Repair peeling and rusted roof

No way a dealer is going to pay for this on a 10+ yr old truck. Brand new and having paint issues? Sure. Rusted roof attributable to a variety of potential causes likely out of hands of Toyota/dealer? No.

I’d just leave it alone if I could have it painted soon, but if not I’d maybe just do light removal of surface flecks and then hit with some clear coat to tide it over.

If this ever happens to my truck, as I admit I don’t wax/paint seal but 2x a year at best, I’m going to do some color matched bedliner.

 

@Montanahope ive seen some folks on here do a vinyl wrap over the roof to prevent it from getting any worse. May be another cheap alternative to consider before repainting down the road

 

You could take a wire brush to get most of the loose rust of and spray a rust inhibitor primer on it to slow it down until you can get it fixed but the rainy season is upon us and it might get even worse under your paint. Mine was rusting from under the paint so I stripped it all and put a good sealer and primer on to stop it from happening again

 

I'l bump this up because the roof on my 08 is starting to rust, bad. My truck has 60k miles on it and spends 80% of its time under a patio so I have no idea how the roof got so bad. Has anyone paid a body shop to fix it? I sent a picture to a local shop and he quoted around 600, that seems steep for the roof only.

 

The thought's always crossed my mind because my roof on my 14' was heading in that direction. It wasn't rusting, but the paint was starting to fail in a couple spots. I ceramic coated it to keep things at bay and vinyl wrapped the roof myself. I got quoted $600 to vinyl wrap the roof only. I thought that was ridiculous, so I bought the materials and did it myself (and it came out great). I think $600 for a good paint job for the roof would be worth it though. That's just my thought.

 

In CA, $600 is average to prep and repaint the roof. I got quoted $600-700 (NorCal) and my roof is worse than post #7 in this thread.

 

$600 doesn’t sound steep to me

 

Doing just the roof is a waste of time and money. The clear coat starts peeling on numerous Tacoma’s after about 10 years. No all but many. It usually starts on the roof. Once it starts it will continue elsewhere. It may take awhile but it will happen. I know 2 guys who had just the roof painted. Actually one had the roof wrapped. Within a year or two the clear coat started peeling elsewhere. My neighbor across the street had it happen to his Chevy truck. Got his roof painted and less than a year later he took it back for a complete paint job. It was painted last week and he brought it home today. Looks great.
You let it go too long, no matter what you do it won’t be cheap.
Check out Maaco their prices are pretty good.

 

You could also consider Tijuana. You can Get a quality job on the entire truck for < 2 grand

 

It sucks because I keep the truck and the paint pristine, then this happens and it's entirely not my fault.

 

How often did you wax or seal it? In any event, I wouldn’t hesitate to take my truck to TJ if it needed paint. It’s like a fourth of the cost. You just need to do your research to find a reputable shop.

 

What i found mine was suface rust. Not bad , but bad enough. I wet sanded it, put down some ospho, wet sanded it again and painted it satin black rattle can which i have done on other vehicles with fair results. Two weeks later the rust is back. So, I started wire wheeling the worst spots as an exploratory. What I found my truck was some sort of coating on the roof like a body filler in between the two outer ridges of the roof line. It started an in or so above the windshield line and continued until the downturn at the back of the cab. Everywhere the coating was on my roof there was a layer of rust underneath it. This was done at the factory, it was under the original paint. I think that the coating may have been semi metallic yet porous hence the corrosion underneath. At the edges of the roof where there was no coating there was no or minimal corrosion. The coating will get smooth and appear to be corrosion free, but if you paint over it a gew weeks will see the return of it. Going to go back with por 15 and satin black rattle can because I'm cheap and would rather spend on mechanical upgrades than a paintjob. Lockers before lightbars.

 

I had mine painted a couple months ago. Damn it looks great, like a new truck.

 

If you take that down to bare metal, in pic 2, you just might go thru the thin a$$ sheet metal. You might look into having a new section welded in. I'm no expert, but I'd repaint the whole truck afterwords.

 

I bought this truck with storm damage. Got enough Dents & Dings that is fun to drive. A new paint job would ruin that. Would rather have single piece driveshaft conversion and 35's. I know there's a lot of guys on here that take extremely good care of their rigs though. I would not hesitate to jump in mine and drive to Alaska, but she'll never win a beauty contest.