Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

BSM Contactor failure - unable to charge...

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
Correct. I went on a drive to heat things up and I was able to charge. Is anyone aware of a fix?

You'll have to bear with my descriptions, since I'm not the car tinkering type. The explanation that was given me when I was having this same issue is that there was moisture in the "engineering box" (I'm pretty sure that is the exact term used). One fix Tesla did was to shorten the AC outflow hose so it had more of a downhill run to allow the condensation to escape faster and lead to less moisture in the box. Their other recommendation was to run the heater for 10 or 15 minutes to help dry it out. Hope that helps. I'm leaning towards putting a dehumidifier in the garage to help dry things out. Tesla had mentioned that another 1.5 in this area has had the same issues, but of course once it gets to the Service Center and sits around in the air conditioning for a few hours the problem disappears by the time they touch the car. So I'm thinking a dehumidifier that I'll turn on just when I see odd things start to pop up on the touch screen.
 
  • Helpful
Reactions: TigaFF
Correct. I went on a drive to heat things up and I was able to charge. Is anyone aware of a fix?

I believe you first have to identify where the moisture has entered and where in the system its faulting. On my 1.5 the fault was due to moisture blowing in hard from the passenger side vent, wind then pushed the air in further towards the drivers side, where it then worked down to the motor. Since the motor is part of the charging system on the 1.5 design, the Roadster detects a potential threat for a short and prevents the system from charging which could damage it.

What was given to me as a work around was to put more foam blocks around the side vents, so that there's less chance of the water from following the same trail toward the motor, but rather to have it accumulate and fall down. Its a balance you have to understand between restricting air flow into the PEM which needs good circulation in that area (passenger side).
 
My Roadster is complaining about the same issues since almost a week.
-Isolation fault
-Isolation fault while contactors closed

It first occurred, while the car was parked and I turned it on to drive home under a roof at a mall, the floor was wet, though. I drove it home 30 km. Turned it off and on again and the errors were gone.
Since then, these errors popped up randomly and were gone after a drive of at least 10 km.

It seems, the high humidity and crappy weather is enough to trigger this issue...

I am pretty sure it's the same as wiztecy's problem, the isolation resistance in the motor which drops under a threshold and triggers the error.
Did anyone find a final solution for this, yet?
 
When my car went in for servicing they replaced the service plug as they said it had a hairline crack and could be causing the isolation fault. Since it was part of the $600 servicing fee I did not question and I have not seen the fault since even, in some very damp weather.
 
And I only had that one issue while charging during a harsh windy storm that blew water in from the passenger side vent area. We've been getting some pretty stormy windy weather here lately in California and the Roadster hasn't had any issue. It was that one storm that blew in and worked the water where it shouldn't be around the motor. My Roadster stays outside in the elements.
 
I've just had this same issue. Tried to trigger a charge remotely and got #287: BSM: Isolation fault before charge / Powertrain Problem Service Required. Came back to the car and tried again with both cables with the same result and a red ring around the charge port.

I drove the car out of the garage and over to my other EVSE with the same result. Then when driving back to the garage I got several #286 BSM: Isolation fault while contactors closed.


All I can think of reading this thread is that it might be due to me washing the car lightly with a hosepipe on Sunday to remove some bird crap from the roof and mud that had got up under the arches.

The car has been garaged since and I should add it's been in storage mode and done the daily storage charge since Sunday without any errors AFAIK.


I've only got 30 miles in the tank so I'm scared to go driving it an using them up if I can't charge. The PITA is the car was due a service and is going in on 9th Jan, but now I can't charge to get it there.
 
Last edited:
Just went out to try again and can now add #283 to that list of faults.

20141218_222333.jpg
 
Last edited:
Just went out to try again and can now add #283 to that list of faults.

If its any comfort my car has had the exact / identical sequence of faults including the red charge port ring. It also happened this time last year. It always occurred during very humid damp cold winter nights. But it was intermittent and would clear up most mornings ..

However, 2 weeks ago I reported it to Tesla UK and they accepted there was a problem. Apparently they have found 'moisture ingress into the charge port PCB' via a near invisible crack in the plastics. I'm expecting an update tomorrow.
 
Thanks dhrivnak and wiztecy
The service disconnect is an interesting idea, but when I thought again, I am pretty confident, that the error would also occur in case of opened contractors because the plug is in the pack, in between the contactors.

I've just had this same issue. Tried to trigger a charge remotely and got #287: BSM: Isolation fault before charge / Powertrain Problem Service Required. Came back to the car and tried again with both cables with the same result and a red ring around the charge port.

I drove the car out of the garage and over to my other EVSE with the same result. Then when driving back to the garage I got several #286 BSM: Isolation fault while contactors closed.


All I can think of reading this thread is that it might be due to me washing the car lightly with a hosepipe on Sunday to remove some bird crap from the roof and mud that had got up under the arches.

The car has been garaged since and I should add it's been in storage mode and done the daily storage charge since Sunday without any errors AFAIK.


I've only got 30 miles in the tank so I'm scared to go driving it an using them up if I can't charge. The PITA is the car was due a service and is going in on 9th Jan, but now I can't charge to get it there.

Wenn I look at your avatar, I see you have a 2.5?
The 2.5 has both, the PEM and motor fan, pretty close to the bottom.

Well, I don't know, but you could try to drive the car for 6 miles or so to warm up the components and try to charge again.
If that doesn't work, I would contact your Service Center.

