Measuring the panel gaps upon delivery

[holeydonut]

People obsessing about body panel gaps are missing the whole point about driving a Tesla. If it looks good and performs well the car should be accepted. Elon has mentioned that panel gaps should get better as they introduce more large castings instead of many smaller parts that need to be welded together.
There is no published spec for body parts gaps, just to put them together as well as you can in the time allotted. Some manufacturers are better at this than others. Tesla must deal with a millennial California workforce. Perhaps in Germany they have more precision oriented workers.

I think you’ve pivoted this into some generational or cultural work ethic thing.

Let’s just focus on why panel gap is important. As doors get opened and closed and hatches get slammed, they start to move. At severe levels, this wear causes rain to be pulled into the cabin, air to leak in causing noise and whistles, and also looks terrible. Eventually parts will “kiss” and cause damage.

Automakers not named Tesla shoot for +/- 1mm around a 4 or 5 mm baseline spec when new. This means a door can drift to 2mm and probably be fine.

If the car is new and starts at 1mm that is a problem. Especially if the buyer is expecting to own the car instead of lease.

Automakers will not honor warranty claims on issues caused by gaps over time because they view this as a wear item. Since every automaker not named Tesla ships new cars that are in spec for these “minor things”, millions of normal car buyers don’t care about gaps because they didn’t have to care.

Since Tesla has proven they are fine shipping poorly aligned panels, anyone who buys the car and wants to keep it a while needs to take it upon themselves to get measurements. Paying someone to fix a leak at 20,000 miles is not cool, and is preventable.

So yeah, Tesla’s apathy unfortunately means someone needs to do seemingly idiotic steps to address issues that Tesla should be addressing before the product lands in dealerships. I hope this P3 I’m expecting is “normal” for an average budget automaker…

 

[Quagmire2]

My only question is.... Do you guys who obsessively look over the gaps on the Tesla do the same if it was a BMW, VW, Chevy, etc? Or do you only go over the gaps on the Tesla because of all the talk about Tesla's build quality? If you went to buy a BMW, do you start measuring the gaps or does your perception of BMW make you go, " BMW's are known for well assembled vehicles, so I won't look closely at them"?

Look I am all for holding Tesla accountable for build quality issues. Heck I have discovered some recent issues I didn't spot at delivery that have to come from the factory( which of course I am well past the 24 hours/100 mile cosmetic issue deal), but same time I wasn't going to pretend to be Sandy Munro and pull out a tool to measure the gaps for consistency. I went and looked at the common areas of alignment issues and they looked fine to my eye and relatively consistent( I say relatively because again I didn't have a tool to measure consistency).

It's one thing to make sure your vehicle is well built, but sometimes I think people can take that too far.

 

[holeydonut]

I came out of automotive… I look at panel gaps on all my cars. I also look at the flushness of cutlines and head/tail lamps. Automotive assembly is fascinating; and at the same time it’s amazing how all automakers not named Tesla have figured out how to ship new cars with good finished alignment.

Typically eyeball is enough, and I’ve only had one instance of asking the dealer to right a door on a Honda before I drove it away.

But Tesla’s seem to have severe issues that they don’t remedy. This is why I feel it is necessary to document the issue that they refused a fix, that way if the issue worsens over time I can say it was known at the time of delivery and they did not repair.

As I mentioned, having rain leak into a car through poorly aligned seals is the customers problem as the vehicle ages. Getting properly aligned panels when new is the automaker’s responsibility.

I think you all are too quick to make excuses about poor fit and finish. If I buy a new Chevy, it should have 4mm baseline +/- 1mm gaps. Same goes for a Tesla. Giving them a free pass is your prerogative, but it’s not mine since I have to live with my car for a while.

You’re right, the average customer of an average non-Tesla doesn’t need a Sandy Monroe tool. The automaker has done the work to QA the thing and it’s rare to see something way off spec in a showroom.

 

[Quagmire2]

I came out of automotive… I look at panel gaps on all my cars. Typically eyeball is enough, and I’ve only had one instance of asking the dealer to right a door on a Honda before I drove it away.

But Tesla’s seem to have severe issues that they don’t remedy. This is why I feel it is necessary to document the issue that they refused a fix, that way if the issue worsens over time I can say it was known at the time of delivery and they did not repair.

As I mentioned, having rain leak into a car through poorly aligned seals is the customers problem as the vehicle ages. Getting properly aligned panels when new is the automaker’s responsibility.

I think you all are too quick to make excuses about poor fit and finish. If I buy a new Chevy, it should have 4mm baseline +/- 1mm gaps. Same goes for a Tesla. Giving them a free pass is your prerogative, but it’s not mine since I have to live with my car for a while.

