Today I was giving my max the spring wash and wax and noticed a chip in the paint on the passenger side roof of my car. After closer inspection I noticed that rust was creeping arount the area. Hell, I live in the south where we have no road salt and it is usually mild during the winter wtf is up with this horrible paint process. My front bumper looks worse than the 95 gxe I traded in. It has more pits and chips than I have ever noticed on a car that is only a year old. Anyone on the forum have a similar problem.
This is deplorable, especially for a near 30k car. I am really pissed!

 

Yeah, I have some rust. It still seems excessive in a car under two years old even though I am in Michigan. My rust locations:

1. The rear passenger door.

2. The trunk from the TSB.

3. Where the chrome trim joint is above the outside rearview mirrors.

4. A few paint chips in the hood.

I agree that the Maxima paint chips way to easily. We had a long thread on this a week or so ago.

 

I have a similar problem, very tiny rust "stains" on my Icelandic Pearl paint keep forming. They're about the size of a pen tip. I buffed them off once and used a paint sealer, and now they're forming again.. also recently had front bumper re-painted because some paint had literally fallen off. Obviously I'm not too happy about the lousy paint job either.. for the amount of my car payment I expect better!

 

I am having the same problem. You can search back for some of my other posts.

I have noticed that I have many rust spots over my rear wheels, on the quarter panel.

Not impressive Nissan.

As an update, I got my car washed today and the rear trunk face (where the license plate is) is riddled with 200-300 pin head sized rust spots. I am starting to wonder if it's some sort of grime.

 

I noticed A LOT of rust spots on the lower sections of mine too (Perl). They are about the size of the diameter of a pin (not the head). I asked my dealer about it the other day, the top mechanic thinks it's from the brakes. After he mentioned that, it did make sense because most of them exist below the body side moulding and in back of the front wheel. He says it has to do with the new semi-metalic brake pads the are being used.

If this is the case, wouldn't the wheels be covered with orange specks? Why would they stick to the paint on the side of the car?

Anyone have any comments or suggestions?

 

Is the rust forming due to paint chips, chipped paint, etc, or does it just start rusting?

 

It's not due to chips, except for 1 or 2.

The brake idea is OK, but it doesn't explain why it's on the back of car.

 

DUDE, have you been asleep for the past month? we have this thread all about paint chips and has like 9+ pages of reply.....get with the program...go and reply to that thread...we are tryen to get nissan to do something about that. i really hope everyone here will do everything in there power to help us get nissan out working with the paint chip problems

 

It's not because of chips. The tiny rust spots just seem to form on the body of the car.. and it's not because of the brakes! They'll come off with a bit of elbow grease. This problem seems unique to us icelandic pearl owners.

 

wow i can still post.
ok first....those pinhead sized rust spots are not from the car. or brakes...its called industrial fallout. crap in the air settles on the car and begins to stain the paint. thats why it is more noticed on the white cars. trust me, it happens on all cars. my yellow sonoma gets it sometimes. my moms red 94 hardbody has it. my teal VR4 has it. it is preventable. you gotta wash the car every week and keep it nice and waxed. like wax it every time you wash it. this is the reason it will rub out. look closely at the paint when you rub out those stains. it should be a little pitted. its not the paints fault. its pollution. at work this lady came in with a new white escape that was almost orange because fallout. turns out she never washes it. she foot the bigg for repairing it because its not fords fault...its the owners fault.

 

Sorry but I don't buy that one.

If that was the case, it would be all over the car. On mine, it's only on the lower body panels behind the front wheel, on the rocker panels (inside the door) and some on the back bumper.

Any other suggestions?

 

just curious, because i don't have any of the symptoms (yet), but see if you are getting them on the bumper areas as well; since the bumpers are not metallic they should not be there, if they are present, than it's probably not rust. just another one of my miniscual thoughts.

kafene.

 

I have to kind of give you one with your point.

Not for the obvious that if it's in one spot it should be everywhere. The trunk lid may not be made by the same guys who make the quarter panels, so there ***may*** be some manufacturing / preperation flaw in one of the parts.

The interestin point that you bring up and that I can support in some respects is your reference to rust on the bumper. I have noticed spots on the bumper and on the painted parts of the side blinker mouldings.

How does a peice of plastic rust? This fact lends itself well to the brake dust / other debris idea. The one thing is that I really don't understand how some dust can attach itself to the read face of the car, neccessarily due to suction, with such force that a regular hand wash will not remove the particles.

All in all is weird and Nissan better have some good answers.

 

guys....it's called road grime and oxidation....everyone gets it...it's just easier to see in lighter cars..try using a cleaner wax....and you should be fine. It's not Nissan's fault that we drive our cars and get them dirty and get other crap on them. It IMPOSSIBLE for paint to rust....only the sheetmetal UNDER the paint can rust.

As for the chips....all cars made in the last 10 years have problems with them. Car manufacturers stoped using acrylic paints in the early 90's and that's why we get paint chips so easily, the new paints are much more brittle. You can partially prevent some chips by using a pre-wax cleaner like zymol...that restores the moisture back to the paint therefore making it less prone to chipping.

 

It may not be Nissan's fault that we get our cars dirty, but it may what Nissan has done that is causing the problem we are experiencing.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I took my car to the dealer and asked them to check into this. The head mechanic thinks this has to do with the new composition of the brake pads (they are no longer using asbestos). This guy has been working on Nissans for over 25 years and has just started seeing this problem. The service manager told me that he had never had any complaints about this in the past. I'd just like to figure out how the damn things stick to the sides and back of my car.

As for the chips. I don't see anything different in my 2000 Maxima than what I've seen in any of my other cars (2 Mazda's, 4 Toyota's, 1 Nissan and 1 Datsun). These are Japanese cars, the sheet metal is thin and the paint is not durable, PERIOD! I didn't buy them for their exceptional paint or rugged bodies, I bought them for their exceptional mechanical and electrical components and reliability. I'm grateful that they started using more galvanized steel and clear coat paints. I just wish they would start using powder coating.

 

I can atest to fallout. This past summer I worked right near our airport so the planes would fly over everyday. And since the Air Force base is right next to the airport, the fighters would fly over as well. I noticed some of these yellow spots, but they didn't bulge or anything, so I ruled out rust. In just 6-8 hours of my car sitting in the parking lot, it would get covered with black bits of jet exhaust fallout. I also noticed that if I did a routine wash and wax once a week, it kept the problem down to a minimum, and none have surfaced since then. I use PRO's Fastrak liquid carnuba.