While clay barring and waxing my truck yesterday I took note of bubbles in the paint along the drip rails on the roof of the truck. Its only in the rails and none in the goofy ridges Ford puts on the roof of these trucks. I searched and found that this is a pretty common occurrence. Just wondering if anyone has had theirs fixed and what the process is. I'm going to point it out to my dealer on my next oil change to at least have it documented.

 

Mine is getting fixed on the roof as well as a few other parts.
Basically they took pics and no questions asked.

 

I would be upset at that too! That's the great thing about clay baring...you see things you normally would not see...not to mention all the road grime that you can take off!

 

I dont normally play around up there otherwise lol. I did notice that the roof was by far the dirtiest part of the truck when claying. But the little bubbles didnt settle well with me. I have 2000 miles before my next oil change, I will point it out to the dealer then. None of them have busted yet and they all are really small so I dont see a hurry right now.

 

I say take care of it the sooner the better.

Usually the dirtiest part of clay baring is the bottom half of your vehicle. I know some people do not clean the roof of their trucks as well as they should and lots of grime gets up there too.

 

I broke out the ladder and everything lol. IDK what the deal was but the hood and roof was the worst part. Solid brown color with every swipe.

 

Just wanted to update this. I did take the truck in for its oil change. While it was there they looked at it and took pictures to send to Ford to have it approved. A couple hours after I picked the truck up I received a phone call from the service manager telling me to call and set up an appt after Jan 1st (this was in Dec). I called yesterday and scheduled to drop it off on Feb 28 and pick up a rental from them. They said it should only be a few days to get taken care of.

 

Good deal glad to hear you are getting it resolved!

 

I have several co workers with 09+ F150s. Talking about it after I discovered the bubbles in my truck how few people actually look at the roof of their trucks. Only 2 out of 6 trucks had bubbles in the drip rails. One of them only had one huge bubble.

 

Yea, The paint that's used nowadays isn't the same as it used to be. They try to make the process as environmentally friendly as possible. (specifically when it comes to VOCs.)

More or less everybody uses water based paints now. I know, at least on the body shop side, a lot of the stuff is hugely annoying to work with (I hesitate to call it crap, but some are very adamant that it's simply crap).

In my experience, the biggest flaw is that it's hugely susceptible to contaminants. It's a very thin paint making it picky about prep work and primers used. It also takes forever to dry, it requires a very specific humidity range, and it doesn't dry the same way as paints used to (rather than tacky it gets kinda slimy and chunky). Finally, to my eye, it just doesn't have quite the same depth that traditional solvent based clear-coats do.

They're definitely getting better, but like any of these 'green' technologies it take a long time before it really gets perfected. While it's definitely not acceptable for a new car to paint bubbles, I can understand why it's a common occurrence (because of the paint) and why they let they it slide on the roof (as most people don't ever even look at the roof of their vehicle).

On the plus side, paint and primer are no longer the main rust inhibitors on most automotive body panels. Instead most vehicles have galvenized body panels (or really now, even aluminum and plastic body panels are common).

 

The foof gutters on my '04 Expy had to be fixed under warranty. So far so good on my 2011. I wash it good everytime I wash the truck and I make it a point to up there twice a year to apply some polish and inspect.

Glad that the dealer is handling this issue.