**The Car That Was Left to Rot: Part 1**

As I stood there, staring at the battery tester, my heart sank. The voltage reading confirmed what I had suspected all along - the car's 12V battery was completely dead, with a voltage level of only 4.5 volts. I couldn't believe it. How could something as simple as a battery fail so catastrophically? I tested to confirm there was no high voltage in the car, and then decided to move on to the interior, hoping that the problems were limited to the electrical system.

As I made my way into the cabin, I was met with a sight that resembled the Atlantic Ocean. The charges underneath the rear seat were submerged, and I knew I had to act fast before further damage was done. I tried to manually move up the driver's seat to access the 12V motors, but they were seized, rendering them useless. I sprayed some WD40, gave the seat a few hard kicks, and eventually ripped out the axle for the motor that adjusted the seat position. It was a small victory, but it showed me that even in the most dire situations, there's always hope.

I attached my drill to try and get the job done, taking it one side at a time for both seats. The process was slow and laborious, but I refused to give up. The condition of these seats was completely trashed, with busted reclin motors that were tossed aside like garbage. I couldn't help but feel frustrated and discouraged by the state of the car.

As I continued on, I knew I had to focus on getting an idea of how high the water level got in the car. I checked the filter and peeled back the front passenger carpet to reveal a line smack dab in the middle of the speaker line. This was my first reference point, telling me that everything below this line was toast. The sight of the salt-encrusted wiring harnesses only added to my unease - it looked like a scene from a horror movie. I assumed that the car didn't get flooded as high as the main computer, which controlled the entire car's systems.

The thought of repairing or replacing the MCU sent shivers down my spine. As someone on a tight budget, the prospect of a new computer replacement was daunting - Tesla wouldn't even sell one to me, and at $4,000, it was an unaffordable luxury. I was essentially sitting duck at this point, wondering if all my hard work would be for naught.

Despite my doubts, I refused to give up. I plugged in the 12V power source to the front post, waited five minutes, and... voilà! The screen turned on. It was a small victory, but it gave me the confidence to continue working on the car. As I looked back on the progress I'd made so far, I realized that small successes are crucial in projects like this. Without them, it's easy to lose motivation and momentum.

As I paused here, reflecting on my journey so far, I'm excited to share the next part of Dolores' story with you. Stay tuned for Part 2, where I'll continue to document my progress, sharing more of my frustrations, triumphs, and discoveries along the way.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys it's Rich the kaguru here uh I just wanted to go over the the Tesla story and how everything kind of got off the ground this is going to be more uh podcast style so feel free to throw on the headphones and do some lighthous work while you're listening to it uh throughout the process I'm going to have some pictures up uh it's more of a slideshow kind of style but you don't have to look at those they're just going to be some pictures of me disassembling the car and some of the things that I've seen this is going to be a lot of this is what I posted on the the Tesla Forum just to kind of give you guys a patrol view pictorial view rather of of what I've seen and and what I've done to the car but feel free to pop the headphones in or put it in your car and just kind of listen to this one won't be much video here just still slides so how it all started was I I had this thing for for Teslas and I really really wanted one my my buddy that works there he by my house with one uh a couple years back and I I was blown away by the car it's great power super quiet it looks great high-tech I was like man I I need this thing the only downside to the car was that they're they're 100 grand new and about 70 grand used and and that's far more than I was willing to spend on a car that I drive four miles at the train station so the only real way I could get into one I didn't even lower price point was getting one that needed some kind of work so now a wrecked one wasn't in my cars and I'm not a body guy and the chassis of a Tesla is aluminum so it would have to go to a special body shop that works with aluminum and I didn't want to deal with that anything I couldn't do in my own garage with no frame machine or no lift I didn't want to deal with so I started the hunt for one and I'm browsing Copart which is a Rec car site uh it's a Rec car set insurance companies used to to sell total cars at auction and I see this black Tesla it's just sitting in a field in New Jersey and you know they said it was in a flood and I'm like okay the the pictures that I saw um those are the only things I knew about