2019 Tesla Truckla (Model 3)

It’s not road worthy, as mentioned they cut into the structure, and towed it to where they were filming. the point was to make a cool Tesla pickup, regardless that its roadworthy or not :smile:

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That was an awesome watch! I wonder if they could have avoided damaging the frame… ?

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It’s probably fine. They welded up the back doors, and welded in a (definitely could be beefier) cage.
I helped build an off-road Jeep Cherokee that was rolled before purchase, and we cut the whole top of and welded in a tubular cage and when we were done it had less body flex then a stock.

BTW for those who don’t know the Cherokee is a unibody and it turns into a wet noodle when you cut the top off.

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No. By nature of it, they had to rip out parts of the roof.

If anyone actually watches the video, they added roll cage steel to reinforce the car. Where the truck body ends, all along that new truck back, and all along the bottom under the truck bed. They then welded and put new body panels into it, and welded a tuck bed to the back.

I’m fairly certain that car is 100 percent more sturdy than it was to begin with.

Watched it.

No.

When you install a roll cage in a car, you install it in addition to and to supplement the cars frame, and as it would indicate, it’s designed to protect against rolling.

When you cut the unibody up and attach a steel cage to it, you’re still sacrificing a lot of rigidity. Cars undergo immense engineering efforts to design something that’ll withstand a lot of stresses from driving (and crashing). When you take out a main component and throw something else in there, you’re undoing all that engineering.

No matter how good you are at designing roll cages, you aren’t better at it than the engineers who designed the car in the first place.

Cars are strong. Roll cages make them stronger. Roll cages cannot replace cars.

And that doesn’t even begin to discuss that welds are the weak points of every mechanism and how when you weld to a structural component that you cut off, you’re making an attachment point that’s going to be subjected to huge stress force in one direction or another.

Nah. Steel roll cages are stiff, and don’t have a team of engineers spending ~6mo doing FEA and simulations on the various crash modes.

Sturdy != Safe.

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Depending on the use case, that can be true.

We’re in complete agreement here. Making a stiff structure that’s usually intended to supplement a unibody does not add any safety. Roll cages don’t respect crumple zones, deflection areas, and so on.

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Perhaps you guys should mosey on over to pirate 4x4 forum and see what they do to vehicles, mods and crashes roll overs. Rock crawlers are put through hell and more. The amount of mods done would astound you.

I am fully aware of what happens on those forums. My friend has a jeep with a full exo cage, 18in lift and 3/4in steel plating on the bottom.

If you’re lifting a vehicle you’re doing it WRONG. Lifting is dangerous and stupid. Rock Crawlers are a completely different animal than “Mall crawlers and Mud Trucks”. They are actually built to race over rocks and virtually impossible terrain. Also Pirate 4x4 is NOT one of those 4x4 forums. (It’s kind like saying L1 forums are just another appliance forum) These guys actually know their tech. What they do is not Bolt ons, but rather engineered for a purpose.

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Sooo, i was wrong.
The now famous Uncle Rich (i could swear it was him on the original video and i would be right) helped build the car and yesterday he showed how they done it.
It seems pretty well braced after all, perhaps it could be useful.

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definintely appreciated Rich’s video more.

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The intro is amazing in its own right.

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