During my weekly washing of the Runner I noticed that the plastic cladding is not installed evenly (or very well) on my rig.

Has anyone noticed or had problems with the platic cladding on their 4th gen Runners? I have heard that those with the Lexus flavored version had a lot of problems with the plastic trim needing to be re-glued or replaced by the dealer. A search here turns up nuttin' on the Toys.

In my case it all seems to be sticking to the body OK, but is "gapped" unevenly from one side of the truck to the other. For example the fender flare cladding gap between the rear door and where it continues on the rear quarter panel is a 1/2 inch wider on the driver side. There is similar differences in where the front bumper cladding meets the front fender flare.

Of course this purely cosmetic, but brings back bitter memories of my 87 K5 Blazer where none of the body panels lined up properly.

UD

 

Since the cladding is bolted on, I am going to assume you could loosen the bolts, slightly move the cladding and retighten.

I don't have the fit issues you describe. 1/2 inch is a huge gap difference, is it really that much?

 

Hey FirstToy:

I wasn't clear in my ramblings: What I meant to say is that there is a 1/2 gap between the fender cladding on the door and where it meets the the fender cladding on the rear quarter panel, which is not the problem. The issue for me is that this area is about 1/8 of an inch *wider* on one side of the truck and clearly from not being carefully aligned during manufacturing. The same is true for the front bumper cladding where it comes around to the side of the front fender.

It looks like it is all held on with rivets and glue so I doubt I coudl adjust it at all. Might jsut be a personal issue with this particular truck rathter than something common to all. Maybe my rig went down the assembly line at 4:45 pm Friday afternoon... LOL!

UD

 

Did you talk to your dealership to see if there was anything warranty sould do? On the vehicles at our dealershp it covers production problems for the whole warranty. Not powertrain but comperehensive length. but that might just be Hyundai. I dunno worth a shot though.

 

I think the dealer would just laugh it off, or worse pull it all apart and put it back together worse than it is now.

This is a cosmetic issue that would only bother someone (like me) who wipes his truck and motorcycle down with a cotton baby diaper. LOL!

All that damn plastic is bad enough, the fact that it doesn't all line up evenly just gets under my skin.

UD

 

the plastic cladding are attached via plastic clips.

If you are noticing spacing in some parts, the clips might have become loose or are damaged. You should first see if you can push the clips back in place. If not, then you will need new plastic clips. This means going to the local stealer and having them fix it... which will be interesting

The clips should look orange (i see it everyday as i have some gaps due to my mishaps on the trails... doh). Anyway it looks like plastic clips w/ screws inserted in them so I would say check it out. Most likely you're experiencing the clips getting loose and just needs to be re-inserted and you should be fine.

good luck

 

Nah the Japanese work til 7pm

someone could have backed into you, that pushes everything off

 

Plus, apparently, the Japanese JDM QA/QC is better

 

From what I can tell, the cladding is bolted at the bottom of the door/frame and 3M adhesive tape holds the top of the cladding in place against the body. I have small gaps in place where the tape is holding the cladding to the body. I noticed these 'gaps' when I test drove a different Runner and now my Runner has that happening. :pat:

 

The cladding is attached with clips and adhesive tape except for the cladding on the back doors which uses pop-rivets along the rear edge of the cladding.