based on @jdw's experience, I've reached out to the SC to push 2.7.106 to my car to see if that helps.