the car itself but I already had questions I'm like you know is the front grill in the car was it stolen I mean the car slammed a sign of of it having air suspension that's good but how's the air suspension are the bags blown how long the car sit is it saltwater flooded freshwater flooded you know is is half the back seat really gone I just didn't know answers to to any of these questions so the lastly the biggest one for me was how high was the water uh and again I knew nothing about these cars at all I just knew that they were good-look cars pretty fast and Tech overload and and being in the it field in a lever of cars is just what I wanted to get into and I thought it'd make a great daily driver too so the first thing I did was I know with cars is that the first thing I was I head online to find out more about them so in in January of 2016 I posted on a Tesla Motors Club asking hey you know this flooded Model S what do you guys think you know I want to work on this and fix it so I got typical responses like hey what are you doing this a paper weight don't waste your time on this car it's All Electronics where are you going to get the parts from you'll be fighting electrical Gremlins for years even one guy went as far as to say it's no big deal because the electronic boards in the car coded to be waterproof so I'm like okay let's do it and and this was Phil Phil Phil has repaired uh freshwater cars in the past but but you know so his perspective was a lot different from mine his perspective said that hey you know it was a freshwater just Dy it off and drive the car so he gave it his Blessing so I said you know what I'm going to I'm going to try it out uh so he someone said where you going to get parts from and I'm thinking to myself that's a strange thing to say because you know you could just go to the dealership and buy parts like people have been doing for decades now you know you go to the dealer like any other car guy and then you just say hey you know what I want this part for my car but so after some more research I realized that that's actually not the case you can't just walk into a Tesla dealership and ask for parts for your car because you can't actually buy parts from Tesla for a salvage vehicle they don't want people doing half ass repairs to their cars so they make it so that only Tesla certified shops can do this the the reasoning for that is that if you get into an accident with your car it's not going to make headlines because frankly no one cares if you get into an accident or not however in a Tesla it's national news a car that catches fire isn't a big deal unless it's a Tesla and the news they just run with it uh electric cars are unsafe think of the children oh my gosh lithium mining etc etc so there are a few articles about people buying these cars wrecked and spending over 50 Grand only to have Tesla say nope we won't sell you parts to fix your car because your Vin's coming out Salvage and to add to that you know there Parts they won't even sell you even if your Vin's clean you know so even if I had a clean Vin and I walk up to the dealership and I say hey I need a motor or battery or or basically anything in relation to high voltage they they they'll sell you they'll say no because some parts are actually restricted for the cars so after reading up on that for an hour I reached out to my friend that actually works at Tesla I gave him the VIN and he I asked for information on the car it's last service history and he said no I can't do that I'm not allowed to give a service history on vehicles and I'm I'm I swear it's like a damn Fortress of information dealing with these cards everything is one big secret so the interesting thing is that he was allowed to give me he he was allowed to give me the faults that were on the car uh meaning the diagnostic info so I was thankful for that and this is what really got me going he gave me all the faults that the car threw before it died and I'm like okay well how'd that happen you know did they bring the car in after it was dead you know he said no you know the logs are automatically uploaded and the car communicates back and forth with Tesla all the time and he he said the logs show that the car hasn't been active for four months and it had 47 faults before dying the high voltage internal faults in the battery pack only part of the battery pack was communicating before it died it it would he said it would probably run about 65 to 70 grand just to restore the car stay away from it this is a bad idea etc etc etc well he's telling me this via text not knowing that I've already bought the damn car anyways and it was literally on its way from New Jersey so that really shot myself in the foot right there um but anyways yes uh against the advice from Friends financial advisors fam strangers etc etc etc I bought the car anyways and I purchased it for the grand total of $144,000 so 10:30 p.m. uh later that night uh my toe guy calls me and says hey I got the car uh it took him six hours okay 6 hours from New Jersey which should normally take about four he said the car was so heavy his max speed