Okay spoiler alert! I'm going to tell you about how I noticed the carbon spoiler
on our Tesla Model 3 Performance was started to come detached and how I fixed it.
So stay tuned!
Hi John here. A confession right off the bat.
I'd already started to repair the spoiler on the Tesla then my wife Jill
said 'Ooh that would be a good video for your channel'
which she was a 100% right about. But then I've already completed
almost all of the tasks. Thankfully I did take lots of photos as I was doing it
and a few video clips. So I'm going to use those to tell the story. I'm sure
it will be fine. Anyway, when washing the car about six or so weeks ago I noticed
that one side of the carbon spoiler on the boot lid had a bit of play on it. And
I could see daylight through it where it was supposed to fit sort of nice and snugly
against the bodywork of the boot lid. And when I pushed it I could feel some
movement. It wasn't a great amount of movement, but it was on the last sort of
4" - 6" of the spoiler on the passenger side at the very tip where
the spoiler narrows. And when I pressed on it I could see and feel quite a bit
of flexing and there was a fairly large gap. I guess about an eighth of an inch,
so 3 - 4 mm, of play and when I pressed against it and it
pushed back into the bodywork of the car. And I knew then it wasn't gonna fix
itself and it was only going to get worse over time. And it would need to be
dealt with at some point in the future. Fast forward to a few days ago and over
the past month it's been really really hot here in the UK, which is a bit of a
shock in itself. Sunshine day after day and as a result the car sits on the
driveway and therefore heats up during the course of the day and this time of
the year the sun hits the driveway for the majority of the day, from sun rise to
sunset. And that's fine for the interior of the car
as I've got the overheat protection option turned on
which ensures the interior doesn't get over 40 degrees or 104 Fahrenheit. But
the outside paint work goes very very hot and certainly very hot to touch by the
end of the day. And a couple of days ago one late afternoon I had another look at
the spoiler and noticed there was an even more movement along its length.
The movement had sort of expanded I guess and it was almost halfway along the
entire length of the spoiler. We've been out of the car earlier that day and I
guess that may have helped it lose some of its adhesion. You know the combined
wind buffeting, and bumpy roads, general jar and knocks and bumps from driving.
But I also think it's actually very easy to use the spoiler as a handle when
you're shutting the boot. Even though there's an internal pull handle in the
boot lid, there's one on either side. It's quite tricky to get the force and momentum
correct, to close the boot without... by just using that pull
handle. And I often find I have to start with a pull handle and then adjust my
hand position to push against the number plate, to continue with the closing to
completely close the boot. And it's actually all too easy just to put your
hand on top of the spoiler and pull the boot lid down to close it. And whilst
this method is effective in closing the boot lid it adds quite a considerable
strain to the spoiler and its fixings. And I'm sure it causes flexing or
weakening of the seal between the boot lid and the spoiler. That's something
we've both taken on board, Jill and myself and adjusted our boot closing
habits as a result. Anyway back to the partially hanging off spoiler. I decided
the best course of action was to remove the spoiler completely. Because I didn't
really want it coming off whilst driving and thereby potentially losing it and
having to buy another one. No idea how much they cost but I'm sure there'll be
a pretty penny as they're carbon fibre. I didn't want it start flapping
around and damaging the paintwork as it worked loose when I was
driving. Or even worse perhaps it came off altogether and caused an accident
spearing a cyclist through the heart,
just too much paperwork for that sort of thing. So I thought the best course of
action was to get it sorted. Thinking, okay well what's the best thing to do to
remove it from the car. As I'd done the Chevy 57 I'd bought some plastic tools
to help lever off the external trim on the Chevy it's all stainless steel
trim on the outside, so I thought perfect, that'll do. I took the tool, the plastic tool,
a microfibre cloth, to act as a protection between the spoiler and the
paintwork and the PPF film. And ease the edge of the the trim tool under
the edge of the spoiler where it was loose on the passenger side. And worked it
along the entire length of the spoiler generally using the boot as a kind of
leaver really to give me a something to push against. And about 3/4 of the
adhesive along the length of the spoiler gave way really easily without much
force at all. But the last quarter on the other hand proved a little bit more
stubborn and it certainly didn't want to let go. They had
formed a bond basically, the boot and the spoiler.
