Nose Injury

[santorin4]

Has anyone injured their plastic nose?? I let my husband drive the car for the first time today and when he pulled her back into the garage (backward) the garage's inside handle scraped the plastic nose guard on the way down.

Is this a replacement injury or can something else be done about this? Do I need to go to Tesla to get this fixed?

Sorry this picture doesn't really show all the fine lines, but for a general idea...

 

[ahurst]

Looks fatal. Possible amputation.

 

[Chris TX]

"Cut off your nose to spite your face..."

It looks like it just needs sanded and repainted. They don't come painted from Tesla.

 

[JPP]

You can try polishing out the acrylic. Might work. FWIW they are available as a replacement nose cone from TM. When I bought 1 a year ago (cracked mine) I paid about $450 (NO PDC/parking sensor holes).

 

[taurusking]

You can try polishing out the acrylic. Might work. FWIW they are available as a replacement nose cone from TM. When I bought 1 a year ago (cracked mine) I paid about $450 (NO PDC/parking sensor holes).

Your kidding right !! $450 for the nose cone? Seems a lot

 

[vitaliy]

I let my husband drive the car for the first time today and ...

Never let a woman drive... oh, wait

 

[Fezzik]

SOmeone stated that prices have been slashed drastically on body parts. Front bumpers is just a few hundred now. You can call. But get some buffing compound..

 

[cgiGuy]

http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/show...-now-66-cheaper-Bumper-Cover-was-1200-now-320

- - - Updated - - -

Or a perfect time to customize. http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/show...Green-MS/page3?p=495066&viewfull=1#post495066

 

[santorin4]

thanks everyone - I'm crossing my fingers that the buffing works first, I'd hate to have to replace it already! Good info though. I suppose to some degree having to put the front plate on will cover some of this as well

 

[caddieo]

Wheeew! Glad it's only the cone and not your nose. I thought you had an injury from a defective airbag or something.

 

[CHG-ON]

I had the same thing happen to me but worse. I measure my space down to the inch because my parking space is pretty short with my workbench in the garage. One day I parked about 2" too far to the right and the hinge of the garage door (between the panels) put two good size gashes in my cone. Perhaps 1/16" deep and quite noticeable. It took about 3 hours of very careful polishing from coarse down to ultra fine, but I got them out. The reason it took me so long was that I could not tell if there was a "finish" layer of plastic over a substrate and I was very afraid of polishing right through. It doesn't look like there is, so next time it should take maybe 45 min to fix.

No need to paint. The thing to watch out for is generating too much heat when polishing. Plastic does not dissipate heat like metal does. It retains it and makes the plastic soft. So you can run the risk of melting or deforming the plastic if you buff at a high speed or leave the polisher in one place too long. Yours looks quite easy to fix. Just take your time and you will be fine. The plastic is much thicker than the paint on the car. So you have lots to work with.

And make the man do it so that he will never make the same mistake again!

 

[santorin4]

"And make the man do it so that he will never make the same mistake again!"

LOL, oh the man is definitely going to be the one to do this! He's also removed that handle from the inside of that garage door and might even be rearranging our parking spots so it's not quite so tight (we have some pretty big cabinets on both the side wall and back wall where I am parking it now - all adding to my parking anxiety as I have to back it in for charging)

Thanks for the tips

 

[mwulff]

if it doesn't buff out, just take it to a paint shop. They can repaint it easily. The good thing is that you can just bring the nosecone. No need to take the whole car.

An added bonus is that you can have it done in whatever color your prefer.

 

[santorin4]

Yeah I'm actually not a fan of the nosecone at all... i wish they had done something different up front... folks are going to hate me for saying this, but the design - just in the front - makes me think of a ford

 

[doctorwho]

Your kidding right !! $450 for the nose cone? Seems a lot

That would be the world's cheapest nose job.

 

[Max*]

Based on other users, the price dropped to the $120-$150 range.

The sad part of owning a Tesla... accidents - Page 4

 

[CHG-ON]

And I said it with love!

"And make the man do it so that he will never make the same mistake again!"

LOL, oh the man is definitely going to be the one to do this! He's also removed that handle from the inside of that garage door and might even be rearranging our parking spots so it's not quite so tight (we have some pretty big cabinets on both the side wall and back wall where I am parking it now - all adding to my parking anxiety as I have to back it in for charging)

Thanks for the tips

Updated:

Yeah, I am not a complete fan of the cone. But I haven't figured out what would be more attractive to me and all the options I have seen out there really don't move the mark for me. Just a slight spin on the original. I'm not the creative type. So I can't offer anything else.