was about 45 miles an hour the whole way he said it was a nightmare to get off the truck the battery was dead the EB brake was stuck on so in order to get it off the trailer I had to use um my engine crane to jack up each individual wheel and put wheel dollies underneath and and after all that I still had to use my truck with the chain to pull the car off the trailer that's how heavy this thing was now not only that but even when I got the car off the trailer the there's a 2in lip actually maybe an inch and a half lip that goes into my garage so after the the tow truck driver and his friend left I had to push the car in the rest of the driveway into the rest of the garage myself so I put a foam piece in between my my uh my pickup truck and the Tesla to push it into the garage what a mess this whole thing was you know so this is a recap here uh in case I'm losing your attention basically long story short uh I found a car sitting in a field it was flooded it didn't work I asked my friend should I do it he said yeah and I started working on it and it was a complete disaster even getting it home in the garage it took hours just to even get it into the garage but so so the next day I'm sitting here with this expensive paper weight in my garage trying to figure out how to even get in the car the car was locked windows were up uh I look up the location of the jumper Post in the car I found out there are two posts in the front for battery power and this is the standard location that people use to jump the car in emergency after running out of power so I ended up hooking up a 12vt battery with jumpers to the front and I heard a loud snap fall like a cloud of smoke it it was just it it was crazy CRA so I I like an idiot I plugged the car in when I wasn't supposed to all I heard was a snap and I smelled smoke and I I said you know what in in hindsight it probably wasn't my best decision uh to add additional electricity to a car that was filled with water so I definitely got ahead of myself on that one but you know what are you going to do uh I ended up grabbing the passenger side glass pulling it down as hard as I could and and and destroying the door window motors in the process but hey at least I got in the car so I'm in the car I threw a dehumidifier in the car overnight uh that I actually ended up wrapping the top of the car up in plastic uh because you don't want to use heat a lot of people said to use heat to dry the car out but you don't want to use heat because heat accelerates mold and I just let the dehumidifier do its thing uh I let it run for about 3 days and I emptied periodically and I was entering sorry I was throwing away tons of water you know I pulled probably a good bucket full of water out of this car every single day that's how much water was still in this car uh so I'm thinking maybe okay maybe it's not that big of a deal maybe it's not salt water maybe it's just rain water from when the the the front trunk was open and water just kind of trickle down there okay so I I open the the front the trunk and I work more up to the air filter which is about a foot above the trunk to see whether or not it's wet and sorry let me be let me let me clarify this now the trunk on a normal car is in the back uh the Tesla has two trunks so when you refer to the front trunk you call it a frunk so I'm going to start referring it to to to the frun as as as as now uh going forward so the frunk I opened up the frunk and to see whether not it's wet and I wanted to see how high the water line was and after about 5 minutes or so I popped it out and it was dry as a bone so this is great news because it told me that the car wasn't fully submerged but however I did pour myself a small cup of water that was at the bottom of the frunk and as luck would have it it was it was salt water so I was already pretty pissed about that you you know salt water is just bad news for for electronics in the car so onto the battery the 12vt battery in this car is hilariously difficult to remove it's just heavy awkwardly placed the the fuse blocks on top the battery was interesting as well cuz I I I knew I had to remove the 12vt battery and cut the first responder Loop uh and this first responder Loop just essentially makes sure that there's no high voltage going to the car it's for First Responders meaning you know firefighters and and and and and other servicemen and women like police and paramedics uh once I cut that Loop it disables all the high voltage of the vehicle uh I cut that because I removed that rather just to make sure I Wouldn't Die working on any high voltage stuff in the car and you know after I did that I felt much better about making an attempt uh to actually fix anything on the vehicle uh I removed the the 12vt battery tested the voltage it was like at 4 and 1/2 volts so it was it was just it was just completely dead I uh I confirmed there's no high voltage in the car I decided hey you know what um let's go on to the interior and the interior SM like the Atlantic Ocean it it was I know the charges underneath the rear seat um were underneath the rear seat but uh the