Fatally Disappointed--The Thread I never wanted to write.

^^^ Yup, that is just a cleaner wax, which contains mild abrasives. That's about as mild a method of cleaning this as you will find. Any auto parts store will have a wide array of cleaner waxes on the shelf. If that doesn't work, you can go to the next step which would be a polish, then a compound, then sanding, etc.

 

EM...
Man.....I'm sorry, but welcome to the club!

Everybody that is familiar with my posts knows that I have a special place in my heart for dealerships - especially Toyota dealerships, but I'm trying to determine if what's going on with your car is environmental or a manufacturing defect.
I don't see how something can "get" under three layers of paint and start oxidizing but I fix phones for a living, and I'm not seeing what you're seeing. At best I can see a good picture of what you're seeing.

You're on the fourth page of recommendations and I can't think of much to add.
Paint is supposed to protect the underlying material ad well as give you the good looking finish. If your car is starting to get skin cancer from normal use, then I would submit that your paint isn't doing its job.
Whether this is from use or abuse may be a 'wobbler' and this is where dealerships/OEMs will show their stuff - either good or bad.

My mind is made up, and had been since the early 90's having been re-affirmed both by negotiating with my CFO for a new vehicle (we went with a GM) and reading story anfer story after story after story about how Toyota stands behind their customers (it's easier to back shoot them that way! )

Good Luck!
I know what it feels like to have a new car experiance go sour, and I hope that your situation shakes itself out to everyone's benefit!!!

Mediation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

It's not getting 'under' the paint, it is 'in' the clear coat. If it is left too long, and/or treated improperly, it starts to get worse. The rail dust/brake dust is essentially tiny metal slivers. Like a sliver in your finger, if you break off the sliver, it's more difficult to get out because it is now embedded. A clay bar will remove them if they are still partially above the surface, but since clay has virtually no abrasion, that's the limit of its ability. Polishing with some sort of abrasive will remove these because they are so small that it is unlikely they have penetrated much beyond the surface of the clear coat. These abrasives will remove some of that clear coat, taking the metal slivers with them. You do want to deal with this sooner than later, but the same is true of bird droppings, even water marks.

 

The dealer, and Toyota, had a chance and the means to make their customer happy and decided not to.

 

I think they went above and beyond what was reasonable given that this doesn't appear to be a manufacturing issue, and a dealer is not generally an expert in this subject.

 

Noted.
Excellent explanation.

If this is 'rail dust' on a two year old car? I'd probably write it off to environmental damage and tell the OP to look at all of the light colored cars in his area to determine whose manufacturers use a better paint process.

However (comma!) I'm thinking that a 5 month old car is a little different since this damage takes a while to manifest itself. This is starting to smell like a delivery problem and/or a gun-decked PDI.

I don't recall what Toyota's delivery charge is, but I'm thinking that it's most of a thousand bucks.
.....Juuuuuuust Sayin!



Good Luck!

 

Thanks.

Under the right conditions, this phenomenon can occur very quickly. My previous car, a Volvo, had some of the best paint I've ever seen on a pedestrian production automobile. At 17 years old it still looks fantastic. I would clay/polish and seal that car at least twice per year - so a maximum of 6 months between working on it - and I would run across this issue to some extent every time. It was definitely worse in the winter, where the road salt exacerbated the rusting of the metal slivers, but it happens all the time. Depending on the location and conditions of the OP's vehicle, this does not seem out of the norm to me.

In the case of that Volvo, that car actually has no clear coat on the white paint, and yet I was still always able to remove it with minimal effort.

 

but they still fell short of making the customer happy and it was well within their means to do so. they made the choice, not the customer.

 

The dealer is not obligated to make a customer happy no matter the complaint.

Like I said, this doesn't appear to be a manufacturing issue, it is just part of owning a vehicle. The dealer tried several methods of solving the issue - to the best of their ability. Since this is outside of their scope of expertise, any attempt to continue to get them to solve it is likely to cause more harm than good while ultimately getting nowhere. If the OP wants the issue taken care of, he'll take it to someone who knows what they're doing.

I liken this to the poor satellite radio reception of these cars. Some have chosen to keep going to the dealer to get them to fix the issue - spending a lot of time (money) and getting nowhere, again, because the dealer is not an expert in the subject of radio reception. No matter how much you badger them or keep going back to them, there is a limit to what they can do. Someone else decided to take matters into his own hands and figure out the issue and how to solve it, which he was able to do successfully.

 

I'm sorry but this has been made to sound like a way bigger deal than it really is. Get some polishing compound and polish the brown spots out. It is not that hard. You could likely do it by hand. After that, put a good coat of wax on it to stop this from happening again. Washing your car every week is actually hurting it because you're taking the wax off of it. Wax is your paints first line of defense against things like this. Washing the car every week leaves the paint clean but exposed. Wax your car and if you need to wash it, run it thru a touchless car wash every once in a while but be sure to select that wash that puts wax back on your car. Always put wax on your car after every wash.

The most expensive part of any car is the paint job. It can never be duplicated outside the factory. The best paintjob your car will ever have is the the first one it got at the factory. You should see the painstaking process just to enter a paintbooth at any car factory. There is zero chance this is a factory defect. I have to side with Toyota on this one.

 

I agree, but I would not take my business to a dealer who decided to not make their customers happy. That is about the only value add a dealer can offer.

 

I don't know of a single dealer that wakes up in the morning and says, "I'm going to see if I can make my customers unhappy today". No dealer would ever make a decision not to make their customers happy.

 

I once worked on a project at a GM engine plant that had a foundry next door. We tried to park upwind of the foundry, but at times we'd find fallout all over our cars. Long-time employees who kept their cars more than a couple years generally had really ugly paint.

 

I do have to say... "Fatally disappointed" implies death, reasonably interpreted to mean suicide. Even in an actual instance of that, I think most people would consider it a bit hysterical.

 

I hope that's a quick and easy remedy.

 

true, it's more like, 'i'm gonna make me happy today, and to heck with the customers'.

 

At the risk of giving away my age, we could be in the audience ( at least one show around then we were)

 

Electric Me...
Now that you know Toyota's out of the picture as far as a fix is concerned, what's the plan to remedy the problem?
Did you consider the cleaner wax product?