I didn’t make any excuses for Tesla. If the build is shoddy, they need to be called out. But I think there is a difference between checking for poor build quality and going overboard. I think going out and measuring the exact gap on each panel crosses into overboard unless the gap fails the eye test. But then again you don’t need to measure it either to make a complaint if it fails the eye test. A misaligned door is a misaligned door. If they say it is within spec, then reject the car. Don’t accept delivery until you get written acknowledgment that the issue you brought up is out of spec and will be fixed. If they refuse to do that, again refuse the car.

 

[holeydonut]

I didn’t make any excuses for Tesla. If the build is shoddy, they need to be called out. But I think there is a difference between checking for poor build quality and going overboard. I think going out and measuring the exact gap on each panel crosses into overboard unless the gap fails the eye test. But then again you don’t need to measure it either to make a complaint if it fails the eye test. A misaligned door is a misaligned door. If they say it is within spec, then reject the car. Don’t accept delivery until you get written acknowledgment that the issue you brought up is out of spec and will be fixed. If they refuse to do that, again refuse the car.

Ok let’s level set here…

Most model 3 ‘s I’ve seen are for the most part fine. The slight variation of gap is within whatever tolerance a reasonable buyer of any automobile should be happy with. If my car is hopefully in this bucket then there is no need to measure anything.

My concern is that for a few owners, they get cars that clearly have a panel that is wrong. And when they tell Tesla about the issue they refuse to fix it. In this instance I’m saying the owner shouldn’t succumb to internet peer pressure about being “too picky”. They should get the car fixed by Tesla before delivery.

If Tesla won’t fix, the owner should take a measurement and document. Because this misalignment is likely going to worsen over time, and being so far out of tolerance when new means problems for the owner later.

It is for this smaller population of poorly constructed vehicles that Tesla won’t fix that I am talking about that would benefit from a measurement.

If the car looks good, measurements would still be nice to see so a proud owner can say “hey look, this car is built well”. But you’re all right, it’s not normal to need measurements because the automaker usually does their job correctly to the extent people don’t complain about gaps or flushness.

 

[Quagmire2]

Ok let’s level set here…

Most model 3 ‘s I’ve seen are for the most part fine. The slight variation of gap is within whatever tolerance a reasonable buyer of any automobile should be happy with. If my car is hopefully in this bucket then there is no need to measure anything.

My concern is that for a few owners, they get cars that clearly have a panel that is wrong. And when they tell Tesla about the issue they refuse to fix it. In this instance I’m saying the owner shouldn’t succumb to internet peer pressure about being “too picky”. They should get the car fixed by Tesla before delivery.

If Tesla won’t fix, the owner should take a measurement and document. Because this misalignment is likely going to worsen over time, and being so far out of tolerance when new means problems for the owner later.

It is for this smaller population of poorly constructed vehicles that Tesla won’t fix that I am talking about that would benefit from a measurement.

If the car looks good, measurements would still be nice to see so a proud owner can say “hey look, this car is built well”. But you’re all right, it’s not normal to need measurements because the automaker usually does their job correctly to the extent people don’t complain about gaps or flushness.

If Tesla doesn’t want to fix before delivery claiming within spec, but clearly an issue, the vehicle should be rejected. In no way am I trying to say people should accept a vehicle if the issues won’t be resolved to their satisfaction. I wouldn’t believe a delivery agent telling me oh they will fix it, accept delivery, only to come in again and tell me it is within spec.

I’m mostly commenting on the fact the issue with panel gaps regarding Tesla’s do have people extremely wound up over in terms of them being hyper vigilant over, worried about it, and asking on how to measure it, etc. Back in June, Reddit was filled with people going is this gap fine, is this missing trim normal( the trim that is now removed to make room for the powered trunk), etc. Like I said, if the car is put together poorly, Tesla does deserve to be called out. But the focus on panel gaps with Tesla’s have actually got people to notice poor panel gaps on their previous or other vehicles in their garage that they clearly didn’t even care to look for when taking delivery of them. Hence my comment on if people would go to the lengths that they do with Tesla’s with a BMW. People only care about gaps on a Tesla because of the focus on it. Otherwise they wouldn’t care and check on other vehicles.

 

[holeydonut]

If Tesla doesn’t want to fix before delivery claiming within spec, but clearly an issue, the vehicle should be rejected. In no way am I trying to say people should accept a vehicle if the issues won’t be resolved to their satisfaction. I wouldn’t believe a delivery agent telling me oh they will fix it, accept delivery, come in again and tell me it is within spec.

