We turned our attention to the rear of the car to replace the blown right rear shock.
Two easily accessible bolts were loosened to remove the top of the rear shock.
The BC Racing “DS Series” adjustable rear shock looks really nice compared to the factory Tesla rear shock.
The quality of the BC damper is quite nice, and the threaded damper body makes the droop travel of the rear suspension adjustable.
The main point for this threaded shock body is to adjust the point where the rear bumpstop engages and prevents the rear tire from rubbing the inner fender liner. The as-delivered settings from BC is probably ideal.
The damping adjuster is at the top of the shock and easily reachable when the car is jacked up.
We removed the nut to swap the upper shock mount over to the BC Racing “DS” damper.
After removing the shock mount, we can see the bump stop heights of the factory Tesla rear shock vs the BC Racing shock.
The factory bump stop is 3.5” long and engages quite early in the suspension travel to increase spring rate of the rear of the car.
After bolting the shock mount to the BC Racing shock, we were ready to install it.
5 comments
For some reason I cannot see any photos using multiple browsers.
Are the photo links broken?
Seems fine to me
BTW, is there no “tesla,” section under projects?
The stock upper control arm design is the real story here, and it is good to see it called out. A plastic and steel hybrid arm with a water-trapping ball joint is a failure waiting to happen, especially on a car that sees rain and road salt. Replacing it with a one-piece forged aluminum arm is the right fix, not just a performance upgrade. My tip for Model 3 owners hearing a clunk over bumps is to check that arm first and not let a shop replace the whole strut assembly when the arm alone is the problem, because the cost difference is large and the arm is a known weak point on these cars.
The new Tesla Y-L seems to have a magnetic damper in the rear. It would be interesting to see what the aftermarket brings out for that, that still works with the dash settings, but offers better valving or perhaps an aftermarket controller that offers even more settings than comfort and standard.