Well I said I would never work on the Model 3 after the last shit show but I never listen to myself.
So ordered a wheel hub from America, it’s only £60 and the car needed a set of pads. Hey for £60 it’s worth it as Tesla wanted £200 plus VAT to diagnose the noise beyond recommending a new set of tyres.
Working on the mechanical side of Tesla’s is quite nice, all the detailed workshop manuals are free and available online
https://service.tesla.com/docs/Model3/ ... D50B6.html
And unlike every other manufacturer you don’t need a laptop with a special software, the on board computer does all the diagnostics.

The EPB service mode releases the handbrake for 90 minutes and completely retracts the caliper piston for easy servicing. Foreshadowing that it may take me more than 90 minutes to beat the ever living crap out of the hub I loosely rested the old pads inside the caliper so it didn’t retract all the way. I tried to pull the electrical harness off the handbrake but it wouldn’t budge and I didn’t want to break it.
After over an hour of beating the ever living shit out of the hub it eventually comes off. I also have a lunch break and at some point the caliper piston partially retracts against the pads. Little did I know how much this would fuck me.

Bearings in the old hub felt pretty perfect, so I was a bit disheartened at this point that is was the other side making the noise.
Smash new hub in, torque it down, brake disc back on. Get to the caliper and I need to fully retract the piston. But the electric handbrake is resisting. Split caliper in half during this process so I could use a rewind tool or clamp on it but it wasn’t budging.
So my thinking is the car is in park again probably, as the 90 mins has long elapsed. I’ll just go in, put it in drive or activate the service mode again and it’ll retract. Nope.
It went fucking mental just as I sat in the seat and starting pumping the abs for about 5 mins straight. Luckily had a bottle of brake fluid on hand so I get out and I’m slowly filling the reservoir as it’s pumping it out through the piston, which it has pretty much pooped out, and cycled through 500 ml of brake fluid.

So many error codes too. I knew I could get the caliper back together but the error codes worried me, the car is so complex that I didn’t know if it would resolve itself.
At this point it’s easier for me to just remove the entire caliper. Remove piston, the nut inside had unthreaded itself. Put that back, bodge together a pair of wires with some clips to connect to parking brake motor, connect the other side to a 12v battery to retract mechanism and test it.
Reassemble everything on car, bleed rear brakes, connect up parking brake harness whilst praying. Enter car, pump brakes, the error messages start erasing one by one. Finally something good.
Take it for a drive. Silence. It was the correct bearing.
Still need to change out the front brake pads as they’re pretty much on the wear tabs and then I’m never working on the Model 3 again.