DIY: Improving the coat hooks

[Gauss Guzzler]

Starting a new company is hard, especially a car company. Sometimes little insignificant details like coat hangers need to be entrusted to summer interns. Unfortunately, the intern who designed the Model 3 coat hooks was high off his freakin' ass.

I didn't quite know how to fix this. Ideally I'd take them out and get them on the workbench for closer evaluation but there's just no way - the whole headliner would have to come out. So I figured they're probably glass-filled nylon which should thermoform somewhat easily. I placed a bunch of heat shielding around the area and used the small nozzle of a hot air soldering reflow system to carefully heat just the hook. That didn't really work and mostly just pissed me off, so I got out the Dremel...

As it turns out, it's super easy to just slice off the tip of the hook with a Dremel wheel and then deburr with a scrap of 100-200 grit paper. The abrasive wheel cut cleanly and effortlessly thru the hook and there's no way you'd ever know by sight or feel that it had been altered. It looks and feels perfectly factory, except now the coat hook works!

Time: 5 minutes
Difficulty: 2/10
Tools needed: Fearlessness
Tip: Use both hands on the Dremel with at least one (clean) hand also on the headliner to guarantee stability

Before:

Slicey-slicey:

And now with 5 hangers:

 

[Resist]

I've never had any issue with mine that they needed this mod.

 

[Young Phenom]

They probably weren't intended to hold the extra weight

 

[Gauss Guzzler]

My intent wasn't to increase the capacity, it was just to make the coat hanger functional. I showed a pic with 5 hangers only to prove that I didn't reduce the capacity in the process. But regardless, the hooks are reasonably strong and should hold most anything you can hook on to them.

 

[Resist]

But regardless, the hooks are reasonably strong and should hold most anything you can hook on to them.

Not necessarily. There is a reason why they designed it to limit how many hooks can be loaded onto it.

 

[Unclepaul]

Maybe they have the high hook on to prevent hangers from coming off in the high G cornering limits the Tesla is capable of.