Discussion of Stinger paint quality (Was - Paint Chip Issue)

[bumble bee]

Merlin, see we have same color and no issue. Hope i didn't jinks ourselves.
john

 

[MerlintheMad]

@bumble bee: The only "chips" I've touched up so far (well over 4K miles) are all in front (well, other than the single one down amidst the clear protective plastic patches on the driver side, under the passenger door, a definite ding; and the front passenger door handle, two tiny dings), and all from driving. It does seem that the silky silver is spared the paint chipping woes of some of the earlier cars, up to c. November of last year. My car's manufacture date is Feb this year.

 

[Luminary]

So I picked my babe up yesterday after work, and I am really happy to report good news. Scott, one of the Service Managers at Ourisman Chantilly KIA (where I have taken all 7 of my KIA's to for all services) told me that they will take care of my car's paint issues, and "Make it right". I really cannot say enough about the guys at Ourisman, and specifically, Scott. All these years I have taken my cars to them, they never BS me, push me and are always wonderful to deal with.

The techs searched my car's paint, and found quite a few issues. What I called "Bubbling" (looked like bubbles under the paint last weekend) is more like what I can only explain as chips in the first few layers of paint. Still to me looks like bubbles between the layers of paint, but I trust the guys at Ourisman. The pics below are a few of the pics the tech took and sent off to KMA. I did get a case number, and my car will get repainted (not sure if it is the whole car repaint yet, but I do not believe so at this point).

So again, the staff at Ourisman Chantilly KIA rock. If you are in the Northern VA Dulles corridor area they are worth taking your car to for service.
I was so expecting a bit of a fight about the paint, but no, they blew me away yesterday.



They also took care of the Hatch Rattle again, under a different SA# then the original SA322, and so far, no more rattle. I do not recall the new SA number.

 

[AV8R]

@bumble bee: The only "chips" I've touched up so far (well over 4K miles) are all in front (well, other than the single one down amidst the clear protective plastic patches on the driver side, under the passenger door, a definite ding; and the front passenger door handle, two tiny dings), and all from driving. It does seem that the silky silver is spared the paint chipping woes of some of the earlier cars, up to c. November of last year. My car's manufacture date is Feb this year.

So I picked my babe up yesterday after work, and I am really happy to report good news. Scott, one of the Service Managers at Ourisman Chantilly KIA (where I have taken all 7 of my KIA's to for all services) told me that they will take care of my car's paint issues, and "Make it right". I really cannot say enough about the guys at Ourisman, and specifically, Scott. All these years I have taken my cars to them, they never BS me, push me and are always wonderful to deal with.

The techs searched my car's paint, and found quite a few issues. What I called "Bubbling" (looked like bubbles under the paint last weekend) is more like what I can only explain as chips in the first few layers of paint. Still to me looks like bubbles between the layers of paint, but I trust the guys at Ourisman. The pics below are a few of the pics the tech took and sent off to KMA (Kia Motors America). I did get a case number, and my car will get repainted (not sure if it is the whole car repaint yet, but I do not believe so at this point).

So again, the staff at Ourisman Chantilly KIA rock. If you are in the Northern VA Dulles corridor area they are worth taking your car to for service.
I was so expecting a bit of a fight about the paint, but no, they blew me away yesterday.

View attachment 8687 View attachment 8688 View attachment 8689

They also took care of the Hatch Rattle again, under a different SA# then the original SA322, and so far, no more rattle. I do not recall the new SA number.

good to hear the positive news!

 

[AV8R]

@bumble bee: The only "chips" I've touched up so far (well over 4K miles) are all in front (well, other than the single one down amidst the clear protective plastic patches on the driver side, under the passenger door, a definite ding; and the front passenger door handle, two tiny dings), and all from driving. It does seem that the silky silver is spared the paint chipping woes of some of the earlier cars, up to c. November of last year. My car's manufacture date is Feb this year.

No issues yet swp and same build date as you.

