Tesla rear drive unit on the Jaunt workshop bench

Tesla service · Model S · Model X · Model 3

Tesla LDU coolant delete. Done properly.

Permanent fix for the rear-drive-unit coolant intrusion problem. Two days in our Melbourne workshop. Fixed price, no surprises.

Tesla service centre

AUD 20,000+

Jaunt workshop

AUD 5,499

Book a diagnosis How it works

7+ Years of EV engineering

20+ Cars built in-house

ADR Compliant workshop

2 days Service turnaround

The problem

The seal that shouldn't have failed.

If you own a Model S, Model X, or an early Model 3 long enough, the rear drive unit will eventually start drinking its own coolant. The seal between the gearbox and the cooling jacket on the motor stator was, in the early platform years, fundamentally undersized for the thermal cycles the unit goes through.

Coolant slowly seeps into the gearbox, dilutes the oil, attacks the bearings, and eventually destroys the drive unit from the inside out. By the time you can hear it, it's already too late.

Three stages, easy to miss until stage three.

Stage one. Coolant level drops slowly. Owner tops it up. No symptoms. This can go on for tens of thousands of kilometres.
Stage two. Drive unit makes a faint whirring or growling under load. Often confused with tyre noise or wheel-bearing wear.
Stage three. Hard mechanical noise, vibration, catastrophic bearing failure. This is the point most owners discover the problem.

The Jaunt fix

We delete the cooling jacket. Permanently.

Tesla's official fix re-engineers the seal. It works, but it requires replacing the whole drive unit assembly and waiting weeks for parts.

Our approach is simpler: we remove the cooling jacket entirely. The gearbox doesn't need active cooling in normal road conditions. Once the cooling jacket is gone, the seal that fails has nothing to seal against.

Six steps. Two days.

Remove the drive unit from the car.
Disassemble the gearbox: endplate off, halfshafts out, gears and bearings inspected.
Clean every surface of coolant residue.
Block the cooling passages with custom-machined plugs and high-temperature thread-lock.
Reassemble with new bearings, fresh oil, updated seals.
Reinstall and test. Service mode, road test, customer pickup.

Fixed price

AUD 5,499. All in.

The price covers diagnosis, removal, disassembly, parts, reassembly, reinstall, and post-service road test. There's no hourly rate, no parts mark-up, no surprises. If we find a separate problem during service that needs attention, we tell you before doing anything about it.

Book a diagnosis

Frequently asked

Common questions.

If your car is still inside the Tesla powertrain warranty, take it to Tesla. We don't recommend voiding factory coverage. Our work is for cars that are already out of warranty, or where the cost of the official Tesla fix exceeds the value of the car.

Two days for the workshop work. Drop off Monday morning, collect Wednesday morning. Diagnosis and quote can be done in a single afternoon visit.

Model S (all years up to 2020), Model X (all years up to 2020), and early Model 3 (2017–2019). If you're not sure whether your car is affected, send us your VIN and we'll check.

If we find anything separate during service, we tell you before doing any additional work. Quote, options, your call. The base coolant delete price stays fixed.

Yes. 12-month workshop warranty on the work. The drive unit itself, after our service, has been operating reliably in customer cars for several years on average.