Just noticed this rust showing up on the hatch of our 2011. The paint is blistering and the rust is bleeding through. Sucks that this is happening to a relatively new vehicle with only 30k miles. Will be visiting the deal this week. Ergh!

I had the rear hatch on my 4runner repainted in July of last year due to the rust bleeding through the paint and now it has returned. Has anyone had the rust return after a complete strip and repaint?

My 2011 bp 4 runner has the electronic module and extra protective finish and also has many rust specs developing. At last oil change I mentioned the rear tailgate was starting to bubble through, and dealer agreed to repaint. When I said the sides were also displaying signs, but like Prius post, hard to see unless clean, dealer did have toyota approval for anything else. I am still hoping to get the whole vehicle reprinted, keep you posted.

This issue has been happening for years. My 04' had the blistering issue on the tailgate. I now have a 14' and am worried that it is going to show up again. Seems crazy that Toyota hasn't fixed this issue.

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Was going to wax my 2012 4Runner Limited this past weekend and noticed 3 very small spots of rust starting from under the paint and clear. I used to work at a few Toyota dealerships and one I'm still friends with the service manager and other people at the dealership. Going to set up an appointment today to get this fixed so it shouldn't be an issue seeing it's under the clear/paint. I know what the causes this issue with the 4runners and other vehicles but I won't say anything to the dealer when I go in. What I believe is the cause is rail dust. Rail dust is exactly what it sounds like, it's dust that is created from the trains wheels and when the vehicles are in transit this dust embeds itself into the paint. I know manufacturers started being concerned about this problem about 15 plus years ago because auto manufacturers started applying that white protection material to the vehicles for their transit to each dealership. This white protection sticker doesn't cover every square inch and the areas where my rust is starting is most likely the area where this sticker wasn't on. After looking closely at the areas around this new rust I can see a few other spots of this "rail dust" embedded into the paint but has not worked it's way down to the metal to start the rusting process. My father's 1999 Avalon has these small rail dust spots all over his car but i don't believe any of them has caused the rust he has now. He waxes his Avalon a lot which is probably why his hasn't developed rust like my 4runner. I will let you guys know what happens when I take her in.
Another note, I've been working in the automotive field for 16 years working at a couple restoration shops and from my experience once rust starts on metal it will almost always come back unless the contaminated part of the body panel is cut out and replaced. There really isn't any chemical that can be applied to the infected area to prevent the rust from coming back. There is a product called POR-15 and it's great stuff but great when applied to a bare metal surface that has not had any rust contamination. I've seen a few rust repair jobs where the rust wasn't too bad but after the rust was sanded down and none left to be seen. Por-15 was applied and it was body worked then sealed, primed and painted. Two of the repairs only lasted about a year and the other the rust came back in 6-8 months.
For this reason I will be demanding a new Toyota rear hatch be painted and installed. Since my 4runner is a 2012 I only have a couple more years on the vehicles rust warranty so I don't want it coming back after my warranty expires. I don't want the rust to come back at all to be honest. Have any of you guys with this issue requested a new panel for the repairs and what did they or didn't they do?
Thanks for reading guys!

Got an appointment for this Thursday so crossing my fingers Toyota will fix this issue without hesitation. I actually have to go to the dealerships body shop and they are gonna make the decision. Not liking that too much though, would rather have the service department check it out. It shouldn't be rusting at all seeing it's a 2012 with only 50k. My old 1999 4runner Limited didn't have one spot of rust when I traded her in and it had 245k. Hopefully this is just a fluke with only a few 4runners that maybe affected only on the hatch but I really believe it's caused by rail dust.

My 2014 is showing some early signs of rust on the tailgate as well.. It's only got $8,000 miles and is 1.5 years old. We've never towed anything with it, so it cannot be from rocks kicking back.

I'm going to give it a good clean soon and i'll share the pictures. We even bought the "paint protection package" when we bought it so i'm sure it'll be taken care of.

On the 4runners it seems to be an issue with only the rear hatches. Wonder why it only seems to be these panels that are getting affected. I was thinking a bad batch of metal used for the rear hatch but I've found 4runners from 2010 to now 2014 with rusting hatches. Even with low production numbers that span of years is too great to be just a bad batch of metal. That's only with the 5th gens and I've found earlier years with the same problem. I have been a Toyota guys since I owned my first Supra 18 years ago but starting to lose faith in my brand if their going to rust like American cars of past are known to do. Example is my uncles 06 Dodge Durango, this is when Chrysler was going through hard times and used substandard metal. His Durango started rusting with only 40k and has turned into a rust bucket. Rear hatch, both quarter panels and 3 bottoms of the doors. Pretty much every Durango of his generation has rust in the same spots. Toyota better step it up or my next vehicle won't be a Toyota.