driver's seat reclined all the way and blocked out access to the Chargers so I had to somehow find a way to manually move up the seat uh that would involve me manually jumping the seats and hooking up the 12volt motors to get them to move but unfortunately you know judging by this picture here uh the seat motors were seized you know even hooking up 12vt power they did nothing whatsoever I just got smoke so I figured okay no biggie I'll just remove the nuts that secure the seats down of the chassis and guess what I I only took off the fronts because you know while the car was freaking out while it was submerged the seats automatically slid backwards and shorted out and this really sucked because there's no way to access the nuts to pull up the seat the motors didn't work uh this was my first big hurdle uh one of many actually and I got around this one by using a crowbar to pry up the seat and I took the bottom seat cushion off and wedge my skinny fingers in between the seat rails uh I sprayed some WD40 I gave the seat 10 hard kicks and then I ended up ripping out the axle for the motor that that adjust the seat position uh after that I attached to my drill it took forever cuz I had to do each side individually for both seats but hopefully this is the most difficult thing I had to come across in the car uh and jez let me tell you the condition of these seats reclin Motors they were just so busted up I ended up cutting them out and just throwing them away I mean I mean look at these things they were completely trashed again now one of the things I still wanted to know first and foremost about the car was how high the water level got and and after I checked the filter I peeled back the front passenger carpet and I saw this line smack dab in the middle of the speaker line on the passenger side so this was good so I I I had a reference point at least to know hey everything below this line was toast I had to assume that I had to repair everything below that line uh and if you look at the other picks you could see that the salt in between the wiring harnesses I mean it honestly it looks pretty intimidating and nerve-wracking and and judging by that level I means it it didn't get high as high as a main computer looking at that level but the that computer controls the entire car that main screen the MCU that controls the entire car so if it didn't get wet then I'm in good shape if it did then I'm I'm kind of boned here you know um I'm on a budget so a computer replacement would end me as far as I concerned because remember I have no resources to get a new one you know Tesla won't sell it to me so so I I was a Sitting Duck at this point and when I was building this car looking on eBay the prices were running four grand four grand on eBay so I'm like shoot I really hope this works so I mean I kept working on the car but you know what I I I was just too curious I just I just had to know if this whole project was going to be a waste of time and and whether or not I need to replace that screen so you know I plugged it in the 12vt power source to the front post again waited 5 minutes and you know what that screen turned on so that was the first sign of life that I got in the car and the next stage that I guess gave me the confidence to continue because in a project like this you really need small successes to keep going because as you you work on something like this if you just keep getting bad news over and over and over and over again it's it's things like that that are going to leave you pretty discouraged so you know this is just me yapping for 18 20 minutes here I just want to um give you guys part one of me working on Dolores and you know getting up to the point where I fired up the screen so let take a quick break uh I think this is a pretty good stopping point uh I'm going to upload a part two pretty soon maybe this will be a good little talking Series so you could kind of get a feel for what was going through my mind when I was building this car but either way stay tuned for the next episode and I'll talk to you guys shortlyhey guys it's Rich the kaguru here uh I just wanted to go over the the Tesla story and how everything kind of got off the ground this is going to be more uh podcast style so feel free to throw on the headphones and do some lighthous work while you're listening to it uh throughout the process I'm going to have some pictures up uh it's more of a slideshow kind of style but you don't have to look at those they're just going to be some pictures of me disassembling the car and some of the things that I've seen this is going to be a lot of this is what I posted on the the Tesla Forum just to kind of give you guys a patrol view pictorial view rather of of what I've seen and and what I've done to the car but feel free to pop the headphones in or put it in your car and just kind of listen to this one won't be much video here just still slides so how it all started was I I had this thing for for Teslas and I really really wanted one my my buddy that works there he by my house with one uh a couple years back and I I was blown away by the car it's great