I was taking the time to Zaino my baby the other day and afterwards, used the ChipMender (a paint-match pen) to cover any little nicks from our great drives. As I did this, I noticed that the paint on my side mirrors is FADING. Yep, you can actually see that pint fading. It's slick, so I feel that it's protected, but perhaps the 60k miles of driving and most of that at HIGH speeds may be fading the mirros. Like the nose of the Sapce Shuttle. At any rate, I was wondering if anyone else noticed the same.

Oh, and while on that, anyone take a GOOD look at the interior knobs and buttons at night? Look at the UP/DOWN knob for the level of air, on the edges, can you see some of the amber light come thru? I have small speckles of light shining thru as if the paint/coating on this lever is starting to fail/fade as well.

 

[Non-Carolina poster]

Not on the mirrors, but I've noticed fading on one very small part of my car. You know the piece between the trunklid and the top? It has two smaller pieces on either side of it. The smaller piece on the left side is a little faded on my car. The one on the right looks okay, though

My car has 50,XXX miles.

[QUOTE] Oh, and while on that, anyone take a GOOD look at the interior knobs and buttons at night?

 

Not on the S but on the Insight. The door arches were actually plastic (above the door). After 3.5 years they started to fade. It looked like high speed water stains if you know what I mean.

I used to tell my wife that it was because the car was so aerodinamic that all the water ended up there during the rain. :-)

In any case, a good rub (with paint cleaner) would make it go away but it would come back within a few weeks.

 

My girlfriends parents own a body shop and the first thing they noticed was the slight difference in color on the mirrors and body. They said they must be sprayed off of the car, then put on.

 

Other thing [I'd think] is the materials that the paint is applied to. Those lil "trunk hinge access" covers, as well as the mirrors, and our bumpers, are not made out of the same metal/materials as the main portion of our S2K's body. I would think it somewhat easy to suspect that the characteristics of the paint could be different on different materials (even to the point of how well the paint sticks, how it oxidizes, etc.).

- Dave

PS. Actually its probably that you're just zaino'ing down to the primer Raul!