However, with increasing and repeated pressure with the trim tool I
did actually manage to get it off. No damage to the car, or the spoiler
thankfully, or any damage to my bank balance. So that's all good. The tape, I
guess it was 3M tape, that was used to fix the spoiler to the car was very
sticky in the last quarter which was the tricky bit to get off. However the
remaining three quarters which was supposed to be sticky I wasn't really
sticky at all. It had a build-up of fine dust on it
which I'm guessing had reduced its effectiveness and I suspect that as the
gap between the spoiler and the car increased the dirt and dust had made its
way in between the two and stuck to the adhesive tape
rendering the tape fairly useless. So great for collecting dust, but rubbish
for keeping the spoiler stuck to the back of the car.
Once the spoiler was off the next tedious job was to remove the old
adhesive tape from the spoiler. During my research I read everywhere
about making sure that the two surfaces were squeaky clean before putting new
tape on to get a good adhesion. Now thankfully there was none actually stuck
to the car there was a few smears which soon came off when they were cleaned.
But inside of the spoiler just was caked with the tape basically. And the old
adhesive. And I needed to get that off completely before I then put on my new
tape. So I tried white spirits, no good. I tried acetone, no good. I tried WD-40, no
good. And then I remembered that I had a tin of 3M adhesive remover which I had
bought when I installed the weather stripping on the 57 Chevy. I'd used
it to clean off the excess glue. Hey! So I grabbed that and it was still a real job
to remove all the old tape. I started off with a plastic narrow
scraping tool, to remove the foam backing from the tape which then left me of a
real sticky residue on the whole length of the inside of the spoiler. And the
tape was really well stuck to the spoiler unfortunately it just wasn't as
well stuck to the boot of the car. So once I've broken out the adhesive,
the 3M adhesive cleaner and the microfibre towel it was a lot
easier. And slowly but surely after a couple of hours I managed to clean and
get rid of all of the residue from the spoiler. And had some very sore
fingertips at the end of it. So one clean spoiler, one clean boot lid.
Before putting on the new adhesive tape I wanted to confirm the fit on the car
there's actually two plastic lugs, one on each side pre fitted onto the
boot lid which marry up to corresponding holes in the back of the spoiler. So I
trial fitted the spoiler to make sure it was a good snug fit and I knew that a
locating lugs would be really handy when I got around to reattaching the spoiler
to ensure is in the correct position and evenly spaced across the boot lid. So the
trial fit was successful and the next step was to deal with the tape. So I cut and
applied new strips of adhesive tape and trimmed them to the shape or profile of
the spoiler. The tape I purchased was a 25mm wide high bond OEM approved
adhesive tape. Link in the description below. It was black in colour and it's
very thin. 1mm thick but even so I didn't want it sticking
out and being visible from underneath the spoiler along the edge and nor did I
want it sort of preventing a buffer and stopping the spoiler from seating neatly
when it was sitting against the body line of the boot lid. So the tape was 25mm
which was actually perfect for the width of this spoiler its widest point
and a spoiler is spoiler is sort of come cave on the the inside so it gives a
nice fit against the boot. I put the tape along the the wider part and moved it
all away to the outer edges. And this necessitated me trimming the adhesive tape
with a sharp scalpel to the contour of the spoiler. Which was actually easier to
do than I thought it was going to be. I thought was gonna be a bit of a
nightmare but with a good sharp blade it made the job was so much easier. So I had
my tape installed and bedded down firmly against the inside curve of the spoiler
I peeled off the protective blue backing film and
approached the car with a spoiler. I had already cleaned the boot paintwork
made sure it was nice and clean and got rid of any dust. I lined the spoiler up
against the locating pins and pushed home firmly with a spoiler.
I kept the pressure evenly across the whole width of the spoiler for a few
minutes and I was running my hands up and down the length of the spoiler to
ensure some even pressure and a nice tight snug fit. It's now actually fitted
better than the factory fit and it fits along the entire length of the spoiler.
It's really good contact against the other line the boot lid. I've kept my eye on it
over the following few hours and days really making sure it was a good fit the
instructions on the tape say the the adhesion of the tape gets stronger over
time. So I'm actually hoping this will stay on. So there you go that was my
spoiler alert. So if you have one on your car just keep your eye on it and if
you're finding it is a bit loose then it might be sensible to pull it off and
then reattach it before you lose it. So there you go. I hope that was useful.
Take care, stay safe. I'll see you on the next video.
All right. Cheers, bye.