Glove box flops open hard

[CharleyBC]

Our Model 3 just passed its fifth birthday. And just recently, when the glove box opens, it now opens with a bang. That is, it flops open hard and fast, such that the door actually bounces a few times before coming to rest. It used to open gently. Clearly there's some sort of damping system that lets it open smoothly, instead of crashing open, as ours now does. Some spring or hydraulic thingy or whatever. So my hope is that it has simply come detached from the damping thing.

I poked around this morning to try to figure out how it works, but couldn't see much of interest. I looked for a way to remove the door to see what's behind it, but no luck.

Does anyone recognize this problem? Or at least, any clues on disassembly to get behind it? The only sort of promising thing I found is on the underside of the horizontal panel below the glove box (above the passenger's foot well) there are six or eight snaps that probably hold that panel in place.

Any wisdom on disassembly, diagnosis or repair would be most welcome!

 

[Gumball]

The damper is attached to the glove box with a small white plastic thingy. It is a known problem that the thingy gets loose, so the damper no longer does it’s job of damping. The glovebox have to be taken loose to fix it, fairly easy job, if the white plastic thingy is still in there somewhere or on the floor, that is. Tesla’s solution is to replace the glovebox completely.

 

[CharleyBC]

The damper is attached to the glove box with a small white plastic thingy. It is a known problem that the thingy gets loose, so the damper no longer does it’s job of damping. The glovebox have to be taken loose to fix it, fairly easy job, if the white plastic thingy is still in there somewhere or on the floor, that is. Tesla’s solution is to replace the glovebox completely.

Thanks very much. That confirms my guessing. Do you have any advice on taking things apart to hunt for said white plastic thingy? Youtube video?

 

[stopcrazypp]

Thanks very much. That confirms my guessing. Do you have any advice on taking things apart to hunt for said white plastic thingy? Youtube video?

Here's a quick and dirty fix:

To officially fix with the original parts, might need further disassembly of the glove box.

The second post in this thread documents how the original white pin looks like and how they were able to find it and reattach it:
glove box dropping, not slow opening

If you can't find it, you can use the fix in the previous video.