Is it just me, or is it that the factory paint on the Max's are really crappy? I drive in the city and I hardly drive on roads that are unpaved or where there is loose dirt/gravel/stones. After a perimeter inspection, I noticed a lot more paint chips than when I bought it, and it came with a lot already (poor touchups). First owner also didn't drive it outside the city as they had a van *shrugs*. I've also noticed that some very small rust spots are appearing I don't know if I can wait a year or so until I get a new paintjob and body work done.

Sorry but I had to rant. I don't remember the factory paint on other cars being so weak. Maybe it's because my Max is black??

D'oh

 

Holy crap nissan makes some $hitty paint. My cars black and my whole front end is full of white specs where the paints chipped and especially along the fender flare thingy in the front, its ridiculous.
My friends Grand Prix looks flawless from the front almost and hes put more than half of his 75K miles on the highway.

Maybe its the black paint that makes it show up more, but the paint shouldnt be so cheap.

 

yea. me too. i have a 1999 superblack maxima gle, and it has those same white spots in the front. and the car only has 33k miles on it. it is not in the city much, and is in perfect condition otherwise. nissan paint sucks.

 

Yeah mine sucks too. I have a 97 Rosewood Max with 59000 miles on it and my front bumper, hood, and front fenders are covered with chips and white spots. Nissan should give us a refund or discount on a new paintjob

 

It's not the paint. What the hell do you expect? If you want 12 coats of paint, buy a Bentley. It's still not going to matter. If anything the clearcoat or your lack of protectants is the problem..

Buy a bra and quit whining

 

I agree about the lack of paint quality. This is my 20th car and even my old 1976 Ford pickup with 150,000 miles had better paint.

I think even Earl Shieb would be embarrassed by the crappy paint......

 

I purchased a Deep Evergreen 96 that was highway driven that has the front fenerd flares and the rear lower flares practically sandblasted off!

The hood & front bumper are terrible as well......

I have since then put a bra on as a "cover up"......

 

My 95 was so bad when I purchased it from my mom the very first thing I did was repaint and took the opportunity to convert to a 97 front.

 

hmm I have a 98 with 108,000 miles on it..and i like my paint... you can't really tell any wear...not too many chips on the front...almost unnoticable...am i one in a million ? haha

 

The paint on my 99 is pretty much flawless too. Aside from the very front of the bumper, which shows war wounds, the rest of my car's paint is in showroom condition.

No complaints here.

 

have you ever thought the prob is that your are tailgating or driving to close to the guy in front of you.. ive noticed this.. so i stay back from rock flying distance.. ive also noticed less chips.. so maybe its your fault to... so give it a shot it might just work...

 

my front is beat up

 

Well no amount of paint will hold up over time against rocks guys. The fact that your getting paint chips doesnt show bad quality in the paint. If it was fading/bubbling/peeling in large amounts, that would be a different story, but you guys are whining about paint chips?!?! cmon now...

Also, alot of the problem people have with the cars paint is from their lack of care...




Eric

 

I think for the most part, all major car manufacturers (except exotic ones) seem to cut corners when it comes to factory paint. Also, try to maintain a good distance between you and a truck or semi infront of you because they kick up so much stuff that you don't even realize it. If you are too close or are tail gating, then all that crap ends up landing on you hood chipping your paint...just my .02 cent. When I had my lifted truck, it used to make me wonder why people in cars tale gated me so much (like they can run me off the road with their little rice burners), everyone did it, little do they know that my rear boggers where kickin' up dirt and tiny rocks all over their front end and hood. I guess most people do not use common sense.

 

You guys cry to much. These maximas have probably the best paint available in the US. Every american car I have seen built in the 80's paint peels showing primer. The 90's americans played catch up and still because of environmental stardards are subpar to japanese paint process. Obvious you didn't spend time detailing your car (or someone else didn't), upkeep on the clearcoat and base coat is probably something you have to do at least once a month on any car.

