Tow Bar
I only have one car so my Model 3 has to do it all - carry bikes, go camping, tow trailers. Everything. So I have a strong desire to get a tow hitch fitted to my 3.
I researched the options available, including waiting for the long promised Tesla original kit, but when I saw that Stealth Hitches had a 15% off Black Friday discount code and MyUS had a 20% off deal as well I locked it in!
Choice
The Stealth Hitch is the best of both worlds when compared to the cheaper Ecohitch and the likely to be more expensive Tesla option:
The Tesla hitch is 970GBP in the UK, about $1820AUD, and that’s for the factory fit. After delivery it will be more expensive to cover the Service Centre labour costs.
The Tesla kit also only comes with a ball and no square receiver so mounting bike racks isn’t as secure as it should be
The Ecohitch uses a basic threaded through bolt for the hitch mounting making it fairly slow and complex to remove. The safety chain eyes are also higher inside the bumper cavity making them harder to get to.
The Stealth is good value, easy to use, remove and provides both square hitch and ball options in the kit.
Whilst importing a kit means that the kit isn’t certified to be compliant (but almost certainly is compliant) with Australian Standards for tow hitches I think the odds of my hitch causing a massive accident that could be directly attributable to the hitch is basically zero. Life is compromise. I’m told that the kit can be complied for about $1500AUD. If anyone was keen to split those costs I’m happy to if we can get 5 or more of us. Get in touch with the links on the home page!
Parts
The total Bill of Materials landed in Australia in AUD. It’s possible you may be hit for GST when the bar is imported but with the discounts applied when I bought mine I wasn’t charged GST or duty.
If you get the tow kit you’ll also need to sort out trailer wiring. For this you’ll need a 7-wire wiring kit. The wiring kit that comes from the US is only four wire so isn’t any good to us here. I chose the Ark AHI7 and AHI7FP kit. It isolates the trailer loads from the cars wiring so bad wiring or bulbs in the trailer does not affect the car.
The tow ball with the kit is 2”, which is about 50.8mm. The standard ball size in Australia is 50mm. As close as it is a 2” ball won’t fit in many trailers here. The hitch also has a 1” hole in it so you need a ball with a 1” shank. The standard size you can buy at Bunnings, Supercheap, etc is 7/8” so you’ll need to go to a specialty trailer parts store to get the correct one such as the Ark TB501.
I also added a flat to round adaptor and a magnetic mount kit for the trailer socket so it can mount to the body of the car just inside the hitch cover and come out to reach the trailer when in use.
I used MyUS.com to ship the hitch to me. They got it here in less than a week after Stealth shipped it to them. From order to delivery took about three weeks.
Installation
90% of the process is per the Stealth manual with a few exceptions:
IMPORTANT - I highly recommend that you use the “Power Off’ option in the Service menu and then use this process to completely isolate the car from battery power before you start any electrical work.
Throughout production of the Model 3 some minor details have changed. There is now only two bolts at the front of the rear gravel guard, not three.
All Australian cars already have a removable cover for the hitch. There is no need to cut a hole in the gravel guard.
All Australian cars have a socket for the OEM trailer wiring harness taped to the crash bar. This includes 12V, earth and CAN bus wires. I cut this off and used the 12V and earth for my trailer harness. I did have aspirations of using this to power my fridge however its only powered up whilst the car is in drive so its not much good for that. The 12V outlet in the centre console stays on with the car charging, in Sentry Mode and generally for quite a while after the car is turned off - so I’ll keep using that when I need it.
US cars have slightly different wire colours as they combine brake and turn lights. These are the colours for Australia (and probably Europe):
Left Turn - Purple
Right Turn - Red
Parking (Marker) - Yellow
Brake - Grey
Reverse - White (the one thats alone, not twisted in a pair.)
All the wiring is easily accessible from the back of the tail lights except Reverse. You’ll need to get this from the wiring harness that runs under the driver’s side rear seat bolster.
The whole job took me about 5 hours of labour to do, and at least two of those were spent researching things that I’ve answered in this article. So if you’ve got a bit of experience working on cars you could do it in an afternoon.
A Picture is Worth 1000 Words
Click through the pictures and read the descriptions for more details. On mobile you may not see the captions unless you turn to landscape.
Experience
When driving with Autopilot the car can see the trailer or bikes there in the ultrasonic display but it still allows you to engage Autopilot and NoA. I’d exercise caution when using Autopilot but it seems to work fine. I’ll probably avoid using NoA however as the car doesn’t realise that it’s now a lot longer, particularly with a trailer, so it may cut people off when changing lanes.