I've removed the winshield tape on my 3.5 year old Red '00, and during careful and painstaking removal of the sticky residue, I noticed various areas that seem to have no clearcoat/shine and instead have small scratches in the paint.

At first I thought I had caused the damage while removing the residue, but as I progressed I noticed they appeared in clusters throughout the frame, and had no relationship to my residue removal technique. The unaffected areas of the frame are perfectly shiny and silky smooth.

Do I have any recourse with Honda for these paint defects? The delayed reaction is due to their hiding them with tape, which as I understand was always meant to be removable (for hardtop installations or owner preference).

Here's a very close up view of one of the affected areas (total surface about a square inch), on top of the windshield frame about 10 inches from the left side:

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but...Nowhere did Honda publish that the tape is to be removed. Thus, you have no recourse from Honda.

 

Whoa.. That looks pretty bad, I thought it would be a lot smaller.. Sorry, but I don't think you have any recourse..

 

What would be the best way to repair this damage? How do I smooth out the scratches? Meguiar's paint cleaner and polish aren't doing it... Can I apply some form of clearcoat to make it shiny again?

With so many people having removed the tape, I'm assuming I'm not the first to have encountered this problem. Was the damage similar? How have others resolved it?

 

You have absolutely no recourse, but I think you've figured that out by now. Honda didn't complete the "process" with that paint in terms of quality. They had always planned to cover it with that tape. So they didn't care if it wasn't perfect. Sometimes it's better than others. Sometimes not. Repainting it with clear coats is what some have done.
Oh, did you know that if you removed the exhaust tips, it looks REALLY BAD!

 

What the heck did they do to get those scratches there?

 

[quote]They had always planned to cover it with that tape. /quote]

Odd then because I believe the JDM cars have no tape.

 

I don't think you have any recourse.

Your best bet might be to see a body shop and get an estimate to get it repainted. I think a few other members had their windshield frame repainted for around $200.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by steve c
We're not talking about a JDM car here. If Honda workers knew a certain run of cars were destined to stay in Japan and those pillars needed to be painted properly, they will do so and put that protective "saran wrap" on it before shipping. If they knew a particular run of cars were destined for N. America and the paint process was to stop just before the clear coat and then get that black tape put on it, they won't care if there are small imperfections in it. It is likely that it won't even get wet sanded.

 

I suppose, but many folks, myself included have removed the tape and found no hidden surprises.

Moreover it does seem a bit strange to differentiate between the domestic and destined for overseas cars, the fewer changes the cheaper things are.

Maybe we just got the rejects.