power super quiet it looks great high-tech I was like man I I need this thing the only downside to the car was that they're they're 100 grand new and about 70 grand used and and that's far more than I was willing to spend on a car that I drive four miles at the train station so the only real way I could get into one I didn't even lower price point was getting one that needed some kind of work so now a wrecked one wasn't in my cars and I'm not a body guy and the chassis of a Tesla is aluminum so it would have to go to a special body shop that works with aluminum and I didn't want to deal with that anything I couldn't do in my own garage with no frame machine or no lift I didn't want to deal with so I started the hunt for one and I'm browsing Copart which is a Rec car site uh it's a Rec car set insurance companies used to to sell total cars at auction and I see this black Tesla it's just sitting in a field in New Jersey and you know they said it was in a flood and I'm like okay the the pictures that I saw um those are the only things I knew about the car itself but I already had questions I'm like you know is the front grill in the car was it stolen I mean the car slammed a sign of of it having air suspension that's good but how's the air suspension are the bags blown how long the car sit is it saltwater flooded freshwater flooded you know is is half the back seat really gone I just didn't know answers to to any of these questions so the lastly the biggest one for me was how high was the water uh and again I knew nothing about these cars at all I just knew that they were good-look cars pretty fast and Tech overload and and being in the it field in a lever of cars is just what I wanted to get into and I thought it'd make a great daily driver too so the first thing I did was I know with cars is that the first thing I was I head online to find out more about them so in in January of 2016 I posted on a Tesla Motors Club asking hey you know this flooded Model S what do you guys think you know I want to work on this and fix it so I got typical responses like hey what are you doing this a paper weight don't waste your time on this car it's All Electronics where are you going to get the parts from you'll be fighting electrical Gremlins for years even one guy went as far as to say it's no big deal because the electronic boards in the car coded to be waterproof so I'm like okay let's do it and and this was Phil Phil Phil has repaired uh freshwater cars in the past but but you know so his perspective was a lot different from mine his perspective said that hey you know it was a freshwater just Dy it off and drive the car so he gave it his Blessing so I said you know what I'm going to I'm going to try it out uh so he someone said where you going to get parts from and I'm thinking to myself that's a strange thing to say because you know you could just go to the dealership and buy parts like people have been doing for decades now you know you go to the dealer like any other car guy and then you just say hey you know what I want this part for my car but so after some more research I realized that that's actually not the case you can't just walk into a Tesla dealership and ask for parts for your car because you can't actually buy parts from Tesla for a salvage vehicle they don't want people doing half ass repairs to their cars so they make it so that only Tesla certified shops can do this the the reasoning for that is that if you get into an accident with your car it's not going to make headlines because frankly no one cares if you get into an accident or not however in a Tesla it's national news a car that catches fire isn't a big deal unless it's a Tesla and the news they just run with it uh electric cars are unsafe think of the children oh my gosh lithium mining etc etc so there are a few articles about people buying these cars wrecked and spending over 50 Grand only to have Tesla say nope we won't sell you parts to fix your car because your Vin's coming out Salvage and to add to that you know there Parts they won't even sell you even if your Vin's clean you know so even if I had a clean Vin and I walk up to the dealership and I say hey I need a motor or battery or or basically anything in relation to high voltage they they they'll sell you they'll say no because some parts are actually restricted for the cars so after reading up on that for an hour I reached out to my friend that actually works at Tesla I gave him the VIN and he I asked for information on the car it's last service history and he said no I can't do that I'm not allowed to give a service history on vehicles and I'm I'm I swear it's like a damn Fortress of information dealing with these cards everything is one big secret so the interesting thing is that he was allowed to give me he he was allowed to give me the faults that were on the car uh meaning the diagnostic info so I was thankful for that and this is what really got me going he gave me all the faults that the car threw before it died and I'm like okay well how'd that happen you know did they bring the car in after it was dead you know he said no you