NOTE: Update in post #14 .
This is now the second time this has happened. I took my car in to get the wheels/tires re-balanced (different story). Anyway, the shop (Town Fair Tire) had a standard twin-arm lift, which they choose not to use, and instead, used individual floor jacks with a rubber jack pad -- one jack on each corner jacking point. Prior to jacking the car up, I put the air-suspension in "Very High" mode and turned on "Jack Mode". They jacked the car up with the floor jacks. While the car was jacked up, they slid the twin-arm lift arms under the car (they were unused, just in the way).
When they went to remove the front wheels, the put in a brake-pedal bar to lock the front wheel brakes. This turned the car on. This is where the problem started. I have no idea why Tesla Motors has this "feature" but doing this AUTOMATICALLY disables JACK MODE, and the auto-leveling was re-enabled. But since the wheels were off the car, nobody noticed. Well, that's not true, since I had seen this happen once before, I immediately jumped in the pax side and re-enabled "JACK MODE". But what I did not realize in that short period of time, the suspension lowered itself to the "normal" setting with the wheels still off the car.
We didn't notice the lowered position until they remounted all four wheels and lowered the car to the ground. Except this time, the car was NOT in the "Very high" setting, and the car is now resting on the twin-arm lift arms under the car (drivers side only) -- NOT on the jack points, but rather well into the battery area. Now there wasn't a lot of weight on the lift arms, as we could just lift the car with our hands and swing the arms to move freely, but not enough to clear the side skirts. So I had to jump in the driver's seat, and reset the air-suspension to "Very High", which it didn't really do at first -- it took 2 or 3 tries to get it to sync up and lift the car back up. Once that happened, the lift-arms easily swung out of the way.
Once out of the way, I looked underneath for any damage to the battery cover and saw nothing at all (luckily). Now yes, should the shop not have swung the lift arms under the car -- sure. But what's most upsetting is that under these circumstances, the car AUTOMATICALLY disables JACK MODE and re-enabled the auto-leveling. This is a serious flaw, as I think at best, JACK MODE needs to be MANUALLY enabled AND DISABLED. At worst, the car should put up an error message indicating JACK MODE (which it already does). So why turn it off without an explicit action from the driver? Luckily this time there seems to be no damage to the traction pack or housing, but jeeze, if those lift arms were 1 or 2 inches higher, or there was some other obstruction under the car that does not clear on the normal height setting could lead to massive damage to the battery.
This is now the second time this has happened. I took my car in to get the wheels/tires re-balanced (different story). Anyway, the shop (Town Fair Tire) had a standard twin-arm lift, which they choose not to use, and instead, used individual floor jacks with a rubber jack pad -- one jack on each corner jacking point. Prior to jacking the car up, I put the air-suspension in "Very High" mode and turned on "Jack Mode". They jacked the car up with the floor jacks. While the car was jacked up, they slid the twin-arm lift arms under the car (they were unused, just in the way).
When they went to remove the front wheels, the put in a brake-pedal bar to lock the front wheel brakes. This turned the car on. This is where the problem started. I have no idea why Tesla Motors has this "feature" but doing this AUTOMATICALLY disables JACK MODE, and the auto-leveling was re-enabled. But since the wheels were off the car, nobody noticed. Well, that's not true, since I had seen this happen once before, I immediately jumped in the pax side and re-enabled "JACK MODE". But what I did not realize in that short period of time, the suspension lowered itself to the "normal" setting with the wheels still off the car.
We didn't notice the lowered position until they remounted all four wheels and lowered the car to the ground. Except this time, the car was NOT in the "Very high" setting, and the car is now resting on the twin-arm lift arms under the car (drivers side only) -- NOT on the jack points, but rather well into the battery area. Now there wasn't a lot of weight on the lift arms, as we could just lift the car with our hands and swing the arms to move freely, but not enough to clear the side skirts. So I had to jump in the driver's seat, and reset the air-suspension to "Very High", which it didn't really do at first -- it took 2 or 3 tries to get it to sync up and lift the car back up. Once that happened, the lift-arms easily swung out of the way.
Once out of the way, I looked underneath for any damage to the battery cover and saw nothing at all (luckily). Now yes, should the shop not have swung the lift arms under the car -- sure. But what's most upsetting is that under these circumstances, the car AUTOMATICALLY disables JACK MODE and re-enabled the auto-leveling. This is a serious flaw, as I think at best, JACK MODE needs to be MANUALLY enabled AND DISABLED. At worst, the car should put up an error message indicating JACK MODE (which it already does). So why turn it off without an explicit action from the driver? Luckily this time there seems to be no damage to the traction pack or housing, but jeeze, if those lift arms were 1 or 2 inches higher, or there was some other obstruction under the car that does not clear on the normal height setting could lead to massive damage to the battery.
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