@PV4EV
What's the charge port PCB? The LED ring? I think that can't trigger an isolation fault, since it runs at 12 V and the 12 V system is connected to the chassis anyway.
 
Last edited:
I got up early and took the car for a 10 mile blast up the motorway this morning and it did the trick. However it was complaining the whole way about #286 Isolation fault while contactors closed.

It's been charging at 22 Amps for the last 3 hours with no problem so far but it does mean I'm now worried about a repeat performance if I let it stand.

Should I always put in enough to get to the service centre? ;)
 
The first time I saw the error (when contractors closed), I drove home (car still complaining) turned it off and on again, all errors were gone.
I NEVER had this problem during charging, yet.

Do you have an OVMS? You could set it up to charge to 60 miles or so and leave it there? So you have a bit more "safety"?
I know it can be done with the OVMS, but didn't do it myself though.
 
I know some of this is internal to car electrics, but what about also cleaning both male and female charging sides of the charger. (Of course make sure all electricity and such is OFF and unplugged.)

Another thread talks about all the filth that builds up in there.

Best,

T
 
@Marco2228 I also saw the problem a couple of times under heavy acceleration in dry weather. It was a one-off and I thought nothing more of it until this week.

I do have an OVMS and funnily enough I just noticed that feature this week too. Thinking of enabling it.


@Tobash my connectors appear to be clean and it happened with different cables. The issue seems to be when the contactors in the HV system close or perhaps bounce when on the road. This appears to have happened when I washed the car after having to drive through mud and getting a lot of mud under the arches and chassis at the rear of the vehicle. It then sat in storage for a few days and appears not to have dried out. A quick 70 mph blast seems to have blown the damp out.
 
I have also apparently fallen victim to a flavour of this problem, on a 2.0 Roadster. I get the fault 287 error and red LED ring right after the contractors close. I have only gotten it when a charge has started after the car has been sitting for days or weeks in the garage (our Roadster is no longer a daily driver, especially in the winter). It has happened now three times. After the first time, Tesla came over and replaced that HV controller under the hood, which was not showing its pilot light. That did not fix it. They then took the car into the shop, with me driving it part of the way and them trailering it the last stretch to preserve the SOC (it had been in Storage Mode). After that drive, it immediately charged for them in the shop. They talked to Roadster expert engineers at HQ, but the failure pattern documented in this thread did not come up, apparently.

It has now happened two more times, but each time, just driving the car for as little as 10 minutes corrects it. I have never seen faults while driving, only while beginning a charge. Usually I discover the problem when returning from being away (without the car) and see the fault pop-up on the VDS. So it is initially happening during an SOC maintenance charge while parked plugged it. Our garage is near-100% humidity in the winter here in BC, with the cars often coming in out of the rain carrying a lot of water. I will see about improving ventilation and perhaps get a dehumidifier.

I will now bring this thread to my service manager's attention and see what they want to do. Thanks to all above for documenting this failure pattern, and to FANGO for directing me to this thread, which I had missed.
 
When speaking to the head of service in the UK about this, he said it's a problem with moisture in the heating box up front causing a ground fault when the HV contactors close. Driving it to blow the moisture out seems to be the fix.
 
I have also apparently fallen victim to a flavour of this problem, on a 2.0 Roadster. I get the fault 287 error and red LED ring right after the contractors close. I have only gotten it when a charge has started after the car has been sitting for days or weeks in the garage (our Roadster is no longer a daily driver, especially in the winter). It has happened now three times. After the first time, Tesla came over and replaced that HV controller under the hood, which was not showing its pilot light. That did not fix it. They then took the car into the shop, with me driving it part of the way and them trailering it the last stretch to preserve the SOC (it had been in Storage Mode). After that drive, it immediately charged for them in the shop. They talked to Roadster expert engineers at HQ, but the failure pattern documented in this thread did not come up, apparently.

It has now happened two more times, but each time, just driving the car for as little as 10 minutes corrects it. I have never seen faults while driving, only while beginning a charge. Usually I discover the problem when returning from being away (without the car) and see the fault pop-up on the VDS. So it is initially happening during an SOC maintenance charge while parked plugged it. Our garage is near-100% humidity in the winter here in BC, with the cars often coming in out of the rain carrying a lot of water. I will see about improving ventilation and perhaps get a dehumidifier.

I will now bring this thread to my service manager's attention and see what they want to do. Thanks to all above for documenting this failure pattern, and to FANGO for directing me to this thread, which I had missed.
I think 287 was the error code I was getting. It only showed up when initiating a range charge, and simply closing the charge port door and reopening it cleared the error and a second attempt to charge would usually work. Tesla ended up swapping out the whole battery.
 
It happened again, while we were away on our first trip in our new P85D :)biggrin:). This time, I had updated my OVMS firmware and got the real-time faults in that app. So I know it happened after the car had sat in the garage for just 2-3 days. As soon as I got home, I tried restarting the charge-- still red (as it had been every other time).

I got in the car, turned up the heat full blast, and just drove to the bottom of our 200 m driveway and back up. That was enough. I plugged back in and it charged fine. I did also notice that the temperature of the PEM had come up to the second blue bar. I felt the PEM case and it was still cold to the touch.

Now I need to see if it was the cabin heat on or the driving a (very) short distance that cured it.