 

You know what they say...you can drop a boulder on the hood of a Lamborghni and the paint will still remain flawless, dunno about the hood itself though

 

I'm not sure if I can totally blame my driving since I've been driving sane ever since I totalled my old car. That means no tailgating I regularly upkeep on exterior maintanence, so I don't know how those blemishes are showing up. The only thing I can say about my driving is that I generally drive 15-20km/h over the limit, but I find that as a poor excuse to not blame for crappy paint quality.

I'm even more angry tonight than before. I was slowly easing my car into a friend's garage, but I had to park it diagonally since his garage had all this crap in it. Anyways, with the driver's door open and my head back, I slowly eased in but somehow I managed to bump into the corner of a cardboard box and it took some paint with it. OMFG. My poor bumper

 

Nissan does not use the best paint. Before you start whining YES I detail my car, and I probably do a better job of it than you. The cars to seem to be somewhat more prone to chips and sandblasting than other cars...not MUCH more, but a little. You can tell that Nissan isn't too into the quality of the paint by the orange peel, which is pretty severe and well known on our cars. I have heard people who have had their cars repainted say that the situation is better. I, for one, have found that my repainted front bumper is better in terms of resisting sandblasting.

I really want to get my entire car repainted one day and see how **** turns out. Without a doubt some of my sandblasting and chips came from doing 90-100+ going back and forth to colelge on the NYS Thruway, since I don't have to do that anymore it should stand up better because of that at least, but the chpping on my hood is pretty ridiculous even considering that. I'm also not all that satisfied with some wierd effects I've seen on my well detailed hood...the paint should not be doing these things.

 

Look if your doing over 80 plus miles an hour and even if you detail your car your going to get chips in your hood, no place is safe. The road is full of rocks, glass, and other garbage. Furthermore, you live in New York your probably exposed to all that acid rain. Might as well park next to the beach and let all the salt eat through your topcoats.

 

not full of it

I hate to pick sides, but this ones easy. Maxima paint SUCKS. thats all there is too it. If babied and kept in a garage, yes you can keep the paint looking great, but assuming your paint has to deal with the sun, your done for. Ive had my max a year and now that i have to park it in the sun, the bumpers and hood paint have gone to crap. im not talking about chips or normal road crap, IM talking the bumpers have totally lost their lustre. I wash my baby 2 times a week. using a liquid wax ever 4-5 weeks and a polish every few months. Why does the sun eat the paint right off my car when the 10 cars parked next to it dont have this problem? OH, and you cant explain THAT by telling me that I follow to closely. But if there is a nice explaination, id like to hear it.

 

Yea my paints Starting to dull out too around the top rear driver side door. It looks like its starting to spot and fade, why!? I have a late 99 car, it shouldnt be doing that. I wash and wax it every week and fully detail it once a month just hoping that it doesnt get worse.
Oh, and i dont follow close to cars and i stay away from big trucks and i do most of my driving on the streets, Still got that sandblasted look.

 

are bumpers made of different materials than say, the fenders? whenever i wax/polish/wash my car, the bumpers just FEEL different from the rest of the body panels.. maybe the paint dosent react as well to a different material.. i have plenty of little chips on my bumper, by the rest of the body is nearly flawless.. a good claybar/polish/wax job will keep your car nice for a long while

 

Let's see you have a car five and six years...How long do you expect your paint to last? Sometimes you use the wrong products on clear coat and it will just eat right through it.

I suspect if you put 10k to 12k on your car a year the crap hitting your car, I don't care if it's a bug will probably in three years wear your paint out. Just like a chinese water torture.

Go buy you some paint, clear coat, and redo your bumpers. What your going to spend 50 bux on it? Don't seem much to cry about to me.

 

Perhaps those 10 other cars parked next to yours are either newer, or just got repainted, or is garaged most of the time, etc. You cannot make those kinds of comparison because you don't know the exact story of each of those cars, unless you took the time to interview each of their owners and closely examined the paint with your own eyes.

