I have been dealing with a rattle coming from the left front of my Model X P100D. It was very plasticy sounding that sounded like it was coming from just under the windshield. It was driving me nuts for a few weeks and after replacing all of the trim under the frunk and tearing the dash apart looking for the rattle, I had Tesla mobile service come out to replace my windshield wipers (Yes, just to get the mobile tech out) and I asked him to listen to the rattle and he told me it was the left front strut, which is common on the Tesla Model X.
I replaced the front struts with the Arnott struts and they fixed the problem and the ride is very similar to the factory ride. The factory struts are $990 each, you can find these for probably 1400 for the pair.
After replacing the struts, I took the broken strut apart to figure out the rattling and I found that the top part of the strut was moving side to side very slightly where the good strut wasn’t moving in the same way. You could clearly hear the rattle on the bad strut. I removed the C-Clip from the top of the strut, holding in the cover for the air valve and then pulled the black cover to the air valve off and found a 17MM nut attaching the bump stop to the top of the shock. This 17mm nut was lose just slightly. I tightened it about 1/2 a turn and it stopped the rattling, solving the problem. Unfortunately I destroyed the strut trying to find the solution to this problem so it’s not reusable.
Hopefully, if you have the strut rattle problem, you can just remove the strut, pop this C-clip and tighten that 17mm nut and put it all back together. The key would be removing the black cover without damaging it. It’s almost pressed into the shock, it took some effort for us to remove it. We were not worried about damaging the shock so we used a hammer, but I think a good pair of rubber lined vice grips should do the trick.
Check out the pictures below for more details and reach out with any questions you might have. I have pictures but the forum will not let me upload the pictures "files are too big" yet they are only 600kb.
I replaced the front struts with the Arnott struts and they fixed the problem and the ride is very similar to the factory ride. The factory struts are $990 each, you can find these for probably 1400 for the pair.
After replacing the struts, I took the broken strut apart to figure out the rattling and I found that the top part of the strut was moving side to side very slightly where the good strut wasn’t moving in the same way. You could clearly hear the rattle on the bad strut. I removed the C-Clip from the top of the strut, holding in the cover for the air valve and then pulled the black cover to the air valve off and found a 17MM nut attaching the bump stop to the top of the shock. This 17mm nut was lose just slightly. I tightened it about 1/2 a turn and it stopped the rattling, solving the problem. Unfortunately I destroyed the strut trying to find the solution to this problem so it’s not reusable.
Hopefully, if you have the strut rattle problem, you can just remove the strut, pop this C-clip and tighten that 17mm nut and put it all back together. The key would be removing the black cover without damaging it. It’s almost pressed into the shock, it took some effort for us to remove it. We were not worried about damaging the shock so we used a hammer, but I think a good pair of rubber lined vice grips should do the trick.
Check out the pictures below for more details and reach out with any questions you might have. I have pictures but the forum will not let me upload the pictures "files are too big" yet they are only 600kb.