That's awful!

This has not shown up on my 4Runner yet and hopefully it won't.Although, I do have this on the tailgate of my 2011 Tacoma. But not near as bad as what is pictured above. Just small rust spots that are only visible if you examine closely.

Well took the truck into the dealers body shop they took pics and had to send the info to Toyota. Now I'm just waiting on Toyota to contact the dealer wither it's a go or not. The guy at the body shop said it should be covered because the rust was under the base and clear. He also mentioned over the last few years they have had quite a few Toyotas coming in for this same issue all of then we're on the trunk. No 4runners mostly cars. I find this weird that it's only a issue with rusting trunks. My buddy works at this body shop as a painter and he said he sees rusting on cars that have a chrome trim piece on the trunk and where the trim touches the paint is where the rust seems to start. Must be a reaction between the chrome and paint. I know the trim pieces are plastic but they are chromed plated through.

Just found a bunch on mine.. No where near the lift gate or emblems. In the middle of the door.. not happy.. 2013 trail

Did you ever hear back on this? I have one small spot on the cargo door as well that I'll show the dealer next month when I go in for a service.

Yes but this is goung to be long. Toyota warrantied the painting of my rear tailgate but I ran into some issues with the dealerships body shop. Which sucked because my friend actually works as a body tech and did the work. I've had him spray stuff for me in the past and the parts always turned out great. I don't believe what happened was his fault but let me explain first.
Picked up the 4runner once the job was completed and right away I noticed a few things that weren't going to fly. First the whole job only took a day and a half which imo seems like a rush job especially since they originally told me it would take 3 to 4 days. Looking at the paint the base coat, which is the silver metallic color, looked textured. I've been working on cars for over 15 years and I've never seen a base coat textured like this before. Next issue was there was a build up or you could say a lip on all of the edges of the tailgate. Finally I found a couple pieces of dirt or something in the paint. I told the estimater guy who I don't really know that there were somethings I didn't like and this fool had the balls to say "Well you better holla at your boy", meaning he didn't care and talk to my friend who did the work about it. Well that didn't sit very well with me since it is his job to make sure the customer is satisfied no matter who their friends with. Other things that I didn't like and what pissed me off were those black trim pieces next to the rear window were loose like the clips were broken and when I picked up the truck the entire inside was full of body shop dust. Even the wash job was just horrible. I could tell this kid washing the vehicles didn't care and you could tell he used the same bucket of car wash soap all day maybe even for the week. There was black drips like from dirty water all over the truck and there was even a black grease like substance here and there. Before I even left I pulled up to the overhead doors went inside and asked if that was how all of their customers vehicles were given back. It was dirtier when I got it back then when I gave it to them. Unexceptable! After they quickly did a interior clean up I had enough and decided to call my friend and ask him if he noticed what I was seeing. Well he didn't but I explained everything to him and said I had no choice but to call the body shop and let them know it wasn't done right. Being it was a Toyota warranty job the repairs shouldn't look like they were ever done. Heck any good paint job shouldn't look like it was repainted. So I called the shop and was told to bring it back so I did a few days later. I wanted to get another opinion about the work so I visited a body shop that I used to work for. They mainly do vehicle restorations on muscle cars etc. Showed them the work and first thing they said was "ouch" and asked if Macco did the work. Joking of course because it wasn't as bad as a Macco paint job. Lol. Not what I wanted to hear though. From what he told me the textured base coat could have been caused by spraying it with too high of humidity, too high of line pressure or to thick of a coat or possibly a combination of all three. He thought that most likely the base coat shrunk while drying from it being to hot and humid in the booth. That's exactly what I thought. My friend who did the work said it must have been from the use of waterborn paint which I asked the other shop and he said probably not. In the end he was right and I'll get to that part next. Well I take the truck back to the Toyota dealerships body shop and I first wanted to show my friend before the manager or estimator. My buddy said yeah I agree it shouldn't look that way and was probabky cause by the waterborn paint. In my mind I was thinking why did you let it slide especially since your my friend. Anyways the manager and estimator come out and start giving me crap about even bringing it back. They were trying to tell me that it was "commercially exceptable" and of course I totally didn't agree. You could stand a few feet away and notice the texture in the base and it was even worse when the sun shined on it because of the metallic. The manager didn't want to repaint it but my friend said to him it didn't look right and wanted to take care of it. Manager just walked away while stating this was the only time they would repaint it and if it looked worse the second time he didn't care thus they weren't gonna paint it again. I used to work at this dealership and thought I had a good standing with the manager, guess not.
1.5 days later they called and said it was done and again it seemed way to fast to remove all of the trim pieces, sand everything down, repaint and put it back together. Well I was right. This time they used a lacquer paint which I was told was the problem but I knew it was from the heat/humidity. The second time they had it to paint it was again hot/humid. It does look a little better but it still has some texture and now some of the tailgates edges look over body worked from when they were trying to sand down the build up on the edges. All I want is for my $45k truck to look like it never had any body work done but sadly it does. I'm I being too picky, HELL NO, not for what I paid for this truck. Imo this paint work devalues my truck because if i wanted to sell it a potential buyer will see this work and think it was in a accident. I told my friend it looked better which it does but it's not up to my standards. I left it alone at that point because I didnt want to ruin our friendship or get him into any more trouble. I'm a auto mechanic so i know what it's like to get paid by book time. Your bosses want you to get jobs done in a fraction of what the book time calls for. He told me they were talking shit about me to him and I'd bet they talked trash about my friend when he wasn't around. What dicks! I'm sorry if my standards are better then their "commercially exceptable standards". What a joke that makes then look like. I will try to take some pics so you guys can see exactly what I'm talking about with the base coat being textured. My next step is to call Toyota and see what they are going to do about this situation. I have another body shop that I am going to take it to and get their opinion on the repaint. This body shop does high end vehicles from Porches, BMW, Benz, Lamborghini, Ferrari and Bentley and I know they do outstanding work. Plus their shop is fully air conditioned because they understand what air temps and humidity can do to paint while it's being applied. I know the owner of this place from my years of auto racing. If Toyota is going to fix this situation I definitely will be demanding that I can get it repainted at this other body shop. I don't think this should be an issue because another Toyota dealership I used to work at doesn't have a body shop so they used an independent body shop near them. Please feel free to comment and again sorry for the long post. I will keep you guys updated and try to get some pics posted asap.

