Ford Paint Problems 2012-2018

[Hot Pepper Red Zeppelin]

@P. A. Schilke

Hope I did that right.

So we have a '12 Fusion that the paint on the hood went to total crap within the last couple of years. Wife went to Maaco to get an estimate and the guy was telling her that the dude at Ford in charge of the paint operations totally screwed the pooch from '12 to '18 (wife wasn't totally sure on the years). He said that the guy now works for Dodge and they are seeing issues with their vehicles.

I searched the interwebs and saw quite a bit of stuff about Ford paint issues in that time frame including lawsuits but most was regarding specific vehicles, ie, F150, Escape, don't think I saw any Fusion links. Just curious about the truth of the story and figured you might have some insight.

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[D Fresh]

Sounds like a load of BS from the telephone game. There might be 5% truth to the comment.

 

[P. A. Schilke]

@P. A. Schilke

Hope I did that right.

So we have a '12 Fusion that the paint on the hood went to total crap within the last couple of years. Wife went to Maaco to get an estimate and the guy was telling her that the dude at Ford in charge of the paint operations totally screwed the pooch from '12 to '18 (wife wasn't totally sure on the years). He said that the guy now works for Dodge and they are seeing issues with their vehicles.

I searched the interwebs and saw quite a bit of stuff about Ford paint issues in that time frame including lawsuits but most was regarding specific vehicles, ie, F150, Escape, don't think I saw any Fusion links. Just curious about the truth of the story and figured you might have some insight.

Hi HPRZ,

I really can not speak to specific vehicle lines directly in that time frame as I was nicely retired by that time. How I can speak in general. Paint operations at a plant are one of the more difficult areas of the plant as environmental variables keep changing hour by hour for example. Add to this the pressure from the government to get rid of organic compounds being dispensed into the air (Reason LA Assembly, SF Assembly are gone ... Thank you CARB). Because the paint line is so expensive, investment in new state-of-the-art paint lines has to be stretched out between plants and model years. State-of-the-art is a moving target too, eh? Then on the Chemist side the transition to waterbased and away from solvent based paints has been a wobbly process. I recall seeing the early waterbased paints on a couple Crown Vic cars and they were horribly orange peeled. As for "the guy" as referred by Maaco estimator...Paint was a whole area with hundreds of people....and there is cross pollination between manufacturers that naturally occurs .... So Bunk to the Maaco estimator... JMO

Best,
Phil

 

[wanted33]

I have no idea if the guy at Maaco is full of chit, or not. But, Ford still puts out some pretty crappy paint jobs on their vehicles. The paint is so thin on the right side of my truck bed at the back door you can see the difference in the paint. It's much lighter on the bed than it is on the door when in the sun. One of the robots much have been on a little mini strike when my Ranger came by.

 

[rydfree]

I will echo what Phil said and state that it is not just Ford . All auto makers have to deal with the regulations ever changing . My '91 Ranger is in great shape but it lost all of its clearcoat in year 10 as if it was shedding its skin . It looks the same now as it did in 2011 so the basecoat is great , LOL.
I remember a ton of GM vehicles coming through my shop in the late 90's that had rusted roofs due to the paint coming off in sheets down to the bare metal .

 

[AdamHarris]

Ford is actually one of the better quality automakers these days when it comes to paint. Japanese automakers are masters and making paint as thin as humanly possible. I've refinished many corollas and civics that were 5-7 yrs old with the clear coat already failing. Any cutting and buffing AT ALL results in clear failure. Like Phil said its a modern wonder that any automakers are able to put any quality paint on at all at such a large scale. Ford extremely high volume manufacturing makes it even more wonderous that they are able to do as well as they do.

 

[mustang marty]

I love red vehicles but every red car or truck from Ford owned by family members in the last 30 years had severe paint fade . Needless to say I will buy any other color . the other colors from Ford seem fine , but I still fear the RED Shades . I also was a former painter and when they switched to water base paints they lost longevity to me . Nothing like the old acrylic enamels with clearcoat .

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