JCG

Has anyone else noticed how easily paint just chips off the TSX. I have had my TSX for 9 months now and have about 16,500 miles on it and already have a dime-sized section of paint missing from the hood and one from the passenger door which I thjnk the dealer put there at my last servicing -- it looks like he hit the door with the air-powered wrench!

I just don't have the time to constantly run down all these chips and don't want to spend the money to have the entire hood and door repainted. I have tried tough up paint and Langka (paint repair system) but it simply cannot look as good as whole new paint job.

I have noticed that all Acura appear to have pretty weak paint. What's the deal!?

LurchRSX

Complain...they will fix under warrenty!!!

Dan Martin

Acura has been like this for years. My Dad's '99 TL was covered in chips before he sold it. I assume that Honda is the same.

biker

Maybe it's Honda's way to stay green - put as little paint on the car as possible to please the tree huggers.

bob shiftright

The paint on my wife's Oddity seems to be holding up pretty good for a late-model car. But it was built in Canada, not Japan, Europe or the US.

The nose of my '98 Volvo looks like it served as the backdrop for one of Tony Soprano's shotgun hits. My kid's '88 Merc has 0 (zero) chips on the nose even after 180,000 miles. So whatever happened, must have happened between 1988 and 1998.

The paint is brittle. In the case of the Volvo it was because of their paint shop which actually received awards from environmental groups. Like most of the Euros today they use a water-based carrier for the paint rather than organic solvents. There have been a lot of complaints about this on the BMW board, too. Maybe environmentally friendly but definitely user-unfrendly. Welcome to the "Green Age"!

smock9

my dealer wont fix the chips and scratches.

the front is terrible, there are scraches and chips and even dents on the hood. i was weeping in the street during my last wash and wax.

Carlos8542222

What color among the ones below do you guys think is best in making the chips less noticeable?

Black
Artic Blue
Red
Grey
Meteor Silver
Satin Silver
White

KingV

silver probably. The way I've heard it explained is the way that paint is made so shiny is to make the paint very hard, and hard paint is brittle paint. I'm relatively happy with the TSX paint. You just have to be careful how close you follow. some chips will happen, if you stay on top of them they should be mostly unnoticeable. I have 4, two just barely big enough to fill and langka on the hood, one on the door that was there when I too delivery and one on the bumper that was my fault when parallel parking. The one on the bumper is the only one you can still really see after the repair, even then only from certain angles (the reflection is off a bit) the other three are essentially invisible.

Mokos23

no not silver cause my mom's MDX has rock chips on it which are noticable.

all hondas/acuras are like this when it comes to paint. my old Accord had a lot of chips and so far just a few small ones on the TSX, but what do you expect.

all cars will have rock chips.

but, my folks had a 99 Mercedes ML and that paint on that Mercedes refused to chip! it was built like a tank and in the 4.5 yrs my folks owned it, there were barely any rock chips on it at all.

so, you could buy a mercedes if you really want to keep ur car paint in good shape, but the C class is about $5-10K more nicely equipped than the TSX.

acuraaddict_RENAMED

I have read a nearly identical complaint on both Volkswagen and Volvo discussion groups. The most common explanation has been that most modern OEM paint jobs are now a water based paint for environmental reasons and they end to chip much more easily. I have no personal expertise in the paint and coatings business but I have seen similar paint chipping on my Passat and am waiting for it to occur on my Volvo.

Anyone out there in the business have an opinion on this theory?

Helicobacter Pylori

I guess there is another good reason to maintain a safety distance.

One paint will certainly make chips less noticeable














































Primer

TSX 'R' US

I have an SSM TSX...and I've got lotsa rock chips on my hood and they are noticeable in the shade. They're kinda hard to spot in the sunlight though. The US bottles of touch up paint doesn't seem to match as well as the Canadian paint pens.

HKevF

Let's see some pictures. Until, I see more than 1-2 isolated crappy photos of what may or may not be a TSX fender, I'm much more inclined to believe that I'm reading examples of some individuals' need to complain about something, which may or may not have any substance. Granted the TSX is not a perfect car, but it's a damn nice one. So, let's see some good shots.
Cheers.

KingV

The paint is pretty thin, but as a plus to that, it doesn't have as much orange peel as some luxury makes. My roommates Z4 has crazy orange peel if you look up close. I've noticed the same thing on mercedes as well. The TSX is pretty much better, IMO.

Kawaii

my dad has a silver 01 TL and there are no chips whatsoever, my black 99 integra however has a tiny chip on the spoiler and i fixed a small chip on the passenger door handle...

for honda, my green 97 del sol had no chips at all and my stepdad's green 99 CRV looked pretty good too.

gmohr

I had to register just to respond to his post.

My red TSX has 6000 miles on it, and no less than 20 individual chips in the hood and front fenders. This paint issue is my only real complaint about the car.

My dealer said "rock damage" and would do nothing to fix the problem under warranty. They gave me a bottle of touchup paint.

Edit: by way of comparision, my last car was a 2000 328Ci with 100k miles, and that car had *maybe* 10 such chips. dissapointing.

Mindcrime

I just ordered a TL and I noticed this issue on a demo TL and a used TSX on the lot.
I'm kind of concerned about it. I sold a 323i for the TL and I had no chips, allthough I did have a clear bra on the front of the hood. Plan on doing the same on the TL and add clear bra to the
bumper.

Ugggh, more expense.

Dan Martin

A 1% increase to the car cost is not that bad.

MarkPinTx

One thing about these chip complaints is that they seem to originate from the "Great White North" (ie Canada and in this case NY).

