Kenriko

Kenriko’s Wraps

~ Doug ~ 3 Comments

As much as I love my new Tesla Model 3, there are a few cosmetic things that cried out for modifications. And given that I wasn’t able to even drive the car for its first two months due to an injury, I spent much of that time making various “improvements”. Many of the mods are in the form of vinyl wraps, described below.

I searched the internets for options and finally settled on the vinyl-wrap kits from Kenriko, sold on Amazon.com. He’s a guy with a day job, so there are some delays in his updating Amazon’s inventory as well as fleshing out the options such as different materials (matte black, carbon fiber, etc.). The kits are very reasonably priced, all below US$30. Kenriko is very active (and responsive) on the Tesla Motors Club forum.

Center Console

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Center Console

I began with the center console. Like almost everyone I’ve spoken to, I found the stock glossy black finish to be  a disaster. It shows every fingerprint, scratch and speck of dust. I considered carbon fiber and other vinyls, but ended up going with Kenriko’s Avery 900 Matte Black kit. (See his installation video.) Why the Avery matte black? Kenriko says (and he’s right) that the 3M M12 Matte Black scratches very easily. The Avery product (in this particular case) is more durable. But my main reason is that it looks so good with the dark Alcantara upholstery. It’s a DIY wrap, but I cheated. I had Juan Gomez install it when he wrapped the exterior of the car. Juan does a much better job of this than I do.

Door Switches

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Door Kit with Yellow Button

After getting the car back from Juan, I decided to tackle the door switches myself. For this one, I bought Kenriko’s 3M 1080 Matte Black kit. (Installation video.) Yeah, I know I just wrote that 3M Matte Black scratches, but it seems okay on the door switches, which aren’t as vulnerable or obvious as the center console. After installing the wrap, I decided to swap out Kenriko’s door-open buttons for glossy yellow vinyl. I originally hand-cut the pieces using Kenriko’s originals as templates. More on this later. (Original post with more info at https://goo.gl/c7Kuva.)

My Own Vinyl Cutter

Not only does Kenriko sell kits on Amazon.com, he also uploads free, open-source templates to github in both .ai (Adobe Illustrator) and PDF formats. You can easily download the PDF versions and then hand-cut your own materials, but some of the cuts are small and tricky. For best results, you’ll want a true vinyl cutter. Also consider that the cost of the vinyl is almost as much as buying one of Kenriko’s complete kits, so if you can live with the materials he offers, you’re better off just purchasing his kits.

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Silhouette Cameo 3

I decided I wanted to do more of this type of modification, so I decided to dive into the world of vinyl cutters. After a bit of research, I settled on a Silhouette Cameo 3 cutter. Yeah, I know US$200+, plus the materials — I could do all of this for far less by just buying kits. But hey…I didn’t say any of this was rational!

I then purchased a variety of vinyls including:

The standard Silhouette Studio software, which is free with the cutter, won’t open Adobe Illustrator or PDF files. For that, I upgraded to the Designer Edition. That’s US$49.99 if purchased from Silhouette, but I discovered you can buy it from Swing Design for US$20 less. The PDF files work fine as-is, but at the time I wanted to tackle the next project (door sills), Kenriko had only uploaded the Adobe Illustrator file to github.

Not wanting to pay monthly for Adobe Illustrator, I downloaded the free, open-source app, Inkscape instead. For my iMac, this also required X11, so I downloaded and installed XQuartz. At first, I tried opening the .ai files in Inkscape and saving as SVG files, then opening those in Silhouette Studio. That resulted in some scaling errors. Instead, I ended up exporting to PDF from Inkscape and opening the PDFs in Silhouette. Scaling correct!

One of my first self-cut projects was to replace the little yellow door-opening buttons (see above) with ones that have cleaner edges.

Door Sills

Armed with my trusty Cameo 3, I was ready to tackle the next project: door sills. Kenriko did the hard part, designing a template to cover the front-door sills with cutouts for the “MODEL 3” text. But I wanted two things he didn’t offer: Matrix Black vinyl — Carbon Fiber is more popular, but I like the matrix look better — and red lettering.

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Front Door Sill

I downloaded Kenriko’s template in Adobe Illustrator format. I then made two versions: One just as Kenriko made it for the Matrix Black overlay, and another for the Gloss Dark Red vinyl that covers the full area but is just a bit undersized: about 2mm all around. I exported both in PDF format, opened them in Silhouette Studio, then cut the vinyl. The Matrix Black is quite a bit thicker and tougher than the red vinyl, so I had to run a few tests to get the settings right.

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Rear Door Sill

No, there isn’t normally a door-sill plate on the rear doors. This is a Kenriko “extra”.

What’s Next?

I’ve got at least two more wraps in the works: I want to cover the wood dashboard strip in Matrix Black and portions of the steering wheel in Matte Black, like the center console. I plan to wait for Kenriko to upload templates for these mods, since he does all that work with more care and patience than I’m likely to use. I plan to update this post once I’ve got those done.

 

Door Latch Releases

~ Doug ~ Leave a comment

One common complaint about the Tesla Model 3 is the door latch releases, particularly in the front seats. There are no frames for the windows. When fully raised, the glass just presses into a soft black rubber seal. When you open the door from the exterior or by pressing the interior door-release button, the window first drops a bit to protect the rubber, then the door opens.

But these are electromechanical functions that won’t work if the 12vdc power is off. For this reason, Tesla provides a purely mechanical door release in the front seats in case of emergency. You lift up on the lever and the door opens, but without the benefit of first lowering the window. Done often enough, and there’s a chance you’ll damage the rubber seals.

The problem is that if you reach for the latch release where you’d most likely expect it to be, you’ll actually pull the emergency mechanical release. The proper button simply isn’t where most people, familiar with other car doors, expect it to be. If you own a Model 3, you get used to it right away, but occasional passengers or other drivers tend to pull the mechanical release instinctively.

Rather than constantly explaining how to open the door from the inside — something I shouldn’t have to do to begin with — I decided to find an easier way to communicate with Tesla Model 3 newbies.

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I’m a big fan of the vinyl kits by Kenriko. I’ve installed one on my center console to solve the problems of scratches and fingerprints. (Plus, I didn’t like the glossy finish.) I plan to install Kenriko’s kit to cover the wooden dash (when it’s available), the steering wheel and the door sills. I also installed the door trim wrap kit, shown above.

But for the door-release button, I used Kenriko’s piece as a template and hand-cut a piece of yellow vinyl. Now all I have to do is say, “Press the yellow button to open the door.” I’ve got them on all four door-release buttons and they work great. It looks rather garish in the photo above, but that’s because I wanted to lighten the image to show the dark materials. In reality, it’s not this bright, but it’s still bold enough to be seen, even in a darkened garage.