Excessive Paint Orangepeel

[-K2-]

Hi All;

Just joined and I have a question regarding everyone's paint. We've had to date a 2014 Outdoorsman Mossy Oak (black), 2016 Outdoorsman (brown metalic), 2019 Laramie (dark green metallic, looks black usually), and now a 2021 Laramie with about every option you can get (Patriot Blue Pearl).

How's everyone else's paint, orangepeel specifically?

I'll save remarks regarding ours until there's a little feedback

K2

 

[Whoa_Ram]

I wasn’t really educated much on what orange peel was and what it meant until my brother saw my truck and told me, holy Jebus man your truck has a ton of orange peel and then pointed out what to look for. Now I see it and am curious if I should even bring it up to the dealer lol. Quality really went down with COVID.

 

[-K2-]

Thanks @Whoa_Ram for the response.

Okay, well maybe a lot of folks didn't get paint, heh

What I describe below is of course something of an illusion since the the paint and flaws are so thin. But as they reflect light (or an image/the reflection), whereas a perfect paint job would reflect without distortion, a lot of the reflected image is cast in other directions and then look like flaws or dents. Best example would be if you looked from the upper-side at a mirrored bowl, you'll only get part of the image reflected to you. Now make that thousands of bowls.

The most recent vehicle, the orangepeel is so bad it looks like the entire vehicle has been hit with a ballpeen hammer a million times. These aren't minor ripples, they're large and cover the entire vehicle. It's so obvious and prevalent, what doesn't look like dents leaves the illusion of countless drips or like the steel was wrinkled. Our dealer's bodyshop agreed it's the worst paint they've ever seen...even ameteur repaints. A different dealer bodyshop agreed. Naturally, this is the one vehicle at $70k we decided to keep, but now? We finally prodded a Chrysler rep (or whatever they're called this week) to look at it, and though he stayed calm in person, the relayed feedback was, his words, "It looks like ****."

What is burning us up, it they HAVE DOI/RIQ inspection equipment on the line. Plus, it had to pass numerous inspectors and hundreds of hands looking at the vehicle before it reached us, and no one stopped it.

Our previous Rams (2014, 2016, 2019), it was so minimal I couldn't see it, and we have compared the 2021 to the 2019 side-by-side. Frankly, I've owned original paint vehicles from the 1960s to now, and I've NEVER seen a worse paint job.

I'll save my rant regarding their lack of diverse colors (how many shades of gray are there? It's like what we thought were kewl colors in the 80's as yuppies), and now, if we dump this vehicle, besides a lack of exterior colors, they're telling us they're only offering black leather as an interior color like it's a Model-T (you can have it in any color you want...as long as it's black).

K2

 

[Whoa_Ram]

Yeah once my brother pointed it out I see it all the time. I asked him what could I do to fix it, he said repaint the whole truck! I just thought, well I'll drive it until I decide to upgrade or something. It is pretty sad that it passed inspection like that and nobody stopped it. My brother noticed it while I was pulling up in his driveway a few feet away from it. We went through washed it and he was like yup, paint is complete crap man, but hey you love the truck right? I was like yeah.. Not the first time I get a car/truck with so many quality issues and I know it won't be the last. Just going to enjoy it as it does drive great!

Just realized yours is patriot blue as well! I wonder if it's just that color? I don't think I saw the same orange peel or little ripple effect on my buddies maroon truck or my sisters's BF's white truck. They bought there's right after I bought mine. Now I'm really curious if it's a bad batch of paint or something.

 

[-K2-]

Just realized yours is patriot blue as well! I wonder if it's just that color? I don't think I saw the same orange peel or little ripple effect on my buddies maroon truck or my sisters's BF's white truck. They bought there's right after I bought mine. Now I'm really curious if it's a bad batch of paint or something.

Well, the rep brought a truck to compare it to, a granite one I believe, and it was naturally as bad as ours. Naturally, when we looked through the lot every other truck was 1,000x better...and every other make and model were a gazillion times better. What I'm guessing it is (a pandemic vehicle, wherein everyone in every profession seems to have forgotten how to do their job from week to week), is that for a particular batch or run, they either raced them through, the ovens were too hot, or whatever...and they were so anxious to get them out the door (in such demand), they decided to just let them pass.

Regardless, we didn't pay $70k for a vehicle that looks like a hailstorm victim, and that puts into question the paints longevity, and thus the body's. Repainting is NOT an option. You then get a paint job that might look better, but they can only cure it at 160F vs. 300F due to all the heat sensitive components on it. IOW, that paint will fail even quicker, assured.