know the logs are automatically uploaded and the car communicates back and forth with Tesla all the time and he he said the logs show that the car hasn't been active for four months and it had 47 faults before dying the high voltage internal faults in the battery pack only part of the battery pack was communicating before it died it it would he said it would probably run about 65 to 70 grand just to restore the car stay away from it this is a bad idea etc etc etc well he's telling me this via text not knowing that I've already bought the damn car anyways and it was literally on its way from New Jersey so that really shot myself in the foot right there um but anyways yes uh against the advice from Friends financial advisors fam strangers etc etc etc I bought the car anyways and I purchased it for the grand total of $144,000 so 10:30 p.m. uh later that night uh my toe guy calls me and says hey I got the car uh it took him six hours okay 6 hours from New Jersey which should normally take about four he said the car was so heavy his max speed was about 45 miles an hour the whole way he said it was a nightmare to get off the truck the battery was dead the EB brake was stuck on so in order to get it off the trailer I had to use um my engine crane to jack up each individual wheel and put wheel dollies underneath and and after all that I still had to use my truck with the chain to pull the car off the trailer that's how heavy this thing was now not only that but even when I got the car off the trailer the there's a 2in lip actually maybe an inch and a half lip that goes into my garage so after the the tow truck driver and his friend left I had to push the car in the rest of the driveway into the rest of the garage myself so I put a foam piece in between my my uh my pickup truck and the Tesla to push it into the garage what a mess this whole thing was you know so this is a recap here uh in case I'm losing your attention basically long story short uh I found a car sitting in a field it was flooded it didn't work I asked my friend should I do it he said yeah and I started working on it and it was a complete disaster even getting it home in the garage it took hours just to even get it into the garage but so so the next day I'm sitting here with this expensive paper weight in my garage trying to figure out how to even get in the car the car was locked windows were up uh I look up the location of the jumper Post in the car I found out there are two posts in the front for battery power and this is the standard location that people use to jump the car in emergency after running out of power so I ended up hooking up a 12vt battery with jumpers to the front and I heard a loud snap fall like a cloud of smoke it it was just it it was crazy CRA so I I like an idiot I plugged the car in when I wasn't supposed to all I heard was a snap and I smelled smoke and I I said you know what in in hindsight it probably wasn't my best decision uh to add additional electricity to a car that was filled with water so I definitely got ahead of myself on that one but you know what are you going to do uh I ended up grabbing the passenger side glass pulling it down as hard as I could and and and destroying the door window motors in the process but hey at least I got in the car so I'm in the car I threw a dehumidifier in the car overnight uh that I actually ended up wrapping the top of the car up in plastic uh because you don't want to use heat a lot of people said to use heat to dry the car out but you don't want to use heat because heat accelerates mold and I just let the dehumidifier do its thing uh I let it run for about 3 days and I emptied periodically and I was entering sorry I was throwing away tons of water you know I pulled probably a good bucket full of water out of this car every single day that's how much water was still in this car uh so I'm thinking maybe okay maybe it's not that big of a deal maybe it's not salt water maybe it's just rain water from when the the the front trunk was open and water just kind of trickle down there okay so I I open the the front the trunk and I work more up to the air filter which is about a foot above the trunk to see whether or not it's wet and sorry let me be let me let me clarify this now the trunk on a normal car is in the back uh the Tesla has two trunks so when you refer to the front trunk you call it a frunk so I'm going to start referring it to to to the frun as as as as now uh going forward so the frunk I opened up the frunk and to see whether not it's wet and I wanted to see how high the water line was and after about 5 minutes or so I popped it out and it was dry as a bone so this is great news because it told me that the car wasn't fully submerged but however I did pour myself a small cup of water that was at the bottom of the frunk and as luck would have it it was it was salt water so I was already pretty pissed about that you you know salt water is just bad news for for electronics in the car so onto the battery the 12vt battery in this car is hilariously difficult to remove it's just heavy awkwardly placed the the fuse blocks on top