 

[DCBStingerGT]

I have noticed on the Paint Chip Poll, there is one Deep Chroma Blue Stinger with paint chips, anyone know which forum member owns it, and from where?

 

[MerlintheMad]

... they blew me away yesterday.
...

They blew you away, instead of blew you OFF. Good news. Spreading the good news of good dealerships (any business that treats customers right, actually) is definitely going to help out with any ongoing problems.

 

[Falaris]

Spreading the good news of good dealerships

I agree 100% and glad @Luminary is getting things taken care of quickly. Though after 7 KIA's serviced there they should bring her coffee and donuts when she arrives as well!

-Fal

 

[Luminary]

should bring her coffee and donuts

Funny you say this, as they always have Kurig coffee and donuts in the Service waiting room.
I never wait though, I always get a loaner and leave my babe there overnight. Figure I am saving 100+ miles on my car and the time waiting.

 

[Falaris]

Different batches. And from reading through this thread, different colors have different prep and primer. So added together, some cars get shafted.

I totally agree that this is a somewhat limited issue possibly caused by some bad procedures, or batches of paint at differing times during production. The dealers most likely do not know what is going on. Especially not the person selling the car to you. At best the service department may have other information but I sincerely doubt they have any idea how wide spread or not the problem is. So take whatever they say to you with a grain of salt, no matter how official it sounds.

All the talk of how this is going to result in lower resale in the early models, or cause a big black mark for KIA is only is only acting as the catalyst for that possibility to become an eventual certainty. To hear members posting here how they were thinking of buying and now holding off because of this "widespread, major defect" really is unfortunate. This car is a true blast to drive and to think people are not going to be experiencing this due to the fear mongering over paint issues is disappointing.

I am not belittling the concerns of the people that are having this issue. They should be upset and they should expect it to be resolved to their 100% satisfaction. It is clear that people with the issues should work with the customer service hotline with KIA and not rest on the dealers brush off common responses. I feel badly for those who are dealing with this problem and surely hope that most will be rectified in the excellent way that some have already. What bothers me is when I see posts from people that do not even have a Stinger stirring the pot and talking about how this should be heading to a class action law suit. That kind of talk is doing nothing but hurting things even more.

KIA has sold more than 7000 Stingers so far this year and I have no idea how many of them are represented here on our forums. I added the poll to this thread because it was requested that we start seeing how wide spread the issue is. I expected, from what I was reading, that there would be a much higher number of incidents than what is represented on the poll. I know it has only been up a couple of weeks and there is no way to know if people have seen it or bothered to vote. I am sure though that people searching "KIA Stinger paint issues" hit this post first directly from google. So if I was having paint issues and found this thread on the forums I would surely vote and then read everything I could about it. So far we have 41 respondents with unexplained paint issues. I really do not feel that number is that high out of the 7k+ cars sold.

After some of the additional pictures posted yesterday of the headlight corner chips I went over mine again with a bright light and my best old man reading glasses and still cannot find any chips or issues at all let alone of questionable origin. Mine is a Micro Blue 11/17 build GT2 and it does have a ceramic treatment I had applied after three months. Now five months old, and 5k miles later but still not a spot on the car. Just trying to play the other side and show that not all is lost in the world of KIA paint jobs!

-Fal

 

[Kato_the_kia_stinger]

I went into the dealership for them to take photographs of my Limited Edition Sunset Yellow’s paint issues. Hopefully, Kia HQ gets back to me quickly. The service manager was pretty clear that this didn’t look like normal wear and tear. I’ll keep you all updated.

 

[Toaster]

I took my car in to the dealer last weekend for pictures and I just got a follow up call today from my dealership. I was told that everything has been passed onto Kia corporate and they were just letting me know they did not forget about me. They also said I should be getting a call sometime next week from corporate to talk about a solution.

So far its looking good, but we will see when I get the next call.

