Found a spot of rust, covered under warranty?

Since you bought the car knowing that it was a demo (and presumably received a discount for that prior usage), I don't think that you have any recourse. If this were a new car and you immediately discovered the paint flaw (like within the next day) it would be reasonable to ask your dealer to have the flaw professionally repaired. Once time has elapsed, any surface paint flaws could be due to normal wear & tear (i.e., a rock that was kicked up on the highway and landed on your roof) so it would not be reasonable to expect warranty coverage.

If your dealer was interested in customer satisfaction then they would give you a break and repaint the spot at their expense. However since all Toyota dealers in Hawaii are owned by Servco Pacific, the management is probably not worried about competition between those dealers for your business...

So if the rust spot bugs you and you do not consider touch up paint to be sufficient, then you'll likely have to have the roof repainted at your expense.

 

If it were my car, I would probably just use the paint pen.

But I guess the better accepted practice would be to remove the rust, prime the spot with rust inhibiting paint primer, paint it with touch up paint, and then clear coat and/or wax it.

 

Could the rust problem be resolved with the warranty? There's a 60/month warranty on corrosion perforation of sheet metal, or does there need to be a hole, first?

 

I believe the word perforation means hole.

Tom

 

It's not a warranty item unless it perforates by itself; pounding a nail through the middle of it does not count. You paid a good price for it as a demo, right? Use either of boo's alternatives and don't stress about it.

 

This is what I would do, go down to the dealership and talk to the service manager, explain that the car was bought new and is only one week old, you were cleaning and found the spot on the roof, a roof would be a hard place to get nicked, and you would like to see if it could get taken care of before it gets worse. Try that first, salespeople and managers are going to tell you all kinds of BS. If you already did that with the service manager, you might try the body shop department of the same dealership, they might offer an easy and cheap alternative.

 

Depending on the location of the spot and the cost of repainting if it isn't a warranty item you might want to think about a sunroof installation

 

+2

BTW, I doubt very much that that tiny rust spot will spread much, if at all, even if it were left untreated. I had a new 1987 white Honda Civic wagon once. One day in 1990 I went to the car and it looked like someone had dropped a bowling ball on the roof. Besides the dent, there were big scratches/scrapes of the paint in or near the dent, which scratches/scrapes quickly rusted. I never bothered to fix the dent or the rusty scratches/scrapes. In fact, I never even bothered to wax the car since the incident. When I finally gave the car away to charity in 2004, I think the dent and rusty scratches/scrapes looked about the same as they did in 1990.

 

Depends if the OP lives near the ocean or not. There's high humidity and daily rain in Honolulu, so if you've got a film of salt on the roof plus a daily infusion of water, the spot might get worse quickly.

 

I have a 2 month old prius, and today while washing i found multiple "rust" looking spots on my car. They scratch off but definetely should not be an issue on a brand new car!