S2K'ing-IN-Spokane

I don't know about you guys but the paint on MY04 Belina has always looked like crap since day one. It's as though it was dipped in wax or it has a light grey overcoat to it.

You really notice it when parked next to another black car.. Atleast I did.

So after a couple of hours with the porter cable and some Zymol, I was checking for leftovers and found what looked like Zymol in a body line. I took my microfibre cloth and wiped... It hooked in the body line and dragged...

Like these cloths do when you have rough skin on your fingers. It hooked off a small fleck of paint. Oh oh..

After driving the next day I stopped by the local hand wash for a hot water rinse before heading home and when the wand hit the rough spot.... Well, this is what occured.





I have a friend that has been managing a body shop for 20+ years and he states that sometimes the spray they use to keep these plastic parts from sticking to the molds isn't cleaned off completely and this is the end result. Poor paint grab.

The cool part is this. He looked at the overall grey'ish tone to the black and said "It's unlikely I'll be able to match THAT color black".

And even if it does. I'm going to tell them to do a complete re-paint.

So bad luck in the short term.. Good deal overall.

Keep in mind this 04 has less than 10,000 miles on it and never even seen a flake of snow.

Just thought I'd share this with you all.

C4SxM5

is that factory paint? if it is, it should be covered under warranty.

just make sure it hasn't repainted because I never seen anything like that before on any of my Honda's

sahtt

That's dissapointing. Honda's are notorious for fading, my mother's civic did when it was 4 years old, my accord did when it was 6. My parents have an 04 and 05 now, we'll see how long those last. I can understand that improper car, brake fluid, never waxing, etc. could be honda's excuse, but in your case they've got nothing.

For the record, you must be very careful when washing/waxing any car, especially a thin coated Honda. I've seen way too many people put nicks/flakes in their paint at those drive in places with the high power water.

CKit

Too much time with the porter cable perhaps?

clawhammer

Did you buy the car new? If not, then it has a remote possiblity of having been in an accident.

j_t_heilbrun

The only thing that could cause that is like stated, the mold release on the bumper wasn't cleaned completly off. I have never seen this from the factory, but have seen it numerous times from paint shops. In fact when I painted my Prelude I made the mistake of not cleaning my front bumper properly and the paint flaked off in huge chunks.

So if it has never seen a paint shop go to Honda, if it has had the bumper replaced go to the body shop.

Harpoon

I would guess that the original issue with the paint had more to do with the rubbing some people get between the bumper and the body than a problem with the paint itself. Mine was rubbing in that same exact area and pulling off the paint a bit. Honda had a body shop remove the bumper and reinstall. They offered to repaint the whole thing, but it was small and I didn't want a match issue, so I just had them touch it up.

camera obscura

Something similar just happened to the plate covering the gas cap on my 02. A piece of paint about 1/4" by 1" just flaked off while I was washing the car...

beb

I have the same thing happening in the same area! I took it to Honda to get the top replaced, got it back and with their detailing job I had a ton of wax left on the car along with swirls I go to that area and try to get a bit of wax off......................its paint. Mines not so bad, yet... But it breaks my heart.

hpark

i would sincerely hope Honda would pay to get your bumper repainted....i know won't fix it 100% good as new but better than the what it looks like now.