I’m mostly commenting on the fact the issue with panel gaps regarding Tesla’s do have people extremely wound up over in terms of them being hyper vigilant over, worried about it, and asking on how to measure it, etc. Back in June, Reddit was filled with people going is this gap fine, is this missing trim normal( the trim that is now removed to make room for the powered trunk), etc. Like I said, if the car is put together poorly, Tesla does deserve to be called out. But the focus on panel gaps with Tesla’s have actually got people to notice poor panel gaps on their previous or other vehicles in their garage that they clearly didn’t even care to look for when taking delivery of them. Hence my comment on if people would go to the lengths that they do with Tesla’s with a BMW. People only care about gaps on a Tesla because of the focus on it. Otherwise they wouldn’t care and check on other vehicles.

Im not sure about the shorts and fanboi stuff.

But going by my own experience my neighbor had a terrible experience trying to get Tesla to address door alignment on his X. His door keeps jamming where the auto-open behaves funny. But Tesla now says it’s his problem.

My cousin had the worst interior gaps I’ve ever seen on headliners and Tesla told him to take a hike when he asked about it.

If Tesla has this attitude then I think preparing for some measurements is unfortunately warranted (but absurd)

I’m still befuddled why people make excuses so quickly for Tesla saying it’s not that big of a deal… maybe the owner of a good car doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal. But if the car has fit and finish problems, I would want people to get those fixed.

 

[TBrownTX]

I’m still befuddled why people make excuses so quickly for Tesla saying it’s not that big of a deal… maybe the owner of a good car doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal. But if the car has fit and finish problems, I would want people to get those fixed.

Because people will wait in line for literally months to get one, regardless. So at least for the time being, it’s not a big deal to Tesla anyways.

Tim

 

[Quagmire2]

Because people will wait in line for literally months to get one, regardless. So at least for the time being, it’s not a big deal to Tesla anyways.

Tim

Can't wait until supply starts to outstrip demand and competition picks up. This attitude is not a sustainable one.

 

[Air Wind]

My honest opinion (and you’re not going to like it …) — if you show up and start pulling out calipers, you’re someone who’s looking to create problems.

You’re buying a run-of-the-mill commodity car here. If something looks egregiously off to your eyeball, sure, say something. Otherwise, get behind the wheel and drive the damn thing. First time someone at Target opens their door into you and puts a ding in the car, none of that crap matters anymore. Being the Paint & Panel Police won’t matter.

Donate the calipers to a high school science class.

Unfortunately, I fully agree on the point about "someone at Target opens their door into you" part. Was very careful with my 528xi for 2 weeks until I spotted 2 big dings and was furious and helpless, till I decided to move on... .. After 100K miles. those dings say hi each time i approach the car. Hope to not have that with my new baby MS.... Cant wait.....

 

[dmurphy]

I’m seeking going to document any identified gaps

See, I nailed it. You started this thread purportedly “to ask a question” — but really, your mind is made up and you’re just here to reassure yourself.

Enjoy playing with your protractor and slide rule — I’ll be over here driving the @**@ out of my pieces of poorly assembled, gaptooth junk.

 

[TBrownTX]

Enjoy playing with your protractor and slide rule — I’ll be over here driving the @**@ out of my pieces of poorly assembled, gaptooth junk.

Amen brother, Amen!

Tim

 

[holeydonut]

See, I nailed it. You started this thread purportedly “to ask a question” — but really, your mind is made up and you’re just here to reassure yourself.

Enjoy playing with your protractor and slide rule — I’ll be over here driving the @**@ out of my pieces of poorly assembled, gaptooth junk.

View attachment 681608

The passenger side rear door of your car looks off where the door aligns with the C pillar. Maybe someone in your household hung on the door? And your mudflap looks funny.

 

[dmurphy]

The passenger side rear door of your car looks off where the door aligns with the C pillar. Maybe someone in your household hung on the door? And your mudflap looks funny.

Thank you.

 

[holeydonut]

Resurrecting my thread...

I'm sure the "just ignore the gaps" folks will come back and talk about how I suck. But for those who is actually interested in marveling at the tech alongside also being really happy with the build... here's what I did regarding the gap and flushness for the vehicle that was just dropped off in my driveway.

I used to work in automotive in Detroit (like in HQ, not at a plant). I know they all now use cutting edge laser tools today.

