Teslaan väriä

Wow, almost a year before previous update. I wonder if I even remember what has happened since then.

So, we had to get the car running. The car was missing the so called fireman's loop or first responder cut loop. There's a high voltage interlock loop (HVIL) in the vehicle going through all the high voltage components. This fireman's loop is part of this circuit and if it's cut, the HV components can't be activated.

New loop was connected, but the car still didn't start up. First we thought that perhaps the main fuse in the HV battery pack was blown, but it was fine. Eventually we found that there's a pyro fuse at the fuse box in the frunk. That blows in a crash event and disables bit part of electric components in the car.

Tesla won't sell this fuse to customers so we had to improvise. Exactly the same part can be found from other cars like Audi or Mercedes. The only difference being a plastic piece inside the connector. It is possible to take this piece from Tesla fuse and place it in Audi fuse. Finally we had that great moment when we heard contactor clicks from the main battery.

In the end of October we had our Christmas moment when we received a lot of parts from Tesla - worth almost 15 000 EUR.

Not all parts were in perfect condition thouth. A corner in hood had bent a bit.

Also one of the bolts in hood was not properly secured.

Tesla promised to change the hood but we did not have time to wait so we fixed these little issues.

Next was the windscreen. At this point we still had not decided to change the color of the car. If we did, we would not have install the new windscreen.

After the windscreen we started to build the front of the car.

There was a small dent on driver side fender that was repaired.

Originally we had not planned to change the car. A couple of days before the planned paint booth time the paintshop owner came to tell that if I want to change the color now's the time to decide. Never liked black anyway so it was a fairly quick decision. It was time to do some more disassembly.

A photo to remember the wiring in the trunk lid.

The air suspension did not work yet so we were pretty low at that point.

We did think of the color for a long time. At least three hours! Finally we found a tone that's as far as possible from original Tesla colors. Audi Exclusive Mocha Latte. The only problem was it's so exclusive we couldn't find the mixing formula anywhere.