Have you all found the paint on the 2019 RDX to be very thin and fragile to contact with anything? More so than with other cars?

 

I haven't noticed the paint to be terribly thin/fragile.. A few fairly large rocks have hit my front bumper, but overall seems about as durable as other cars I have owned. I considered doing XPEL on the front end but for the $1,200-1,500 most places wanted, i figure i'd rather just repaint the bumper at some point. I did a bit of correction on the car and luckily didnt polish though the paint...yet. Other than that i wash weekly with ONR, Optiseal & Beadmaker and am pretty satisfied w/the paint....

What I have noticed so far is straight up crappy paint application...the rear roof of my car, near the edges of the plastic rail runner things there is just extra clumps of paint...as if they thought nobody would notice...

 

A car on the freeway kicked up a small rock and hit the driver side door. The noise was loud and I was surprised to see that there were no dent on the door, but it left four small (but deep) scratches about 1/4" long and I could see metal. I bought the factory touch-up paint pen to just cover these.

Also found a few of door scratches in the middle of rear quarter panel. No dents, just vertical and horizontal white marks no longer than 4". I buffed them out with something called "Do All" scratch remover.

 

I thought that Honda/Acura was advertising that they spent millions to improve the paint quality and durability on this gen RDX?

 

Sigh.... Not another paint thread...

When manufacturers started using water based paints to conform with environmental laws, there seemed to be a corresponding increase in complaints, but you see this identical complaint on every single enthusiast site.

Your paint is fine.

 

Agree.

 

Hey CEB..........two things:

1. I could care less if you are not pleased with my question......."Sigh.... Not another paint thread". Maybe if you get too bored you will not return to this website. That works for me.

2. Without seeing my car in person, you have no idea that "your paint is fine". It must be great to be so knowledgable about things you know nothing about.

 

WOW.. just wow. Someone needs their meds

 

As opposed to an oil thread?

My complaint is with the thin fragile plastic substrate for the paint, located on the front of the car.

 

What thin fragile plastic substrate for the paint, located on the front of the car? Can you provide a picture of what you are talking about?

 

I sure can.

 

I am going to toss my 2 cents in on this one: I don't get how you want to blame the plastic when it did what it was SUPPOSED to do. If it had been metal, what would have happened? It sucks that you have a hole in your bumper but it's not a defect or the fault of cheap materials if you are going highway speeds and a bolt or object of substantial weight hits your bumper like that. That was not caused by a small lightweight object is what I can see... not slamming you just pointing to what I observe

 

Ahhh, so your complaint is that the plastic, which is by regulation required to be there to meet the crash standards, cracks when it comes into contact with a sharp, hard object.

Yes, it is annoying, but whatever hit your car could have gone through your radiator. A decent bodyshop should be able to fix that (relatively) cheaply.

As an aside, when I had my BMW 335, I recall a poster on the BMW board hitting a styrofoam cooler (you know, those $1 coolers that the bottom falls out of when you put in a six pack and ice) that took out his bumper and fog light.

 

Wasn't "sharp" AFAIK, but I never saw the airborne object. Ice chunk is most likely, unless someone chucked a beer can at me. ( It probably would have needed to be full to do this damage, so not likely... )

Is $1200 "cheap"? !!! To add insult to injury, the color match is a little bit off, so now I have to decide whether to have them respray it.

How is it that rubberized material, such as what covers the front and rear bumpers on most (all? ) other vehicles I have owned, wouldn't meet crash standards? I think this has more to do with style, and the complicated contours of the front end dictate a material choice.

BTW, my speed was 35-40 mph. If it had been Interstate speed I could understand it. ( E=1/2mV^2 if I recall correctly ). This is nuts.

 

My RDX paint (white) appears as flawless and perfect as any of the several prior BMW's I owned, including my current LR. Not a ding, blemish, no orange peel, nothing. No rock chips yet...but like any car...I expect some someday.

 

RDXguy - "I couldn't care less", is the proper phrase. If you could care less then why wouldn't you? lol

 

Since you didn't see it, you can't be sure if it was a rock, ice or a bullet, but that is really immaterial at this stage.

$1200 is outrageous unless they put on a new bumper and resprayed it. Unfortunately, a bumper only respray will have a slightly different color because of the additives they need to add to the paint to allow it to flex. They can blend the paint into the fender to make the color "match".

My bodyshop would have fixed that bumper and painted that section, blending it into the surrounding area. I paid $250 for a similar repair on a 2002 Lexus RX about 4 years ago. It still looks perfect. They painted about a 6 inch section.

Sure a rubber trim would work, but I can't think of a recent car that still has rubber trim?

 

They removed the "bumper", repaired it, resprayed it, and reinstalled it. Lots of labor. Or so they claim.

Kinda glad they didn't try to "blend in" to surrounding panels. So maybe I'll leave well enough alone. Thanks for the feedback.

I mentioned to the insurance agent it might have been a meteorite, for all I know...

( BS aside, I did consider the bullet theory, but AFAIK it didn't penetrate the aluminum bumper beam right behind the bumper shroud. )

Blue ice from a passenger jet?

They weren't buying any of it until I sent photos showing the damage is 21" off the ground in a recessed area.

Anyway, I hope this is literally a shot out of the blue, and it doesn't get trendy.

But I did notice there are lots of "slightly damaged" 2nd-gen RDX bumpers for sale on e-Bay.

 

I have several small chips n my hood after only 3,000 miles,,,,,,does seem rather thin or possibly too hard of paint,,I might get a nose guard to keep those rocks in check,,,,

 

I do not know what happened to my car. I was not in it when this occurred. The paint sure looks pretty thin to me. These scrapes are not very large.

 

UGH! Sorry this happened to your RDX! Don't you just hate it when this happens, and to add to it, the offender doesn't care enough to leave a note.

Looks like this is the rear, as I see the proximity sensor in the pic, as the front doesn't have any (and just a snippet of the red reflector!).

 

Yes rear right corner

 

Not much thicker than a sheet of paper ?

 

Ouch. That was one expensive body shop. You may want to research some more ethical shops now for any future work. I'm also not sure why they resprayed the entire bumper.

This unfortunate incident could have happened to any car. Sorry it had to be you.

 

That looks about right for any modern car. That said, the way the paint chipped off (around the scrape) seems to indicate that there may not be the traditional flexing agent applied to the bumper paint - not that more flexing agent would have changed anything in this case.

 

Ouch.

The other guy don't need no stinking bumper sensors. He just parks by feel.

 

I guess what we learned from this is that you should get the RDX in black to hide the inevitable damage to the bumper..lol