the battery was interesting as well cuz I I I knew I had to remove the 12vt battery and cut the first responder Loop uh and this first responder Loop just essentially makes sure that there's no high voltage going to the car it's for First Responders meaning you know firefighters and and and and and other servicemen and women like police and paramedics uh once I cut that Loop it disables all the high voltage of the vehicle uh I cut that because I removed that rather just to make sure I Wouldn't Die working on any high voltage stuff in the car and you know after I did that I felt much better about making an attempt uh to actually fix anything on the vehicle uh I removed the the 12vt battery tested the voltage it was like at 4 and 1/2 volts so it was it was just it was just completely dead I uh I confirmed there's no high voltage in the car I decided hey you know what um let's go on to the interior and the interior SM like the Atlantic Ocean it it was I know the charges underneath the rear seat um were underneath the rear seat but uh the driver's seat reclined all the way and blocked out access to the Chargers so I had to somehow find a way to manually move up the seat uh that would involve me manually jumping the seats and hooking up the 12volt motors to get them to move but unfortunately you know judging by this picture here uh the seat motors were seized you know even hooking up 12vt power they did nothing whatsoever I just got smoke so I figured okay no biggie I'll just remove the nuts that secure the seats down of the chassis and guess what I I only took off the fronts because you know while the car was freaking out while it was submerged the seats automatically slid backwards and shorted out and this really sucked because there's no way to access the nuts to pull up the seat the motors didn't work uh this was my first big hurdle uh one of many actually and I got around this one by using a crowbar to pry up the seat and I took the bottom seat cushion off and wedge my skinny fingers in between the seat rails uh I sprayed some WD40 I gave the seat 10 hard kicks and then I ended up ripping out the axle for the motor that that adjust the seat position uh after that I attached to my drill it took forever cuz I had to do each side individually for both seats but hopefully this is the most difficult thing I had to come across in the car uh and jez let me tell you the condition of these seats reclin Motors they were just so busted up I ended up cutting them out and just throwing them away I mean I mean look at these things they were completely trashed again now one of the things I still wanted to know first and foremost about the car was how high the water level got and and after I checked the filter I peeled back the front passenger carpet and I saw this line smack dab in the middle of the speaker line on the passenger side so this was good so I I I had a reference point at least to know hey everything below this line was toast I had to assume that I had to repair everything below that line uh and if you look at the other picks you could see that the salt in between the wiring harnesses I mean it honestly it looks pretty intimidating and nerve-wracking and and judging by that level I means it it didn't get high as high as a main computer looking at that level but the that computer controls the entire car that main screen the MCU that controls the entire car so if it didn't get wet then I'm in good shape if it did then I'm I'm kind of boned here you know um I'm on a budget so a computer replacement would end me as far as I concerned because remember I have no resources to get a new one you know Tesla won't sell it to me so so I I was a Sitting Duck at this point and when I was building this car looking on eBay the prices were running four grand four grand on eBay so I'm like shoot I really hope this works so I mean I kept working on the car but you know what I I I was just too curious I just I just had to know if this whole project was going to be a waste of time and and whether or not I need to replace that screen so you know I plugged it in the 12vt power source to the front post again waited 5 minutes and you know what that screen turned on so that was the first sign of life that I got in the car and the next stage that I guess gave me the confidence to continue because in a project like this you really need small successes to keep going because as you you work on something like this if you just keep getting bad news over and over and over and over again it's it's things like that that are going to leave you pretty discouraged so you know this is just me yapping for 18 20 minutes here I just want to um give you guys part one of me working on Dolores and you know getting up to the point where I fired up the screen so let take a quick break uh I think this is a pretty good stopping point uh I'm going to upload a part two pretty soon maybe this will be a good little talking Series so you could kind of get a feel for what was going through my mind when I was building this car but either way stay tuned for the next episode and I'll talk to you guys shortly\n"