Before I bought, I looked at my dealer's fleet of loaners and there werent many if any noticeable chips on those cars.

Could this be a problem endemic to places where they sand/salt the roads? Here in Texas, the sand is sand. What rocks there are tend to be pea gravel and thus round and also chalk or limestone, which is pretty soft. Do you guys have (sharpened) granite in your sand?

Dan Martin

For sure the road contitions are tough on our cars up here. If we had Texas weather we wouldn't be complaining.

Mindcrime

Colorado is the rock gravel capital of the country. They don't thow down salt during the winter they throw down gravel and sand. I've never had a car in Colorado that didn't have a winshield get cracked at some point. We are also the hail capital of the word so we have the to look forward too, which is nice.

peetah

Definitely a paint, not a geographic issue. I live in California, drove an 86 Accord before TSX. Zero chips on 86 Accord, and at least 5 chips on my TSX with only 7K miles. That stuff they used in 86 is much more durable.

slo007

I have chips all over my windshield. But the paint is doing pretty well when it comes to rocks. It's the bugs and birds that consume my car with fire!

Kanon23

that's why I told everyone that the clear bra feels like condom (when it comes to bugs juice and rock chips)

schalliol

I agree too, lots of paint chips (I need to look here to see if there's a good way to fix them, you refer to some things, but in the past I've asked and was told it just would look worse to try to fix). I lived in California for most of the time I've had this car and found that the paint really chips from road debris. Now that I live in a snowy area where they put down sand and such I'm quite worried. It also seems that marks show up very strongly from a "door bash," even a light one.

RMATIC09

I really dont have any at all? I tried searching, i guess im just not as picky....

schalliol

I'm pretty sure that it's not that you are not as picky as others. At least with my car, all the imperfections are very easy to see.

dabuda

honda/acura paint has never been known to be strong. that's why i put on a clear bra a few weeks of getting my tsx. so far no paint chips whatsoever

moda_way

I posted this before... didn't seem to get to much response, but my clear coat is coming off my car... in addition to paint chips.

https://acurazine.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19555

I also agree that the Japanese seem to have the worst paint durability I've seen, short of American cars in the mid-90's.

MemRheins

Chip wise, Blacks horrible, u dont even wanna know about my side doors, im just pritty good at hiding them, besides that though, this paint sucks period, im half tempted to get the whole damn car resprayed in like a flat black, forget that metallic flake sh*t that makes the car look blue, and just wax like crazy... For an Acura the paints lousy, my moms MDX is the same NHB, and its even worse, I dont wanna know what my car would look like if I didnt obsess over it...

zumzum

Do you guys have paint chips that are just on the hood of the car? My TSX is like a little a year old and I have little paint chips all over the place. They're on the hood and only the driver side doors and the rear bumper. There aren't that many on the hood. It's really bizarre. Plus the chips are very very small, not your typical size like the ones you get from normal winter driving. Does the warranty cover it? I don't think it does. It has to be that the paint just sucks w/ the Acuras and Hondas!

pmail

Going back to the question asked, why does the paint job suck? The guy who's installing my ClearBra on Friday tells me that EPA now requires that the only paint used on cars sold in the U.S. be water-based. Is this possible? Does anyone have more information about a correlation (or not) between EPA requirements and Acura paint jobs?

Sclass88

My dad's 05 TL is a mess. The front end has at least 20 small paint chips and it looks terrible. He wants to get the Clear Bra but doesn't know if its worth it at this point. If we go through the dealer to install the clear bra, could they do something to clean up the existing paint chips before installing the clear bra??

pmail

Okay, Sclass88, valid question for sure even if not about the model to which this message board is dedicated, but I'm the one who revived this thread after 2 months, my paint job is still pristine, and I'd like those reading Acurazine to pay attention to these questions first, if you don't mind: So, is TSX paint really water-based? If so, is that required by law? (I need to size up the credibility of my Clearbra dealer, who told me these things, by Friday.)

Jack Slate

Yes, this is exactly the case why the paint is more easily chipped. The finance guy tried to get me to buy their paint sealant package when he mentioned the water-based paints now used. I really try to keep my distance, but it's hard to do that when you drive in traffic every day. It's amazing how many little pebbles or pieces of rock kick up from behind cars. I cringe when I hear the snap or pop sound. I also have numerous chips on my windshield.

matelot

water-based?

required by law?

>> I need to size up the credibility of my Clearbra dealer, who told me these things, by Friday.

I dont understand why his "credibility" is so important for clear-shielding a car lol ???
I mean we are not talkin about hiring some contractor to build your house for serious $$$$$
Isn't his skills and reasonable pricing more important ?

desx

How involved and long did it take to do the permanent install for the V1. I just purchased one and am considering doing that. Also what was your placement of the V1?

ODUB

i dunno what y'all are talkin about...my 00 accord's paint is fine...still shines and everything...zero chips. no problems with my sister's civic or my mom's element either

kenji4861

I owned my Honda Civic 02 for 3 years and drove it pretty hard on the highway. I noticed maybe a 2-3 chips on the bumper before selling.

I owned my TSX for about 1 month, I noticed about 5 new chips in the last 5 months.

I don't know if it's the paint, or the way the car was designed.. makes it easier for rocks to hit it?

CGTSX2004

iTrader: (1)

The primary reason is the new water-based paint. These are intended to be more environmentally friendly, but lacks the hardness of the old style paint. This has become a mandatory requirement in recent years (very recently) and all manufacturers are expected to switch to this paint. Volvo was one of the first manufacturers to switch to this paint and they were the first to discover the problems with chipping.