 

[Bobr]

I had another call from dealer today about my Sunset Yellow which is in production, now without that BS: he said, it's no longer in production and will not arrive There's stop sale on Micro Blue and Sunset Yellow in Russia as well. No any additional info was given.

 

[17th_Letter]

I had a call from dealer today about my Sunset Yellow which is in production: he said, it's not longer in production and will not arrived There's stop sale on Micro Blue and Sunset Yellow in Russia as well. No any additional info was given.

aww dude that sucks. Sorry about that man, i was really hoping this wouldn't effect your car.

 

[Ozstung]

I had a call from dealer today about my Sunset Yellow which is in production: he said, it's not longer in production and will not arrived There's stop sale on Micro Blue and Sunset Yellow in Russia as well. No any additional info was given.

Are you going to pick another colour or not get the stinger at all?

 

[Bobr]

Are you going to pick another colour or not get the stinger at all?

Checking variants... MB E200, Genesis G80, BMW 4GC or BMW 5.... Audi A7 is my ideal but too expensive and we still have old trim, yet %) If KIA dealer will offer something good in addition to my hardly-traded rebate of $2k from MSRP (he mentioned they can, looking at my situation), I may consider to stay with Stinger, with some less problematic color.

 

[Mach_Tuck]

Mine has the same, however, I think it's a bumper fit problem. Sitting in the heat, the bumper expands, and the headlights press really hard against that corner. As you drive, I imagine they rub the paint off.

When I went to check mine out in the sun today, I had to push really hard on the bumper to move it enough to even see between the headlight and the bumper. Now that it's been sitting in the garage, it's cooled down and there's a gap between the bumper and the headlights without me touching it.

Not sure any paint would stand up to rubbing against the seam in the headlights. My thought: throw a little bit of a rubber pad in there to keep the headlights from rubbing the bumper in that corner.

Agreed...This appears to be from rubbing and expansion could certainly be a culprit for me in AZ also. One of the photos i posted was not great but it is clearly not accessible via "rock chip" and could only occur from the headlight housing rubbing the paint and causing the flake. Not certain how one could add some rubber in there given the tight fit. it would need to be applied to the headlight housing i think.

I went into the dealership for them to take photographs of my Limited Edition Sunset Yellow’s paint issues. Hopefully, Kia HQ gets back to me quickly. The service manager was pretty clear that this didn’t look like normal wear and tear. I’ll keep you all updated.

Mine is going to dealer in 1 week for pics of this plus some other items. Initially, on the phone, the SA, said, its probably a rock chip. I responded that i have the car clear bra'd and dont make a habit of driving a $50K car behind anything large and that is was def NOT due to rocks. He chuckled and said the would take pics and review.

I would be fine with a respray or mod the housing to prevent rubbing. However, Kia will have to pay to redo my clear bra also...hopefully no issues there. Will report in after chat at the dealer.

 

[MattRain]

Agreed...This appears to be from rubbing and expansion could certainly be a culprit for me in AZ also. One of the photos i posted was not great but it is clearly not accessible via "rock chip" and could only occur from the headlight housing rubbing the paint and causing the flake. Not certain how one could add some rubber in there given the tight fit. it would need to be applied to the headlight housing i think.


Mine is going to dealer in 1 week for pics of this plus some other items. Initially, on the phone, the SA, said, its probably a rock chip. I responded that i have the car clear bra'd and dont make a habit of driving a $50K car behind anything large and that is was def NOT due to rocks. He chuckled and said the would take pics and review.

I would be fine with a respray or mod the housing to prevent rubbing. However, Kia will have to pay to redo my clear bra also...hopefully no issues there. Will report in after chat at the dealer.

What dealership did you purchase at here in AZ?

 

[Mach_Tuck]

What dealership did you purchase at here in AZ?

Purchased with Peoria...going with service at Sands...

 

[forzanerazzurri]

Skimming the thread. Are these issues happening still on recent builds? I am pretty certain im no longer interested in this model year at the very least.