K2

 

[Whoa_Ram]

Well, the rep brought a truck to compare it to, a granite one I believe, and it was naturally as bad as ours. Naturally, when we looked through the lot every other truck was 1,000x better...and every other make and model were a gazillion times better. What I'm guessing it is (a pandemic vehicle, wherein everyone in every profession seems to have forgotten how to do their job from week to week), is that for a particular batch or run, they either raced them through, the ovens were too hot, or whatever...and they were so anxious to get them out the door (in such demand), they decided to just let them pass.

Regardless, we didn't pay $70k for a vehicle that looks like a hailstorm victim, and that puts into question the paints longevity, and thus the body's. Repainting is NOT an option. You then get a paint job that might look better, but they can only cure it at 160F vs. 300F due to all the heat sensitive components on it. IOW, that paint will fail even quicker, assured.

K2

Oh I feel you. I don't want to repaint my vehicle at all. They never come out the same and I always find errors and problems. Man I really hope that Ram would fix this, but I'm not sure what they would do at this point. The more I think of it the more I feel like complaining haha.

 

[djevox]

I guess I’m lucky that I have minimal orange peel. I remember being surprised at how good the paint looked when looking at the truck on the lot.

 

[mikeru82]

Yeah once my brother pointed it out I see it all the time. I asked him what could I do to fix it, he said repaint the whole truck! I just thought, well I'll drive it until I decide to upgrade or something. It is pretty sad that it passed inspection like that and nobody stopped it. My brother noticed it while I was pulling up in his driveway a few feet away from it. We went through washed it and he was like yup, paint is complete crap man, but hey you love the truck right? I was like yeah.. Not the first time I get a car/truck with so many quality issues and I know it won't be the last. Just going to enjoy it as it does drive great!

Just realized yours is patriot blue as well! I wonder if it's just that color? I don't think I saw the same orange peel or little ripple effect on my buddies maroon truck or my sisters's BF's white truck. They bought there's right after I bought mine. Now I'm really curious if it's a bad batch of paint or something.

Your brother is both right and wrong. If the clear coat is thick enough, or if the orange peel is minor, you can do paint correction to fix it instead of repainting. If you are unfamiliar with that, it's basically where you wet-sand out the orange peel, then use finer and finer sandpaper. How fine of grit you stop at varies. Then machine buffing with rubbing and polishing compounds to make it shine. The problem here is the clear coat is not likely thick enough if it's as bad as the OP described, and could easily be sanded through during the paint correction process. Here's just one description of paint correction.

What Is Paint Correction? | Car Cleaning Guru

Paint correction is a term that is now commonly used by both professional car detailers and car cleaning enthusiasts worldwide to describe the process of

www.carcleaningguru.com

 

[-K2-]

@mikeru82 ; what the dealer bodyshops are telling us is that the clear coat is so thin if you perform any amount of polishing you're into paint, and the paint is so thin you risk blowing through that to the primer. Remember though, I'm stating it's the entire body, every painted surface. So, since you'd need to smooth it out, that means new paint and new primer with full sands between each. Lastly, to do the job they need to remove all trim and emblems (to be replaced since glued on), all seals, all of it.

The quote one stated was a minimum of $10k, the other $16k to do the job. And in the end, you now get a paint job that looks initially better...but...since they can't cure it at 300F (due to the vehicle covered/filled with heat sensitive components), it will not last. Their final answer being, they won't do it as it makes a bad situation worse.

I have found a great explanation as to why this happens and why it can't be fixed, but unfortunately it's written by what reads as corporate insider to convince folks to just live with it. That's not an option since other rams aren't even close to ours as to defects.

K2

 

[GKIII]

@mikeru82 ; what the dealer bodyshops are telling us is that the clear coat is so thin if you perform any amount of polishing you're into paint, and the paint is so thin you risk blowing through that to the primer. Remember though, I'm stating it's the entire body, every painted surface. So, since you'd need to smooth it out, that means new paint and new primer with full sands between each. Lastly, to do the job they need to remove all trim and emblems (to be replaced since glued on), all seals, all of it.

The quote one stated was a minimum of $10k, the other $16k to do the job. And in the end, you now get a paint job that looks initially better...but...since they can't cure it at 300F (due to the vehicle covered/filled with heat sensitive components), it will not last. Their final answer being, they won't do it as it makes a bad situation worse.

I have found a great explanation as to why this happens and why it can't be fixed, but unfortunately it's written by what reads as corporate insider to convince folks to just live with it. That's not an option since other rams aren't even close to ours as to defects.

