As I was preparing to wash our long-term NSX this morning, I noticed that the front air dam is looking pretty ratty.
The black plastic bottom lip has separated from the silver body work right in the middle. I thought that maybe I could just pop it back into place, but when I took a look underneath, it appeared as though the clip and screw that was supposed to hold it in place have been pulled clean through the silver plastic.
I might try to put it on our Rotary Lift to fix it, but I have a feeling this might be a job for a body shop.
We'll definitely need a body shop for a few spots on the silver body work. Right under the driver-side air inlet there's a chunk of paint missing. My guess is that some road debris hit it on the highway. There's also another ding that's much less noticeable on the passenger side.
Mark Takahashi, Automotive Editor @ 52,026 miles
agentorange says:
12:02 PM, 02/21/12
With the junk lying around on the roads today, are we surprised?
evantage says:
12:10 PM, 02/21/12
Not bad. Do you see any evidence of past body work?
throwback says:
12:45 PM, 02/21/12
The Volt will probably have the same issues. In the Northeast the roads are awful, that plus road debris means heavily damamegs air dams.
duck87 says:
12:50 PM, 02/21/12
You Californians are so soft and squishy. Head up here to the North-East and you'll know what it really means when cars "take a beating"!
dougnash2009 says:
02:08 PM, 02/21/12
duck87:
No thanks. THAT is the reason why you peeps move out here to live, and NOT the other way around.
Besides, how can road debris damage anything when you're only going 5mph around the streets of Boston?
explorerx4 says:
05:19 PM, 02/21/12
2 solutions:
1) Get some clear packing tape to hold the pieces together. You can tell people it's 'clear bra' :)
2) Drill a hole in a piece of sheet metal and put it between the clip and the back side of the silver bumper.
I live in New England and we (our family) have decided cars are just too expensive to drive on a regular basis.
Big pot holes, and stuff like firewood or fire extinguishers in the road, not mention snow or flooded streets.
Repairs offset any fuel mileage advantage over an SUV.
With an SUV, you just drive over the top of it.
I do have a summer car, but I don't drive it a lot.
fordson1 says:
06:48 AM, 02/22/12
"I might try to put it on our Rotary Lift to fix it, but I have a feeling this might be a job for a body shop."
This is a low-tech job to be done with the car up on ramps in your driveway, after sourcing an appropriate backing plate, as explorerx4 says - probably a piece of 1" wide eighth-inch anodized aluminum stock will do. Hell, I probably already have one.
You definitely don't need a Rotary Lift (trying to understand why this is treated as a proper noun, but apparently IL's stylesheet says to always capitalize it) to do the job.
Also, this was probably apparent to the driver of the car when it happened - and nobody came forth to admit it - that's not right.
milt721 says:
08:19 AM, 02/22/12
Just yesterday, I narrowly avoided a starter motor on the road. How does that happen? That person is going to be surprised the next time they try to start thier car.
dougnash2009 says:
09:04 AM, 02/22/12
milt721:
Are you sure it wasn't just the entire engine from a Smart or Fiat? Those are also often confused for discarded Dremmel Tools...