Model 3 body repair guide released; reveals what metals are used where

[KarenRei]

It's all about controlling what crystals form and their structure. Sometimes you want slow cooling, sometimes you want fast cooling, sometimes you want cold working, etc, etc.

Alumium is even more sensitive than steel. The increase in tensile strength (and decrease in ductility) in alumium with increasing temper is huge, literally several times higher yield strength just by how you heat treat it. Which is a problem when it comes to welding, because when you heat the metal when you weld, you lose the temper and it goes back to low strength / ductile O-temper (annealed).

 

[J1mbo]

And of course, as mentioned before, if you have alumium in direct contact with steel, the steel will corrode the alumium - potentially very quickly.

For this reason it is curious to see the inner rear wheel arches are aluminium, but the outer skin is mild steel. This is one part of the car where corrosion is very much an issue.

It is also an area which is more prone to accidents, and we should be grateful for the mild steel outer skin for making it easier to fix small dings, but guessing that anything more than a little ding would need the whole alu inner wheel arch to be replaced rather than repaired... at which point, see corrosion comment above!

 

[KarenRei]

For this reason it is curious to see the inner rear wheel arches are aluminium, but the outer skin is mild steel. This is one part of the car where corrosion is very much an issue.

It is also an area which is more prone to accidents, and we should be grateful for the mild steel outer skin for making it easier to fix small dings, but guessing that anything more than a little ding would need the whole alu inner wheel arch to be replaced rather than repaired... at which point, see corrosion comment above!

It all depends on how it's mounted, of course. If you have teflon or nylon separators between aluminum and steel you get no galvanic corrosion - if everything is done right. But if an accident, wear and tear, or just bad design leads to direct contact... yeah, that's not a good thing! Alumium is a weird beast, in that it lasts almost forever on its own, but almost anything else in contact with anything else it corrodes rapidly. You can't even embed alumium in concrete like you do with steel - that'll corrode it too.

I personally worry more about fatigue. My old Insight has a lot of problems that appear to be from fatigue (including two cracks in the roof running its entire length, on both sides. :Þ)

 

[GregRF]

Interesting that they leave a hole in the bottom for the charger, which seems to now be part of the battery pack as shown in this document.

Also shown in the image is the motor, charge port, A/C compressor and PTC heater.

 

[KarenRei]

Interesting that they leave a hole in the bottom for the charger, which seems to now be part of the battery pack as shown in this document.
View attachment 243246

Also shown in the image is the motor, charge port, A/C compressor and PTC heater.

Curious - two wires from the charge port, so DC +-, and ground can come from the frame. But that would imply that the AC charger would be built into the charge port. Could it actually be that small? That's tiny.

Also: unless there's something else sharing that well behind the rear tail light, there's definitely more room for future expansion (larger chargers, etc).

 

[GregRF]

Curious - two wires from the charge port, so DC +-, and ground can come from the frame. But that would imply that the AC charger would be built into the charge port. Could it actually be that small? That's tiny.

I'd imagine those two wires are either DC+/- or AC+/-, with switching happening inside the charger.

 

[Swampgator]

Very cool manual instructions on battery and removing the rear seat, which requires no tools!

 

[zmarty]

Did anybody save the battery disconnect PDF, it's gone from the website?

 

[a.void]

So the rear quarter panels and rear door frames are mild steel. Lots of rusty cars out there (especially Asian makes) with rusty quarter panels over the rear wheels.
I consider this not good news if i read it correctly.

 

[Swampgator]

Did anybody save the battery disconnect PDF, it's gone from the website?

I wish I had. Never though they would remove it.
It is all about disconnecting the 12v and high voltage system which I would think needs to be publicly available for first responders.

 

[MP3Mike]

Did anybody save the battery disconnect PDF, it's gone from the website?

Yes, does anybody have the body structure PDF?

 

[MP3Mike]

I wish I had. Never though they would remove it.

It looked to me like it was missing a lot of pictures. (Empty space where there should have been a picture.) So maybe it wasn't complete and ready for release yet.

 

[KarenRei]

I thought I did have it - I felt pretty sure Tesla would remove it. But I forgot to tell wget "--no-check-certificate" so it didn't do the download, and my version from my Chrome cache appears to be corrupted :Þ

ED: Oh, wait, the battery disconnect PDF? Yeah, I've got that; it's the metals pdf that I lack:

 

[KarenRei]

Aha, got the materials pdf back

 

[e-FTW]

sounds like a blacksmith term

It just made me thirsty for 1980s fruit “juice”.

 

[e-FTW]

I saved all the files on that page if they are needed.

 

[Wide Awake Games]

My thoughts are, you want the trunk crushing in a bad accident.

Like this?

 

[KarenRei]

Like this?View attachment 244719

Precisely like that! What a well-designed car - look at how completely the trunk folded up, yet how the passenger safety cell remained almost perfectly intact. Gotta love Tesla.

 

[DarthPierce]

Precisely like that! What a well-designed car - look at how completely the trunk folded up, yet how the passenger safety cell remained almost perfectly intact. Gotta love Tesla.

Except that's a Subaru. But excellent safety for them as well.... (After 4 consecutive Subarus, I'll be getting my first american car next year)

 

[Model 3]

Like this?

Except that thing sticking out in the lower left corner