K2

I have a lot of detailing experience, to include paint corrections. It is usually very easy to blow right through the clear coat in most factory paint jobs since they are so thin...I've made that mistake more than once. With that said, I've corrected the paint on the hood of my brother's RAM (deep-ish scratches that didn't go through the clearcoat) with success.

Orange peel is pretty normal on most vehicles nowadays, you'll notice it on the vast majority of fresh-off-the lot vehicles...doesn't matter if it's a traditional luxury brand or a base model Chevy. I wouldn't worry about correcting it, it's usually not worth the effort or risk for something that's not a show car.

 

[Whoa_Ram]

Your brother is both right and wrong. If the clear coat is thick enough, or if the orange peel is minor, you can do paint correction to fix it instead of repainting. If you are unfamiliar with that, it's basically where you wet-sand out the orange peel, then use finer and finer sandpaper. How fine of grit you stop at varies. Then machine buffing with rubbing and polishing compounds to make it shine. The problem here is the clear coat is not likely thick enough if it's as bad as the OP described, and could easily be sanded through during the paint correction process. Here's just one description of paint correction.

What Is Paint Correction? | Car Cleaning Guru

Paint correction is a term that is now commonly used by both professional car detailers and car cleaning enthusiasts worldwide to describe the process of

www.carcleaningguru.com

Yeah he's been in the automotive industry for a while so he just mentioned repainting as he knows the clear on RAM's is pretty thin. All good, I'm not going to try fixing it unless RAM says they will do something about it.

 

[-K2-]

I have a lot of detailing experience, to include paint corrections. It is usually very easy to blow right through the clear coat in most factory paint jobs since they are so thin...I've made that mistake more than once. With that said, I've corrected the paint on the hood of my brother's RAM (deep-ish scratches that didn't go through the clearcoat) with success.

Orange peel is pretty normal on most vehicles nowadays, you'll notice it on the vast majority of fresh-off-the lot vehicles...doesn't matter if it's a traditional luxury brand or a base model Chevy. I wouldn't worry about correcting it, it's usually not worth the effort or risk for something that's not a show car.

Correcting it, no, no way. It's too big a job for an even worse outcome (longevity). As to every vehicle having OPeel, though it's stated like that--as in get used to it--the difference between our degree and other identical model vehicles in the lot is glaring and obvious. It really does look like it was in a severe hailstorm or was hit a multitude of times with a ballpeen hammer...not the typical small distortions.

That said, same day, the Jeeps in the lot were miles better than all the 1500s, so were the Challengers, so were the 2500s, and the mid-level Japanese vehicles in the lot looked like glass compared. IOW, it's a factory paint line issue, a factory QC issue, and ours seems to be at the extreme end of the spectrum past the norm.

So in our opinion, if it's a factory problem, a Stallantis(? what is it this week?) problem, it's not our problem and we shouldn't have to live with it.

K2

 

[GKIII]

Correcting it, no, no way. It's too big a job for an even worse outcome (longevity). As to every vehicle having OPeel, though it's stated like that--as in get used to it--the difference between our degree and other identical model vehicles in the lot is glaring and obvious. It really does look like it was in a severe hailstorm or was hit a multitude of times with a ballpeen hammer...not the typical small distortions.

That said, same day, the Jeeps in the lot were miles better than all the 1500s, so were the Challengers, so were the 2500s, and the mid-level Japanese vehicles in the lot looked like glass compared. IOW, it's a factory paint line issue, a factory QC issue, and ours seems to be at the extreme end of the spectrum past the norm.

So in our opinion, if it's a factory problem, a Stallantis(? what is it this week?) problem, it's not our problem and we shouldn't have to live with it.

K2

Having owned new vehicles from Hyundai, Toyota, Nissan, Dodge (a charger), RAM, Honda, VW, and BMW...the only one that didn't have a significant degree of orange peel was VW. Even then, it was still noticable. My RAM is far from the worst, that distinction goes to Nissan with Honda on their heels. The best factory paint job I've ever seen on a vehicle I've owned was on an Mercedes AMG S 55 I bought used 12 years ago.

 

[mikeru82]

@mikeru82 ; what the dealer bodyshops are telling us is that the clear coat is so thin if you perform any amount of polishing you're into paint, and the paint is so thin you risk blowing through that to the primer. Remember though, I'm stating it's the entire body, every painted surface. So, since you'd need to smooth it out, that means new paint and new primer with full sands between each. Lastly, to do the job they need to remove all trim and emblems (to be replaced since glued on), all seals, all of it.

That's what I said, that if it's as bad as you described the clear coat isn't thick enough for paint correction LOL. I wasn't suggesting you try this for your issue, just that there can be other options besides repainting.