GapGun® Pro2 - Third Dimension

GapGun, leading hand-held laser measurement tool for quality control. Measure gap and flush, radius, edge break, countersink, scratch + more.

www.third.com

Gap and Flush System a Good Fit for Chrysler Assembly Plant

While a crooked painting in your office would certainly catch your notice, a car door askew by less than a millimeter probably wouldn’t. And yet for

www.visionspectra-digital.com

Unfortunately a hand held gapgun that can measure in 3D space is like... super expensive. However, Just a few decades ago, it was mostly eyeballs and cheap feeler gages. I hit up one of my old friends who sent me one of the old-school tools they used in the 90s to do batch tests on gaps and flushness. It's a "No Mar flushness and gap gage" that kind of looks like the following. I have no clue how a normal person is supposed to get this, but some of the old timers had these in their desks I guess. You can see how this tool works... and I'm 99% sure that Munro guy on Youtube uses this since he's old-school from Ford.

The symmetrical tapered end measures distance as you push it into a gap. The side that looks like a deck of mis-aligned playing cards measures flushness across two planes that are near each other. Yes, this tool is crude, and doesn't take into account curvature well. But you know what; it's the best I can get.

On the exterior:
I measured every stupid-gap around my car. It turns out, just like many have expressed on TMC ... my P3 was assembled pretty well. The exterior gaps and flushness were really good on my Model 3. There was only 1 gap that I found that 5.0 mm... the rest of the gaps were 3mm to 4mm. Cutlines for parts that don't move (eg fascias) were all less than 1mm. This all means the car's gaps and cutlines are superb.

The only somewhat exterior problem area was the headlight assembly. The Model 3 has a crazy swooping headlight assembly that I wager is really tough to align properly. On my car the headlights are off-flush by like 2mm. But I think trying to get this right would need a much slower line speed and a ton of trial and error since it doesn't appear there's any way a worker (or robot) could use spacers to get this right as a car flies down the line. Probably not worth submitting as an issue.

Aside from the headlights, the exterior flushness was also very good... each door was 0.5mm flush along the beltline, and brake lights and door handles were uniform throughout. Overall this car has some superb exterior fit and finish.


On the interior:
The cross-car gap between the IP and the front driver door and front passenger door is usually the main thing to check in any car. This P3 is off 3mm... with the driver side gap being around 5mm while the passenger side is 2mm. This is probably "within spec" for Tesla, but would be off spec for pretty much any other major automaker producing cars today. It's definitely not fixable without a major amount of work, and I'm not going to press Tesla for anything.


All I can say is... the cars are supposed to be built well. If yours isn't, I think it's worthwhile to make sure things that are way off spec are fixed. Personally, if I had a gap that was way off (or causing two moving parts to "kiss"), I'd ask Tesla to fix it. Luckily I didn't have that problem for gaps.

But, what I am going to submit is a ticket to them for marring in the paint that I couldn't remove with a claybar... I want to see if they'll take a shot at it before I go for it with a polisher. And the interior is so full of black fingerprints and smudges. Like wtf... Elon needs to let these folks get new gloves every once in a while...

 

[cairn]

Resurrecting my thread...

I'm sure the "just ignore the gaps" folks will come back and talk about how I suck. But for those who is actually interested in marveling at the tech alongside also being really happy with the build... here's what I did regarding the gap and flushness for the vehicle that was just dropped off in my driveway.

I used to work in automotive in Detroit (like in HQ, not at a plant). I know they all now use cutting edge laser tools today.

GapGun® Pro2 - Third Dimension

GapGun, leading hand-held laser measurement tool for quality control. Measure gap and flush, radius, edge break, countersink, scratch + more.

www.third.com

Gap and Flush System a Good Fit for Chrysler Assembly Plant

While a crooked painting in your office would certainly catch your notice, a car door askew by less than a millimeter probably wouldn’t. And yet for

www.visionspectra-digital.com

Unfortunately a hand held gapgun that can measure in 3D space is like... super expensive. However, Just a few decades ago, it was mostly eyeballs and cheap feeler gages. I hit up one of my old friends who sent me one of the old-school tools they used in the 90s to do batch tests on gaps and flushness. It's a "No Mar flushness and gap gage" that kind of looks like the following. I have no clue how a normal person is supposed to get this, but some of the old timers had these in their desks I guess. You can see how this tool works... and I'm 99% sure that Munro guy on Youtube uses this since he's old-school from Ford.

The symmetrical tapered end measures distance as you push it into a gap. The side that looks like a deck of mis-aligned playing cards measures flushness across two planes that are near each other. Yes, this tool is crude, and doesn't take into account curvature well. But you know what; it's the best I can get.
View attachment 696762


On the exterior:
I measured every stupid-gap around my car. It turns out, just like many have expressed on TMC ... my P3 was assembled pretty well. The exterior gaps and flushness were really good on my Model 3. There was only 1 gap that I found that 5.0 mm... the rest of the gaps were 3mm to 4mm. Cutlines for parts that don't move (eg fascias) were all less than 1mm. This all means the car's gaps and cutlines are superb.

