Rust on rear hatch handle

Stainless Steel. YES !!!

 

They know what it is, use it for the EGR cooler.

 

but they would have to reduce the mpg then.

 

Premium Manufactured 12/16, appears to have plastic.

 

Only thing worse than road salt is living on a small island. My Nissan Frontier went to the body shop at least once a year over the 7 years we owned it. Mostly minor stiff, but once for an almost complete disassembly. Thankfully, labor is cheap there.

And I had it pressure washed top and bottom and waxed at least every two weeks. One time, the guys discovered that the frame was almost rusted through and it was on the verge of folding just about under the driver's seat.

 

Mine is slightly rusted as well. I don't think it's bad enough to worry but it might continue and that has me worried.

 

It is not actually the "rear hatch handle". It is the steel frame that the handle is attached to. The handle is some kind of rubber coated material. I wonder how easy it is to remove and replace the steel part that rusts?

 

Got my Advanced on 1/27/17 and my handle is plastic. Odd that they would change it to metal in the later models.

 

Mine was built in late May 2017. The metal backing plate does not show rust. I also have low mileage (less than 10K), so it might show rust eventually.

 

Mine was built in Jan 2018. That piece is metal and confirmed with a magnet. Waiting for it to rust and have a new hatch

 

You do realize the paint will not match the rest of the car.

 

Remove it in advance, spray it with matt-black PlastiDip?

 

Maybe but not necessarily. A high quality paint technician can match color and metallic effect very closely by doing a test sprayout then tinting the paint as needed. Experienced technicians can do this by eye, but spectrophotometers are also quite common now in higher end bodyshops. The spectrophotometer reading is input into software which then tells the technician the exact paint formula to mix up. It's not foolproof but it does reduce the amount of hand tinting needed. Also since a bodyshop is typically lighted with fluorescent (or now LED) lights, to make sure that it will look good in sunlight, a good paint technician will inspect the color and metallic flake using a "sun gun" which is a powerful flashlight that duplicates outdoor lighting. And they will hold the sun gun at different angles to the panel because color and effects look different at an angle compared to straight on. If they don't do this, the paint will seem to match when you are standing in front of the door, fender, etc. but later when approaching your car from an angle you will see a difference.

As a final trick a high quality shop when they do the final coat they will purposely overspray onto adjacent panels using a fadeout spray technique, resulting in a gradual transition from the new paint to the old, which is very effective in hiding any small differences in color that remain. However car paint is very expensive so lower quality shops don't do this.

But to your point, yes if the shop has less experienced paint technicians who just mix up the standard formula then spray it without doing a test sprayout then yes there is a good chance it won't exactly match.

 

hopefully you get a new car. I wouldn't be caught dead with that rust.

 

We're redoing a bathroom, and I brought in a small paint chip, less than a square inch, for paint match. She put a contraption on it, pressed a button, and mix up a gallon.

It's moot in the bathroom I'm redoing, it's a complete repaint, but yesterday I was doing some touch-up in the adjacent bathroom, same colour I was hoping, just some fist-sized zones. Primed it first, then brushed on some of the matched paint, and made a point to use just enough paint, and keep brushing outward, letting the brush dry up, feathering it out.

Just one coat so far, and it's virtually disappeared, I'm having a hard time finding the repair zone, lol.

Not readily visible, but I found the framing and bolts on the car's underside hopelessly rust-prone. Everything has rust-bloom, very fast.

 

Plasti-dip will wear off if the hatch is regularly opened as finger tips hit the piece; use regular paint.

The factory coatings are too thin, or the piece back and edgings didn't get painted at all. My guess is the edge where salt can get caught is the weak point.