So I finally joined the club. The real Model S club. The minute when I knew I joined with when my door handle broke. Other people, even Model 3 people are very perplexed when I need a stick to open my drivers side door from the back door. But those of us in the club. They look at me and nod. They know.
A door handle broke on my 2013 tesla a car that msrpd for around 90$ Unacceptable in my opinion. They last car I had where the handle broke was an 83 nissan sentra with 250000 miles on it. That one was straight forward. Some bolts. Some harnesses. Keep the harnesses tied down.
Now Tesla.... The door is straightforward enough. But if you take a look at it closely then you'll see that the exterior handle system is severely out of place. It looks... how do I say this politely? Sort of like it was an afterthought and they got an intern to design it. So we've got one door handle assembly and it's a mess. The vast majority of the time it breaks 2 specific microswitches that cost maybe 70$ which is a ridiculous price but it's much cheaper than letting Tesla handle it for $1000 or whatever it is these days to replace the thing. No talk of fixing the thing. Just replace it and charge the customer 10x what is necessary.
So what's wrong with the door handle? Well staring at the thing over the weekend while I was fixing it gave me the answer. The entire door handle assembly has no water ingress protection of any kind, none, zero. Any water that gets in there is soaking the door handle assembly So I would highly recommend no directly blasting your door handles at the car cash.
Next what happens is that wiring harness, not rated for outdoor use, starts corroding. This I've heard is what kills door handles more than anything.
But okay so I got through all that. Reinstalling it, eventually. The thing is like a science experiment. The mount points don't mean anything. You have to adjust it by hand to get it to look right. Then there's the harness to the exterior door handle. I don't know how the door isn't eventually going to destroy this harness.
Yeah, rants over. I'm half way seriously looking into adapting a car handle that wasn't designed by interns.
A door handle broke on my 2013 tesla a car that msrpd for around 90$ Unacceptable in my opinion. They last car I had where the handle broke was an 83 nissan sentra with 250000 miles on it. That one was straight forward. Some bolts. Some harnesses. Keep the harnesses tied down.
Now Tesla.... The door is straightforward enough. But if you take a look at it closely then you'll see that the exterior handle system is severely out of place. It looks... how do I say this politely? Sort of like it was an afterthought and they got an intern to design it. So we've got one door handle assembly and it's a mess. The vast majority of the time it breaks 2 specific microswitches that cost maybe 70$ which is a ridiculous price but it's much cheaper than letting Tesla handle it for $1000 or whatever it is these days to replace the thing. No talk of fixing the thing. Just replace it and charge the customer 10x what is necessary.
So what's wrong with the door handle? Well staring at the thing over the weekend while I was fixing it gave me the answer. The entire door handle assembly has no water ingress protection of any kind, none, zero. Any water that gets in there is soaking the door handle assembly So I would highly recommend no directly blasting your door handles at the car cash.
Next what happens is that wiring harness, not rated for outdoor use, starts corroding. This I've heard is what kills door handles more than anything.
But okay so I got through all that. Reinstalling it, eventually. The thing is like a science experiment. The mount points don't mean anything. You have to adjust it by hand to get it to look right. Then there's the harness to the exterior door handle. I don't know how the door isn't eventually going to destroy this harness.
Yeah, rants over. I'm half way seriously looking into adapting a car handle that wasn't designed by interns.