The only somewhat exterior problem area was the headlight assembly. The Model 3 has a crazy swooping headlight assembly that I wager is really tough to align properly. On my car the headlights are off-flush by like 2mm. But I think trying to get this right would need a much slower line speed and a ton of trial and error since it doesn't appear there's any way a worker (or robot) could use spacers to get this right as a car flies down the line. Probably not worth submitting as an issue.

Aside from the headlights, the exterior flushness was also very good... each door was 0.5mm flush along the beltline, and brake lights and door handles were uniform throughout. Overall this car has some superb exterior fit and finish.


On the interior:
The cross-car gap between the IP and the front driver door and front passenger door is usually the main thing to check in any car. This P3 is off 3mm... with the driver side gap being around 5mm while the passenger side is 2mm. This is probably "within spec" for Tesla, but would be off spec for pretty much any other major automaker producing cars today. It's definitely not fixable without a major amount of work, and I'm not going to press Tesla for anything.


All I can say is... the cars are supposed to be built well. If yours isn't, I think it's worthwhile to make sure things that are way off spec are fixed. Personally, if I had a gap that was way off (or causing two moving parts to "kiss"), I'd ask Tesla to fix it. Luckily I didn't have that problem for gaps.

But, what I am going to submit is a ticket to them for marring in the paint that I couldn't remove with a claybar... I want to see if they'll take a shot at it before I go for it with a polisher. And the interior is so full of black fingerprints and smudges. Like wtf... Elon needs to let these folks get new gloves every once in a while...

Thanks for the insights. I am also wanting to measure panel gaps and my future M3. I was going to bring my calipers but knew they wouldn't be great for the job. I looked for that taper gauge you posted a picture of but couldn't find it anywhere for purchase. I did however find a different gauge hat only measures gaps and not flushness. It seems most of the gap measuring tools are made of stainless steel which could scratch paint. The only plastic one i could find is the one below, we will see how accurate it is.

https://www.amazon.com/BESPORTBLE-Taper-Alignment-Vehicle-Measuring/dp/B084YTTDD2/

 

[holeydonut]

Thanks for the insights. I am also wanting to measure panel gaps and my future M3. I was going to bring my calipers but knew they wouldn't be great for the job. I looked for that taper gauge you posted a picture of but couldn't find it anywhere for purchase. I did however find a different gauge hat only measures gaps and not flushness. It seems most of the gap measuring tools are made of stainless steel which could scratch paint. The only plastic one i could find is the one below, we will see how accurate it is.

https://www.amazon.com/BESPORTBLE-Taper-Alignment-Vehicle-Measuring/dp/B084YTTDD2/

Yeah that's the gap gage I referred to in my original post that just didn't seem like a good option since the tick marks seemed kind of odd and it couldn't measure flushness. But I guess it's the only option lol. There are some 2 to 6mm plastic feeler gages on eBay, but those are super expensive as well.

I just hope Tesla has turned the corner on shipping late 80's level of gap/flushness "spec". When is the EDD for your M3? Hope all goes well!

 

[dmurphy]

 

[cairn]

Yeah that's the gap gage I referred to in my original post that just didn't seem like a good option since the tick marks seemed kind of odd and it couldn't measure flushness. But I guess it's the only option lol. There are some 2 to 6mm plastic feeler gages on eBay, but those are super expensive as well.

I just hope Tesla has turned the corner on shipping late 80's level of gap/flushness "spec". When is the EDD for your M3? Hope all goes well!

I'll measure the accuracy of that gauge when it arrives. Not a big loss for $7 of it's terrible.

My edd is Sept 19-30. I've heard panel gaps worsen near end of quarter, hopefully not true of my vehicle (and not true in general).

 

[dmurphy]

Alright, so it seems I need to be a jackass back against the jackasses on this forum because that's what ya'll like to do.

Why don't you go into the MPG threads and tell people who obsess about MPG are misguided.

Why don't you go into the threads about cornering dampeners and tell them their concerns about ride height and polar moment of inertia are just lame obsessions.

Why don't you go into the threads about why Jersey sucks and ... well those threads probably don't exist here.

You guys who don't care about panel gaps should just STFU and avoid threads you don't care about. Your contributions are not productive, they're just means for you all to crap on threads where people want to have a conversation about topics that they care about. Stop being jerks about it and go find some stuff you do care about. Instead of dumping on topics you don't care about.

Showing up in a delivery center with a set of calipers or a feeler gauge just screams “I’m going to be THAT guy …” to everyone at the delivery center.

You do you, but don’t expect much cooperation from anyone at the SC …. Well, or me.