ok guys, I have 2300 miles on my Z. 95% of those miles are in town...NOT on the highway. Anyway the front bumper of my car looks like someone took a sandblaster to it. I try and aviod driving too close to cars ahead of me and avoid trucks completely, but I'm still getting TONS of chips on the front end of the car. My Maxima has 108,000 miles...with MANY highway miles and the front bumper on the max is only marginally worse than the Z.

I even have a few large chips and gouges that are visible from over 10-feet away.

My question is what should I do?? I have a Colgan 2-peice bra to protect the car on road trips, and I do NOT want a clear bra...so that's not even an option. I can't stand the cloudiness that clear bras start to get after only about 10,000 miles.

Should I just live with the chipping...or ***** to Nissan???

BTW - the hood and 1/4 panels are near perfect..only ONE TINY chip on the hood...I can live with that.

 

I have chipping of the front bumper. They're pin-sized but there are many of them. The rest of the car seems OK. I don't like to have my car covered with a bra or clear plastic. I plan to point this out at my next service. I doubt if Nissan will do anything about the small chips and I guess that I will have the front bumper/air dam repainted at some point.

 

I believe you can always have the bumper repainted, itll be a few hundred $$$ Id imagine, but if you did it once a year or every other, I suppose it depends on your financial situation.

but clear bras are not bad, they dont cloud as you said, they may have used to, but I saw a bra on a S2000 that was 3 years old I think, 40 or 50000 miles. personally the film needed to come off, it was beat to hell, but you could see that the paint underneith was fine. the car belonged to the 3M distributor, met him at hot spot tinting. I dont like the line the bra has, but then again, I have no chips, so I have no reason to deal with the line. but for you it may be the lesser of 2 evils.

 

I still don't like the idea of the clear bra....and for the cost of it I could re-paint my front bumper TWICE. So assuming I get the car painted after a year..and after 2 years...by that time the clear bra would probably need to be replaced...I'm looking at almost the same cost.

I guess what I'm trying to say is do you think that since my car has such low mileage that nissan might offer to re-paint the front bumper now, or let me take it to a good body shop and have them do it? (the best body shops do MUCH better jobs than stock)

 

I doubt Nissan would foot the bill for repainting your bumper. Unless you can prove there is actually a manufacturing defect, or Nissan acknowledges one and puts out a TSB.

 

you could try, cant hurt. but i wouldnt get too upset if they dont go for it.

 

Well BriGuyMax it doesn't sound like you're leaving yourself many options. You don't like the clear bra and you only use the Colgan bra for road trips. Yet your front bumper looks like a dartboard.

I understand your hesitation with the clear bra because of the price. I can even understand about the look of Colgan bra being on the car all the time. However, a bird in the hand beats two in the bush. In otherwords, if you are concerned about the front bumper use the Colgan Bra that you have. I would much rather have some protection than none at all and continue to be in agony over the chips, nicks, and dings on my front bumper.

p.s. I purchased the Nissan Nose Mask last week. Looks good... works great!

 

We are having the same problem with our Z. We complained and the dealer said to get a clear bra. I think it depends on how long and LOUD you *****. Let us know if you get a better answer. I think we are going to get a regular nose mask since hubby does a lot of highway driving. But we are unsure if we'd have to take it off every night due to dew in the air or not since it can't get wet.