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OEM TESLA roof racks Crack Glass
- Thread starter ECCtechguy
- Start date
Daniel in SD
(supervised)
Thanks for sharing the article on torque vs tension, good information. I take my racks on and off between uses because I am a windsurfer and it may be days or weeks between sailing sessions and I don't want the unnecessary wind drag. My solution for tightening is to use minimum hand tightening till the assembly doesn't move fore or aft. Having achieved that level of securing I don't believe the wind forces can cause the clamp to dislodge. Six trips at highway speeds have confirmed my expectations.
One word of caution I would share. The first time I put my rack on was under exposed sunlight and it was relatively easy to see the alignment marks. The second time I put the racks on was in my garage in low light and what appeared to me to be the alignment mark was some other small grey mark about 1.5" in back of the actual mark. The fore and aft slop in the bracket movement was the same so I thought I was in proper position. Hand tightening in that position cracks the glass.
Tint place I used has done 800+ Model 3's. They have gen1 and gen2 rear glass they purchased from Tesla which they use to size and cut the film (so they don't have to do it on your car). They said at some point tesla switched to gen2 which is thicker and tougher.
640k
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CharleyBC
Active Member
Impressive!!
I have to ask. Your hitch in picture #1 appears to end in a ball. How does the bike rack attach to that? I would have expected if it's on a ball, that the weight of the bikes would make it just rotate down and drag on the ground. What makes it stay up?
Buy the hitch adaptor from the USA that comes without the ball & hence is like a ‘2 piece lego’ system
I work with road bikes a lot and am very familiar with the feel of single-digit torque values. 9Nm is pretty tight and hard to do by hand, especially with a nut.
I ended up hand-tightening mine, intending to finish off with a torque wrench, but I started hearing popping noises almost immediately. I'd say I managed about 4Nm and just couldn't go further. Remember, to utilize the locking mechanism, the hole on the side of the nut needs to align with the pin. I would need to commit another full 360 turn. That might get me to 9Nm, but no way I was going to chance it, given the noises. I shook my rack after install and it was solid. I keep it locked so there's no way the nut can self-loosen.
All the posts talking about torque wrench quality is completely irrelevant if it's possible to crack the glass at 5Nm.
@Musclez Is it just the angle of the picture or does the crack line up with the center of the clip? Isn't the center of the clip supposed to line up with the arrow?
I was reading through this as I finally placed my order for the tesla roof rack in preparation for ski season. It looks to me like it was possibly installation error That caused the glass to break. Zooming in on the picture it looks like the arrow of the protective sticker(and center of the hook when installed)is not lined up with the arrow in the glass. It looks to be lined up with the line behind the arrow. I checked my car and it looks like the arrow is further up where I marked the OP’s picture. If you look close you can see a faint v and behind it where he has the sticker centered is a faint line. The arrow in the glass is where the middle of the metal mounting tab is. And is where the hook is supposed to be centered to. Second pic is what I’m referring too.
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it looks like the OP didn’t line up the hooks with the arrow in the glass. Did yours crack in the front or rear? Are you 100% confident it was properly aligned with the arrow? The rears seem to have better markings as the arrow is in between two lines...where as the front mounting point only has the arrow and then a line behind it.
StealthP3D
Well-Known Member
We have a winner! Except it wasn't "possibly" installation error, it *was* installation error. The arrows (^) on the protective vinyl *must* be lined up with the "^" mark etched into the glass. You really should have good light when doing this because the arrows are not very large and require a viewing angle that makes them stand out.
A lot of us have installed the rack easily with no issues. While I have an accurate torque wrench that I used, it's not really necessary if you have a reasonable level of mechanical competence. The reason I say this is the retainers are welded to the steel frame which is very strong and tightening the bolt draws the rubber pad on the crossbars onto the top surface of the metal roof frame very close to the retainer. So over-tightening can't deform anything enough to cause the glass to break. The way the glass could break through over-tightening is if the tightening draws the rubber pads all the way down to the glass. This can be checked visually. All of mine, tightened to spec, did not even touch the glass. Just check visually when tightening to ensure the rubber pad doesn't contact the glass. The torque spec is not very high because the bolt is designed in such a way that it's captive (rotationally) once installed and cannot rotate or back out when the rack is installed. In other words, the bolt does not rely on tension to keep it from backing out once the rack install is completed.
I lined everything up correctly, used a 6nm torsion wrench.
Glass cracked while driving with a roof box. Tesla service center said it was because of my PPF, had to pay $1450 to fix it.
Bonus: Had to wait 4 months before the new roof arrived. When I delivered my car they forgot to replace it, I came back a few days later after getting confirmation that it was ready to pick up, found the car without a new roof. I waited for 4 hours while they replaced it, 100km away from home/work, and while they fixed it they managed to tear a huge gash in my steering wheel. Getting a new steering wheel in 2.5 weeks.
Glass cracked while driving with a roof box. Tesla service center said it was because of my PPF, had to pay $1450 to fix it.
Bonus: Had to wait 4 months before the new roof arrived. When I delivered my car they forgot to replace it, I came back a few days later after getting confirmation that it was ready to pick up, found the car without a new roof. I waited for 4 hours while they replaced it, 100km away from home/work, and while they fixed it they managed to tear a huge gash in my steering wheel. Getting a new steering wheel in 2.5 weeks.
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