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If I wanted to add a drain at the inverter side, without dropping the engine, do you think it would be feasible? Guessing I should pull the firemans loop first, completely powering off the car, just to be on the safe side, right?

Fantastic stuff! Thanks! ❤

Mine had a thin brownish film. Could it be assembly lube?

Seems to be something for the engineers at Tesla to implement. You should work there. Thank you ❤

Awesome job! Thank you ❤

Hey man, love your work ❤ is there any way I can add emergency drain on Tesla LDU without pulling the unit? Got a low whirring noise coming from the DU when accelerating, and I am worried about the seal leaking. Gonna check speed sensor today. Going on a long trip in a couple of days.If it is dry, I suppose the issue could be a bearing, but if not I would like to add drain on inverter side before going on our summer vacation drive.

Very good results! Please, remind me what mileage this RAV4EV has had since the previous repair?

I’ve been wondering, thanks for the update!

Yey.....I've done this update to my Model S LDU....note that EV clinic now uses a German made dual lip Teflon/Carbon seal instead of the Chinese 3 lipped one.

Damn! You must be a real engineer! This seems to be really thought through. Thank you! ❤

I think these units have sealed bearings on the motors. These bearings will fail at some point, I have not seen all your videos, but if you are doing this much work, might as well replace. Also, there is a replacement / update for the coolant bypass tube, better design that avoids the seal failure issue altogether.

What is the trick for removing the rotor. Mine really doesn’t want to come out….

czcams.com/video/nHN5mrreBdI/video.html

The parking brake seen here is also used in mercedes with tesla large drive unit

Can I just add emergency drains ?

On my Tesla S the original seal lasted 290.000km. Failed in the last year of warranty. The RMN seal (red) failed after 90.000km only. I have done the drains as per your suggestions and installed the triple lip seal now. The surface of the rotor shaft was in a very good condition. I saw the coolant delete kit from QC Charge but for now i hope the seal will work out ok. A big thank you to you for making these videos and your contributions on the open inverter blog too...a must read for all LDU fans.

you have to use kluber nbu 15

Great video!!

Thank you for creating this channel - I am starting on my nightmare journey using those as a road map)

God Bless You!

Your analysis may be more thorough than by Tesla Engineering and QA, indeed most auto manufacturers. If they were so thorough, perhaps there would be less endemic problems with vehicle designs.

When threading aluminum there's a product called tap magic that is a light cutting oil that's good for aluminum. The stuff you used is designed for cutting steel. A good cheap option though is straight WD-40. I've tapped a lot of holes in aluminum with it and I get good results. A good sharp high quality tap is key. Your recommendation to tap by hand is a good one, and I would not use that combo drill/tap for this. It's very easy to cause damage during power tapping and even skilled machinists are reluctant to do it on anything critical or expensive. These combination drill/tap tools are not good for material that's of any thickness too. A lot of chip material is created from the drill point and then you stack more chips on top of that cutting the thread and the likelihood of something getting caught up in the cutting edge of the tap as it turns increases exponentially. You're almost guaranteed to get galled threads with one on a thick casting like this.

I've been wrenching on my own cars for 30+ years and I've found that the best way to drive a seal like this is to just use the flat face of a ball peen hammer and gently tap the seal in walking around the seal to keep it as even as possible. Seal drivers always seem to want to apply too much pressure to one side or the other and I've bent a couple trying to do it that way. I've never had one fail using the gentle tap with a hammer face method. It's interesting to me that these seals fail so readily. Standard water pump seals on ICE cars can run for 100k+ miles without leaking, so based on that I wouldn't expect to see these coolant seals failing any sooner. I'm also thinking of like a rear main seal on an engine because it's much larger diameter than even these LDU motor seals so sfpm on the sealing surface should be equally high, and again they'll run a very long time before failure, and those seals can see 60+ psi of pressure. My truck when I bought it had 190k miles on it and it wasn't even leaking yet. I changed it because the transmission was out of it, but there was no leak yet. I'd be interested to hear from an engineer with expertise in this area with ideas on why this happens in this application.

First of all thank you for step by step videos of your repair process. I am also in process of repair my Rav4EV and currently trying to find all the seals(primary rotor seal, rotor seal on manifold and 2 shaft seals) In your videos I did not see you replace the primary rotor seal. Did you reuse this seal? Much appreciated if you can reply. Thanks

Awesome bro

Is milling sound related to this?

Thank you for the video. A bolt that is torqued properly will take more torque to remove it due to friction.

spray welding just for worn bearing journals not suitable for sealing surfaces it makes lips worn for best result laser welding or chrome plating

drill 2 holes in to the nut than treat it m4 and putt a small bronze piece than tighten it with setscrews and also use loctite

find economos machine to order special sealing to update local ask for skf local partner to economos cnc machine

you made a mistake with use epoxy because you stopped the termal reduction of phases that causes overheat on phases just let them open to get cool

don’t use liquid for test we use air for leaks detection first close the inlet than give 2 bar air to systsem than check it with leak detection

всё это не актуально , не нужно там никакое охлаждение :)

To remove the bearing seal, go from the outer edge, any damage caused on that side is at least not a moving seal surface.

dont be a fool. buy bearings. they cost close to nothing.

This rotor speed very high, for ceramic hybryd bearing you need spesial very expensive grease, skf lghp not for very high speed. Sorry for my english)

bad idea use hamer, you may damage bearings

Dag Landgenoot, I was wondering how did you know there was e problem?

do you have a parts list for seals and orings for this drive unit?

Also important for Tesla Model S with LDU (large asyncron motor) and Mercedes B250e...all suffer from the same issue.

Question: Looking at the coolant reservoir the cap is of the pressurized design meaning a pressure (to raise the boiling point of the coolant) is building up first before excess pressure is released. I wonder if that is really necessary in the EV application and if it would help the seal if the cap would be modified to vent without building up pressure.

QC Charge in Cali has a coolant delete kit that prevents inverter death! I think they have a bearings and seal kit too but not sure.

How long ist the metal coolant pipe? I like to make a tool to press the seal in with a hydraulic press (instead of a cardboard tube and a hammer).

Nice CAD cut-away and explanation. Periodically......on my Model S i do it now every 10,000km (when swapping around wheels). Now my sensor of my remanufactured LDU (90,000km) has some droplets.....coolant reservoir is still on Max. Decided to order seal (3 seals, 3 lipped as recommended) but keep driving for now as i live out of town and its my only transport. I do 30,000km/a, car has over 380,000km on it. After over a year your seal is still ok? Any idea of how much mileage you can get out of it ? Are there coolant additives available to provide more seal lubrication?

Hmmmm......i saw in your other video that you iserted a drain into the inverter cover (and the speed sensor cavity). I think a drain in the sensor cavity is really all you need as any seepage from the seal will drip out there and warn you). Every water pump has such a drain hole, pitty Tesla did not think of that.

You did not put in the service plug in correctly. The black handle needs to be perpendicular prior inserting.

Stupid question: I always drive in chill mode (max power 160kW).....why not blocking off the rotor cooling and avoid destruction of the very expensive (here in Australia) LDU due to a leaking seal? My 1st LDU of 2014 Model S85P+ lasted 280.000km, replaced on warranty and replacement unit has done 110.000km by now. Would it make sense to check the speed sensor for coolant drops every time i jack up the car to swap wheels (every 10.000km)? Absolut great series of videos, well filmed, commented and edited. Man has common sense !