F12 Paint Bubbling

My first F-12 that had the corrosion around both vents was manufactured in October, 2015. I had a much earlier car 5/2013 and a late car, June, 2016 that never developed the corrosion. My theory is the Fall/ 2015 and Spring/ 2016 cars are the most susceptible.

I hope this is correct.

Mark


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Read post #9, same as your car.


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I now have paint bubbling on the lower portion of both rear wings and in the bottom corner of the door aperture where the sill meets the B pillar towards the rear wheels. I believe that this is becoming a common issue on F12s that are around 10 years old as mine is

 

Does this issue happen to 812?

 

Ferrari Atlanta sent me to their paint shop for factory respray of the rear 1/4 where corrosion happens on those air vents. the paint shop told me they had an 812 with similar issues so answer is yes.

 

what are rear wings? you referring the rear air vents where the corrosion starts around the steel mesh/screws touching the aluminum body panels?

 

Inspection time for the Vanquish and 812.

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Apologies - no, not the air vents. In the UK wing is the term for what is known as a fender in the US. The corrosion in on the lower part of the inner arch of the wing/fender

 

Sorry about wrong thread. Fat thumbs.


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Likely not an issue here in the US as we don't drive in the rain!

 

What's funny is now all of the "volcano" colors for McLaren all have crazy issues now.

 

Hi everyone. I am considering a March 2015 F12. It has some fairly sizable paint bubbling around the rear wing vents on both sides of the car. None of the bubbling has broken the paint, and they are firm to the touch. The vent on the hood does not appear to have any bubbling. Is this something I should be concerned about getting worse? The vehicle is being offered by a Ferrari dealer, who has not specifically offered to fix the bubbling. The car has not been CPO, but is eligible for two years extended warranty (buyer cost). I plan to drive this car on long distance road trips and will probably keep it for the next 5-10 years. I would appreciate any advice - live with it or walk away?

 

Micheal,

good question, I can tell you that I have never seen the corrosion become excessive, anywhere from one to 2 inches long, and less than a quarter inch at the widest point , most of the time it’s two or three little bubbles the size of the eraser on the end of a pencil

The correct body shop Repair is pretty labor intensive, because it involves disassembling the interior to get access to the underside of each quarter panel. Once repaired I’ve never seen it come back.

it will not affect it being CPO’d , so get your Warranty, and go drive…. Personally that’s what I would do

….good luck and be sure to post a new thread when you take delivery of your new to you, Ferrari, including photos!!

 

Mine's April 2015 build with 5k mostly-dry miles. Just barely starting to show, you have to look very close. If/when it gets worse, I'll remedy. Until then, will leave alone and enjoy the car.

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Hi Michael,

All F12 are susceptible to this. The repair can be costly, I would try to get a quote and use that in the purchase negotiation (they may tell you to pound sand, but doesn’t hurt to ask). They need to sand down the affected area (to remove the corrosion), and then repaint and blend a very large area because the rear quarter panel extends all the way to the roof (flat paints are easier to blend, metallics/mica are much harder to blend). Also, the corrosion will reoccur unless preventative measures are taken. The corrosion occurs when the steel grille touches the aluminum body panel. The paint is initially a buffer, but when the grille is very tight to the body panel the vibrations from driving the car eventually wear through it. Water accelerates the corrosion process (driving in rain, washing car and not drying that area, humid environment, etc). The two solutions I have seen to prevent reoccurrence are (1) adding nylon spacers to nuts/bolts holding grille in place to offset the grille from the body panel and (2) putting some kind of black tape under the body panel to act as a physical barrier between the grille and body panel. If you do buy the car I’d recommend doing that now to stop corrosion from getting worse, even if you decide not to do the repair/repaint at this point.

The hood vent doesn’t seem to have corrosion issues for whatever reason. Two other areas to check are the inside bottom corner of the doors and the underside of the trunk lid.

 

shouldnt this have been a factory warranty issue? arent all cars covered with a 10 yr corrosion warranty?

 

Thanks for your reply. I don't know the answers to your questions. I believe many cars were addressed by the dealers under warranty when the problem first started to happen. I have read in this thread that the dealer fix was not always permanent, and some cars started to bubble again as time passed. This particular car was manufactured March 2015, so if there was a 10-year warranty it has either expired or will soon expire would be my guess.

 

Thanks for your reply, it is very helpful.

 

warranty starts when first sold.

 

From what I have gathered (forums, speaking with dealers and owners), Ferrari covered the repair/repaint under original warranty (3 or 4 years, not sure) for the original buyer only. However they never acknowledged the issue as a model-wide manufacturing/design defect and thus never issued an official “fix” for the problem. These warranty repairs were just sand and repaint, thus many cars have been affected more than once. This defect persisted in the 812 Superfast, which is susceptible to the same corrosion issue on its rear quarter panel grilles.

Another preventative measure is washing the car only with de-ionized water, which does not facilitate the ion transfer corrosion reaction.

 

Not with a car like this. Kia, yes and yet I bet there are fewer issue like this even with a Prius.

 

I think you have unrealistic expectations from a company that after decades still havent figured out how/where to place and run car battery successfully. Its far more difficult to master body work (prep and paint) than to deal with battery. If they still cannot figure out how to make batteries last, how can you expect them to deal with rust issues?

The battery on my oldest car is 6 years old now (GT3RS), still cranks like when it was new. It stays parked 2-2.5 months at times without a battery tender.

Ferrari should move the battery to the trunk where it wont sit next to a 900F exhaust manifold. Ferrari should also use average quality battery like what Honda or VW uses (I’m not asking for a high quality one like what Porsche or Lambo use). Ferrari should also use appropriate cables with the right thickness and right material that a) tolerate voltage drop, b) corrosion. These are things that Ford explorer solved 30 years ago. Front engine corvettes (which look very similar architecturally to V12 ferraris) have had their battery in the trunk for over 3 decades.

The reason why Ferrari keeps the battery in the engine bay is obvious, they want to keep it as close to majority of electrical components as possible. Current/voltage have an inverse relationship. Longer the voltage have to travel, thicker and better quality wires they need to use. This isnt as simple because all of the modules of the car have to be redesigned to work with these wires. In layman terms, they are being cheap about it. All these electrical gremlins these cars suffer is because improper battery placement, improper choice of wire, improper choice of battery material.

Ferrari isnt stupid. They have smart people working there. The problem is they dont care because you guys keep buying their cars whether they have these issues or not. It makes no business sense to spend millions of dollars improving quality when those millions of dollars will not have any return in terms of pure profit.

 

100% true. And copper ain't cheap.

 

Proper harnessing is not the only issue. Automotive power subsystems on modern vehicles are complicated and expensive to design and test. There are over 100 ECUs in the average car each with up to millions of lines of code and all consume power in multiple modes including quiescent (at rest). The best harnessing and routing won't solve improperly designed software and hardware. You are correct that this will continue until it affects sales which is unlikely due to the expert brand marketing. Likely this will all be addressed better in a full electric vehicle since power draw is a major concern.

 

The 599 had the battery in the trunk.

Daniel