Oh and there's this other thing called Ozone Layer, yep hole in the Ozone Layer which no longer protects anything, cars and humans, from dangerious UV rays. If the sun's rays does that to your paint, imagine what it does to humans beyond what the eyes can see.

Stay cool!

 

what! man Im not making blatant statements. MY family has 3 Max's and Ive seen how it wears in comparison to other paints under equal circumstances. In my personal opinion (disregarding the ozone), maxima paint is crap. thank you

 

if u drive a car its going to get messed up, get over it. buy a 5 dollar can of touch up paint and it will be 100% less noticeable. Or just get a car bra if ur that concerned.

 

Well...I do realize that cars/paint mess up (eventually), but not a month or two after you buy it. When you pay that much money, you expect it to last a while. My friend's civic has less chips on it, and its a CIVIC!

 

Nissan and even infiniti paint for that matter is horrible, I work at a lexus dealer and can say from personal experience the lexus paint maintains its finish and is much more durable then nissan paint. My 98 I30 gets chips and scratches from everything, the quality is no where near as good as the acura cl and bmw 325i I previously ownded

 

I had a Toyota Tundra and most people complained about the paint because it chipped easily. I even saw a few of those chips on the hood of mine and it is a truck! I believe Toyota and Lexus paint are the same, and people complained about those too. Noone is ever content about anything. It's like the more you stare at your car, the more things you will find wrong with it.

 

ROTFL! You guys are hilarious.

And BTW a bra is not a solution...I don't want the paint unevely faded instead of chipped...why cover it up if you're never going to see it.

 

I think toyota and honda have better paint than nissan. I have four cars and my maxima of the same year has the worst paint. I believe they have progressively improved over the years but other factors bar me from buying another nissan.

 

Your right toyota/lexus has better paint. Personally I would rather have a flat non-clear coat of paint, sort of like what the military has. It is good paint.

 

Funny cuz everyone at the Tundra forum I go to also think that anything else other than Toyota paint is better. They all think that their paint sucks.

 

I have alot of chips on my front bumper, and a few on the very front of my hood, but my car also has 170k miles on it! Mostly highway though.

 

Good thing Nissan started adding those clear sticker type paint protecter things on the hoods of the new models.

 

How come it's always the paint on the front bumber. I checked my back bumper with 217k miles and it's good as new? Could it be rocks and other crap and not the paint like so many have whined about?

Paint it. Buy the 3M paint protector and quit crying about it.

 

Ever tried letting your left arm hang down the side of the driver door while you are driving down the freeway (don't let it extend out cuz you can get your arm yanked off)? Do you feel anything, like little tiny things hitting your arm (sometimes something bigger would hit your arm and you'll feel it more)...that's the same crap that hits the front bumper. And after a long while, the bumper's paint appears to have been sandblasted off! Stuff like that cannot be avoided. So something like the X-Pel paint protection films would help preserve the paint on your bumper and hood. I'm thinking about getting this since I just got my whole car repainted. They even have light protection films if your headlight lenses are plastic, great for newer model vehicles since most of the newer cars now have plastic headlight lenses.

 

Dude I have a 99 pearl white GXE and the paint on it sucks too! I think that they just don't put as many coats as they should, to cut expenses on production. Any way this is one of my major complaints about Nissan. My 86 VW Gti had better paint, at least it was way more durable and didn't have the tendancy to chip like my max. The hood is full of chips, and it just breaks my heart because the car is soo beautiful in shape and everything else, except for the crummy paint.

 

Wish I had a 99 pearl white GXE that I could cry about sucky paint. Instead my 95 is Maroon and would be happier with a yellow maxima, any other color but red/maroon. Kind of standard for dealerships to repaint nearly all bumpers on used cars.

If GTi is so good with paint why didn't by another one. Last time I saw a VW it was a four banger and still didn't get as good of gas mileage as my Maxima nor did it have the horsepower.

 

Ive got great paint on my 97 also.

Clear coat still looks great