First wash - (small) paint blems and (potential) rust traps.

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mwalsh

Well-known member
Leaf Supporting Member
Joined
Apr 22, 2010
Messages
9,781
Location
Garden Grove, CA
I've always been a huge believer in washing my own vehicles. Not only do I find it therapeutic, it allows you time to pour over every inch of your vehicle, looking for potential maintenance problems down the road.

So today was the first wash for the LEAF and I found a couple of things.

The first thing I found was a small number of pin-head sized blemishes in my paint that I didn't notice on delivery. Now I'm not the first person to report paint problems with their new LEAF (though I am the first to report them publicly), and these are not massive. But they are somewhat annoying, and I guess I'm reporting them here now so that, should they become a bigger problem on that panel down the road, it's out there that this is how the problem started. This is on the rear hatch just below the rear window on the passenger side. Quite possibly something (solvent maybe) under the paint surface that has now come to the top and "popped".

blems.jpg


The other thing I noticed is something we don't so much have to be concerned about in this neck of the woods, but could be a huge problem for those of you in more inclement areas down the road - there is an area just in front of the rear wheels that is going to be a magnet for mud and/or road salt that you are going to have to put extra effort into keeping clean. Otherwise (and this comes of many years of dealing with rust issues on British cars), I can virtually guarantee that area is going to rust out on you before the serviceable life of the vehicle has passed:

dirt_trap.jpg
 
oh no! That first scratch/ding/imperfection in the paint is the hardest. I'm dreading when I find my first one. I don't wash my own cars. Do you think that bringing the Leaf to a regular car wash will be ok?
 
malloryk said:
oh no! That first scratch/ding/imperfection in the paint is the hardest. I'm dreading when I find my first one. I don't wash my own cars. Do you think that bringing the Leaf to a regular car wash will be ok?

I'm sure that would be fine. Just not something I do myself. HeeHee....even stole some of our "good" towels and relegated them to "shop towel" status (shhh....don't tell the wife!).
 
malloryk said:
................. I don't wash my own cars. Do you think that bringing the Leaf to a regular car wash will be ok?
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Brushless car wash would be fine. I used to take my cars to the cheapy car washes with brushes swirling. Tons of surface scratches and swirl marks appeared over time :cry:
 
Or you can follow my method. Don't wash more than once a year ;)

ps : There was a thread earlier about the pollution washing cars can cause. Check it out.
 
evnow said:
Or you can follow my method. Don't wash more than once a year ;)

ps : There was a thread earlier about the pollution washing cars can cause. Check it out.
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Out here in CA, car wash businesses are required to recycle, filter and reuse their water :mrgreen:
 
mwalsh to me they look like paint droplet or heavier paint right? If so they are not a big issue but suck to find on the car will cause more of a problem is the door gets repainted.
 
Gonewild said:
mwalsh to me they look like paint droplet or heavier paint right? If so they are not a big issue but suck to find on the car will cause more of a problem is the door gets repainted.

It's more of a crater, but not a fisheye, where the paint wouldn't be broken. They are almost like rock chips, but obviously not because they're too uniform and in places rocks couldn't possibly hit.
 
I am with MWalsh, washing your own car is a "bonding" experience. Besides, I was a professional auto detailer in my teens and have never really kicked the habit. Are those tiny "fisheyes". If so, then yes indeed this was an improperly cleaned body panel prior to painting. Make Nissan aware of it asap as the trunk should be one of the least areas prone to rock chips. Is it to the primer or down to the body panel? Another possibility (but unlikely) is if they sealed the paint too soon. A new car needs 90 days to bake off the solvents in their paint before being sealed with wax. Usually this mistake presents itself as haze/discoloration in the paint though. A car built in Nov should not be sealed until Feb IMHO.

Also, a pinhole in the primer could to this... but I think it would have been noticed by Nissan or you during delivery. Strange.
 
Try posting a "macro" shot of the worst offender. I am thinking "pinholes" in the primer or small "particulates" on the primer, painted over, then washed off.
 
TRONZ said:
Try posting a "macro" shot of the worst offender. I am thinking "pinholes" in the primer or small "particulates" on the primer, painted over, then washed off.

That's not easy to do after a lunchtime glass of wine. Hic! :lol:

But now that I have, you can see there is actually more of a crater. And actually other evidence in a sort of splatter pattern of contaminant that is more or less invisible to the naked eye.

blem3.jpg


I'm not massively worried about it, and certainly not worried about it enough to demand that the panel be repainted. Unless, that is, it were to get worse! That would be a problem for me. :x
 
The non-macro view looked much better! :)

I remember how obsessive I was about protecting the appearance of my first new car ;) Every little scratch that inevitably happened would give me way too much grief. But now, I hardly notice. LOL

As it is now, I don't think anyone would even see those blemishes. Hope it doesn't get worse though.
 
It looks more like a drop of something on top of the paint in the 'macro' image, at least to me. Perhaps a few tiny specs of something 'dribbled' on it in the production line or post-production (on the ship, truck, etc...?)
 
You can totally feel it, and I'm about 95% certain that it's more "chip" like, in that your fingernail feels like the inside of the circle is the ridge rather than drip like where the outside of the circle would feel like the ridge. But they are really too tiny (for me) to easily distinguish.
 
Looks like a pinhole in the primer. Panel was not surfaced with primer correctly. The dot was likely the ridge around the pinhole, it was painted and buffed w compound which took off the raised dot of paint. I can see the pinhole in the center easily. Document it with Nissan so it is on the record. A paint chip is usually NOT a perfect circle much less multiple perfect circles. Good attitude BTW.
 
TRONZ said:
Looks like a pinhole in the primer. Panel was not surfaced with primer correctly. The dot was likely the ridge around the pinhole, it was painted and buffed w compound which took off the raised dot of paint. I can see the pinhole in the center easily. Document it with Nissan so it is on the record. A paint chip is usually NOT a perfect circle much less multiple perfect circles. Good attitude BTW.

Will do. Hey, what's the use of getting bent out of shape....resprays (from my experience) are rarely (if ever) as good as factory applied paint. So I'll take this, even with the blems. Unless huge strips of paint start peeling off. :?
 
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