2002 SONATA PAINT

I hope someone could help me with this...we have a 2002 Sonata & the paint
around the outside door handles is starting to chip away (you can see the
tan plastic),,,My question is , since the car is still under warranty (only
has 45k), would this be covered by the warranty,,also the wipers are
starting to rust,,any reply would helpful..Thanks,,JOHN

 

The paint warranty (3 years/36k miles) on your car has expired, so the door
handles and blades won't be covered. If you're a good customer at a
dealer, they may try to get away with actually replacing the door handles
and wiper arms (if that's the part that's rusted). But don't expect them
to do that. If the wiper blades themselves are rusted, that won't be
covered because they're considered wearable components and only covered
for 1 year/12k miles.

 

John,

Unfortunately, paint wearing off of the door handles seems a common
problem. It was starting to happen to my 2002 Sonata. The worst
example I saw was a Kia Optima that had lost most of the paint on the
door handles. When I saw that Optima and noticed a couple of bad
places on my car, I immediately put a couple of additional coats of
carnuba wax on the handles. This seems to have helped prevent the
problem from growing worse.

If you have the painted alloy wheels, you may also want to put a good
coat of wax on them. This is another area where the paint wears off.
I also wax the headlights to protect them from scratches and hazing. I
learned the hard way on my 1996 Avenger to never use Windex or similar
products on modern headlights.

GeoUSA, moderator, www.HyundaiExchange.com

 

Same happened to me , and I had changed in guarantee the alluy wheels, but
after 18 moths the problem has come again: I plan to make them paint soon.
About door handles, I periodically paint thenm in the parts damaged with a
permanent marker in silver colour as my Sonata is silver painted.

 

Anybody know if the handles inside the car (those painted with a
cheapish looking silver paint) can take a coat of wax to protect them
as well? They appear to be vulnerable to scratching and chipping
also

 

Mine ones have 4 years and seem like new... cheapish?

 

Yes, they look like plastic covered with a cheap metalized "look" paint
(why not for instance just have unpainted black plastic?). A design
feature I was surprised thay Hyundai design folks missed.

 

Same here. 4 years with no problem. Of course I do not wash in the
commercial machines, only by hand so maybe that's a difference.

 

Perhaps this issue is what year the model, ours is '06 and I went to
Zotto's site and his handles look like real metal, or are a more
reflective metal paint than the grainy silver painted handles in the
'06. (they do scratch more readily as the shift gate console is also
painted in the same fashion and has already shown scratches with just
sunglass case usage)