I almost forgot to tell you guys of a great product I used before I took my 4runner in for the fix. I found little spots of rail dust all over the truck and while searching online I found a product to combat this issue. It's called CarPro IronX and this stuff really works great. Basically you wash the vehicle with plain dish soap to remove any waxes and before you dry it you spray the IronX on the entire vehicle letting it sit for 5 mins. This product desolves any and all rust particles and fully removes them from the paint. What happens in the 5 mins is amazing but at the same time eye opening. Any rust that is in the paint will cause this product to turn a purple as the rust is being desolved. I was surprised on how much rail dust was actually on my truck and my 4runner looked like a silver and purple Zibra. Lol. Once the 5 mins is up you use a damp sponge and wipe in the product then rinse everything off. I went an extra step and rewashed the truck using dish soap again then I put a nice coat of wax sealing the paint for protection. Since I live blocks away from a major airport and train tracks I will make this a once a year maintenance regiment. I've read that these rust particles which are called industrial fall out or rail dust, come from both trains and airplanes. When a planes landing the landing gear comes down and the brake dust which has metal particles falls down to earth landing on our paint. You guys who see these tiny rust particles this CarPro IronX is a must use product so our nice vehicles don't end up with big rust spots. Btw the 500ML bottle was just enough to do my entire 4runner so if your wanting to do multiple vehicles get a larger bottle.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B004UM...x6L&ref=plSrch

I just noticed a bunch of small rust stains and small balls of rust all over my roof and built up in the drain portion of my roof. I am thinking it came from my recently installed Gobi rack. I was going to use the above mentioned product but couldn't find it around town so I settled for West Marines rust removal product. It's used on boats painted surfaces etc... It did a good job of removing the stains. Afterwards I washed the truck and clay bared the roof. It was amazing what came off in the clay. I'm thinking the balls of rust were slag from welding the rack maybe?