Terrible paint on fender flairs/bumpers?

My color matched flares and bumpers are perfect and im super OCD. IMO Toyota's paint is actually not too bad, its just very thin and soft, but thats because evrything has to be environmentally friendly nowdays. I havent found 1 flaw in the paint in my taco, i was impressed.

Other makes such as tesla, are way worse at paint jobs. The good old days of thick durable paints are gone, unfortunately.

I heard from my detailing buddy that mercedes has the best paint so far.

 

Same experience here. My truck looks brand new after 2.5 years. I do go offroad quite a bit and she gets very dirty. I did do the ceramic coating though, so that helps for sure. I just have a few pinstripies and some rock chips on hood but thats about it, nothing a touch up pen cant do.

Interesting, my flares are super smooth. Not textured at all.

 

Strange, my flares are smooth like my paint.

 

The Off Road and Sport cost exactly the same if configured the same though.

 

Nice truck @Mrtacoman88
I went back and forth between black and cement, it wasn't an easy choice as I'm normally an all black errythang kinda guy, but cement ultimately won over.
Everytime I see a black tacoma though...


Also props to OP @hidesert cowboy for researching prior to purchase as well. A welcome change around here

 

I have no idea where Benz paint is at today, but in all my travels I've neve been more impressed with any automobile paint than that of my buddie's early 90's black E-class. @ 100,000 miles with no unusual care or correction, the paint on that car still looked factory new, including the front end. IDK, but I'd hazard a guess that paint like that is a thing of the past.

 

That’s a fair rational. The SR isn’t going to have the flairs and I believe is a chrome bumper, so that might be your most cost effective option and then purchase OR flairs that will come to you in black plastic and mount them. I want to say the OR flares are under $200 new. Another consideration would be to get some of those bushwacker burley looking flairs. Personally I’m not a fan of the look of them but some people here have them and if you beef the rest of the truck up so they are proportional to the add-ons like skids/bumper/sliders with 33” tires they don’t look too bad.

It’s hard to compare the Tacoma against an F150. It’s just such a different platform, drivetrain, mid vs full size, and up front vs long term value.

 

Any vehicle will be like this where the underlying body piece is different materials. The body of the truck is metal, the bumper and flares are not.

 

I have spray paint cans of that bed liner material I was considering using on my off road flares and wanted to ask you how it looks and is holding up with you doing it on yours? Im sure good prep also goes a long way. I also wanted to get aftermarket flares as well but if I could try this first then so be it and it saves 500 dollars.

 

It is a thing of the past for sure. Even paint on my 07 ranger was like 3 times thicker, it was great. My truck had 160k miles and the paint looked like new. I always take a lot of care of my vehicles though. The black paint on my 87 camaro was amazing as well. Most modern vehicles nowdays have thin/soft paint due to everything being "green".

My buddy does ceramic coatings professionally and told me thats just how it is nowdays. He said high end cars like porsche, lanbos and ferraris have horrible paint jobs, which is surprising to me. He looked at my truck and said toyota did a nice job with the paint on the 3rd gen. Told me tesla is the worst at paint jobs.

 

Perhaps we are thinking differently on what texture means in this context. OEM fender flares are all the same, the have a light texture to them. The painted ones just paint over the texture, so while the paint surface is glossy and not textured looking, you can see the faint texture under the paint.

It is more apparent on certain colors.

 

Yep, amateur detailer here and have also had professionally done, can attest to paint thickness with a bunch of different brands and models of newer cars, reason first mod I do is a ceramic coat.

 

Got to agree and most body shops will tell you the same. Now "we" don't know what degree of difference you are seeing but they should be close.

 

I get what you are saying. My buddy has 19 OR and his flares are textured, but for some reason my flares are smooth like glass, my bumpers are the same. I would have noticed even the slightest bit of texture. Zoom in on that pic and you can see it, the paint does look a bit different though because its plastic vs metal.

 

Save some pussy for the rest of us.

 

Yeah, ceramic coating is great man. IMO must do #1 mod if you care how your vehicle looks. I did it myself about a year ago and it came out about 80% perfect

Need to redo the whole truck this spring. My buddy gave me some nice commercial type coatings, i cant wait!

 

Or you can get an SR5 with out the flares.

 

I think the problem is that they don’t prime the fender flares before painting, they just spray over the bare black plastic. Which accounts for the texture you see under the paint, and how easily the paint chips from the flares.

 

That black truck pictured doesn’t appear to have the issues. I probably would prefer chrome and non painted flairs anyways.

 

Ha! That was high school...

Fun times. What a POS that car was though, absolutely THE worst vehicle i have ever had, i replaced everything in that POS and it still died on me going up the bridge.