Lon12
Member
No.
Actually hammered the bumper with my fist once I noticed all the dirt collected in there.
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Body shop finds Model 3's gathering large amounts of dirt and sand due to improper drainag
- Thread starter PatP
- Start date
Actually hammered the bumper with my fist once I noticed all the dirt collected in there.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Honestly this doesn't seem like that big a deal to me. Admittedly, I'm in California and not running on roads that are ever sanded/gritted. I completely believe you could end up with 30 pounds of sand up in there though if you drove on some muddy roads (I think 30 pounds would be an exceptional case).
But you're buying a near-luxury car with very little ground clearance on slushy gritted roads with a known weakness in this area. The slush accumulates in the diffuser via wheel wells and from plowing slush, melts, and dirt starts piling up. So to me it just seems like part of standard car cleaning to take care of this. If you live in a place with salted/gritted roads, you have to be on top of cleaning out all this junk on any car, I would think. I realize that’s a big ask for an expensive new car.
In any case, it's fairly easy to rinse out this dirt. You can remove 3-5 bolts and drop down the front section of the diffuser. Then you'll have the angle to get a hose up in there and rinse out the junk. You can also just run water from on top of the trunk and it naturally flows into the rear diffuser panel, and if you've remove the bolts, the dirty water will just flow out. You can rinse out the mid aero performance cover as well and make sure the drain holes are clear while you're at it. To some extent you may be able to rinse some dirt out by hosing down around the tail lights and trunk lid during a wash since a lot of that water ends up in the diffuser anyway. So you might get some rinsing action. Or not. You may also be able to get a hose in directly.
Should you have to do this on a car? I guess it's debatable. After I off-roaded my STi (which was pretty rare), I spent a lot of time spraying out the wheel wells and the engine undercover to get all the dirt & mud removed. It didn't have a natural place where a lot of dirt would accumulate like the Model 3 though.
To me, the bigger issue is whether or not the welds on the rear brackets for the rearmost bumper cover bolts fail. Those should never fail and I think are a major factor in losing a rear bumper cover. The extra weight of dirt is going to put more strain on those welds and bolts, but 30 additional pounds distributed amongst the ~7 bolt attachment points for the rear bumper cover & diffuser shouldn't cause failure. But if those obvious weld points fail...
Hopefully there’s something they can do to avoid the buildup, just seems like to some extent there might be an aero compromise. We’ll see. Must be something they can come up with.
But you're buying a near-luxury car with very little ground clearance on slushy gritted roads with a known weakness in this area. The slush accumulates in the diffuser via wheel wells and from plowing slush, melts, and dirt starts piling up. So to me it just seems like part of standard car cleaning to take care of this. If you live in a place with salted/gritted roads, you have to be on top of cleaning out all this junk on any car, I would think. I realize that’s a big ask for an expensive new car.
In any case, it's fairly easy to rinse out this dirt. You can remove 3-5 bolts and drop down the front section of the diffuser. Then you'll have the angle to get a hose up in there and rinse out the junk. You can also just run water from on top of the trunk and it naturally flows into the rear diffuser panel, and if you've remove the bolts, the dirty water will just flow out. You can rinse out the mid aero performance cover as well and make sure the drain holes are clear while you're at it. To some extent you may be able to rinse some dirt out by hosing down around the tail lights and trunk lid during a wash since a lot of that water ends up in the diffuser anyway. So you might get some rinsing action. Or not. You may also be able to get a hose in directly.
Should you have to do this on a car? I guess it's debatable. After I off-roaded my STi (which was pretty rare), I spent a lot of time spraying out the wheel wells and the engine undercover to get all the dirt & mud removed. It didn't have a natural place where a lot of dirt would accumulate like the Model 3 though.
To me, the bigger issue is whether or not the welds on the rear brackets for the rearmost bumper cover bolts fail. Those should never fail and I think are a major factor in losing a rear bumper cover. The extra weight of dirt is going to put more strain on those welds and bolts, but 30 additional pounds distributed amongst the ~7 bolt attachment points for the rear bumper cover & diffuser shouldn't cause failure. But if those obvious weld points fail...
Hopefully there’s something they can do to avoid the buildup, just seems like to some extent there might be an aero compromise. We’ll see. Must be something they can come up with.
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Lasttoy
Active Member
I just had fight with service center, they said under panel was installed wrong. I told service manager to ck records, they installed the panel last time i was there. She would not honor her own records. My motor failed. She tried to make me pay for cable that was ruined as a result of their installation. They gave me the old panel. Just a big flat rubber panel. I feel i was ripped off. The panel keeps street dirt from underside.
