I am reading your replies.. Rust on a 2002 car?

WTF?

A car shouldn't rust before at least 5 years.. sea or not. Here we have snow, calcium and such and it really isn't rusting as fast (on other brands).

Maybe canadian versions get more paint since mitsu knows they will be in winter.

And we have a rust/perforation warranty of 5 years/80 000km if I'm not mistaken

Etienne

 

The Paint Job on this car *02 OZ Lancer* is horrile I have never seen a car that was so, poorly painted. I have mad chips in my hood chips by my rear doors and I have only had this car for 5 months, I know im not that rough on this car. Does anyone know if they are willing to do anything under warranty about this paint problem or if I have to just suck it up and get a new paint job?

 

I dont know about paint chips and all that jazz but I can tell you that the paint does not stand up to being hit by big chunks of concrete from overloaded trucks on the expressway (neither does the sheet metal for that matter). Damn thing nearly tore a hole in the roof.

 

I've got paint chips everywhere and a few on the hood are starting to rust. If the slightest thing rubs up against the car, it will leave a scratch. It seems they are mostly along the edges of panels, which means it's unlikely to be caused by rocks/stones. That's just a sign of a bad paint job. By the way, I bought my car late in January and have only about 5K on it.
-N

 

This is all bull****... We need to get something together so that we can give it to like a Mitsubishi headquarters and completely ***** them out about how their paint sux, and that we all want our cars fixed. I have paint chips on my hood, skirts, front bumper of my car and little scratches everywhere it is really pissing me off on how cheap the paintjob is and we deff. need to do something about this.. So if anyone has any ideas on how we can go about this throw the idea out to us all so we can get this moving!!

 

What about if we get everyone to sign a peition *SP saying that we all are having problems with our paint and want something to be done about it..and we all take a print out and our cars up to the dealer ships and complain...till they do somethiN!

 

paint sucks. Good luck getting anything done with your paint at the dealer. When i went a district rep came out with a roll of masking tape and said that if the paint was bad that he would be able to pull it off with a piece of tape. I think thats a total load of ****. If masking tape is gonna pull the paint off your car you will be lucky if you have any paint left by the time you get to the dealer ship. for paint

 

I am with you guys..
EVO paint job suck...

That's why I am going to paint my EVO from ground up .. by using Mercedes Benz designo paint..
It will be costly but well worth it for me..

 

A few comments about paint in general, from a painter:

"Don't wax the paint too early..." TRUE. If you can still smell the solvents in the paint (not likely when you get it, but maybe) DO NOT apply wax (or anything else for that matter). Wait for the solvents to all evaporate, or they will basically disolve the paint from the inside. It will never fully dry, and be easily damaged.

"Masking tape will remove paint if it's bad" TRUE. HOWEVER, this 'test' is derived from an aircraft specification for flame sprayed aluminum onto carbon fiber components. And the tape is a specific type available from 3M (and it IS a paper-type masking tape). If you research it, it will turn something like this up, so you believe it. BUT, automotive paint (properly applied) should not be removed by masking tape, even if it IS quite bad. The bond strength is too high. If it is bubbling, the tape MAY remove it, but maybe not, as the paint bonds to itself even better than to the primer (if bubbling).

The japan paint may be of lesser quality than other paints (German paints come to mind), but they ALL suffer from rock-chips. My BMW is full of them, but no rust. A quality wax is the key. AND when waxing, don't forget those door jams, wheel-wells and under-hood areas. The wax is sacrificial, to protect the paint.

"Bird crap will discolor paint" TRUE. TOTALLY. Discoloration is the BEST you can hope for. Bird crap is ACID and destroys paint. Those little stones birds eat to help with digestion don't help paint either. Again, the wax is there to be disolved, rather than the paint. Keep a bottle of Zymol Detail in the trunk with a rag to remove the crap as soon as possible. If you look closely at your paint, you can actually SEE the mark left by bird crap after washing it off. It burns right into the paint (or clear-coat if you have it).

I recomend Blitz wax. It is a good compromise between durability and depth of shine. Stay away from waxes with silicone in them. If you applied a silicone-containing wax to your car, and it is re-painted, guess what? The paint will not properly bond, and will fail worse than the original paint. This COULD be what happened to some of you with re-paint failure. A wax I used to use is LOADED with silicone and other polymers: Meguir's 'high-tech' yellow wax. I used it for a while before I realized it has almost NO wax in it! It's almost totally polymer.

I hope this information is of use to some of you, and if you just brought home that new EVO, make sure the paint is fully cured before waxing, and use a quality wax when it is.

J!m

 

<Comic Book Guy> "WORST PAINT EVER!!!!"

 

Anyone had any problems with the Canadian '03 Lancer? I've got a silver one, and I'm about to take it on a road trip to Montreal in a few weeks. I figured they'd learned their lesson after the '02 Lancer and might have gone with a better paint job on the Canadian version, with all the snow and salt we get.