It’s one thing for a shade-tree mechanic to forget to put a bolt or nut back on a car in the reassembly of a vehicle after repair. It’s a whole different thing for a trained Tesla technician to forget to reinstall the entire frunk cargo area into a Model 3. Yet that’s exactly what happened to one customer.
According to one Reddit poster, his brother’s Model 3 ended up stalling about five days after it was in the shop for service. In the process of trying to figure out what exactly was wrong, the owner opened up the hood to find the frunk cargo liner completely gone.
Evidently, this Model 3 had just been into a service center for squeaking front control arms, a known issue on many Model 3s. At some point in the repair it seems as though the technician removed the frunk liner but then completely forgot to reinstall it.
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For the owner in this story, it seems as though it’s a cargo space rarely used as it took nearly a week to spot. After the breakdown, Tesla found an unrelated problem that for a moment seemed as though it could be the result of the missing cargo liner. Thankfully, they were at least able to replace the liner once it made it back to the center.
Someone else in the TeslaLounge comment section piped up to give an alternative perspective on the same issue though. Apparently, they experienced the same missing cargo bay liner and the service center advised them to come get it any time. They live some eight hours from the center though. That’s a major inconvenience that Tesla itself shouldn’t put a customer through.
It seems somewhat shocking that any service tech could end up with such a large piece just left over and not recognize the issue. Perhaps Tesla needs some sort of checklist for techs to go through anytime components come out to ensure that they go back in.
