180 highway miles a day for three years. Is a clear bra a must?
Hi everyone. I will be using my Cruze Eco to get to and from grad school for the next three years. That's 180 miles round trip. It ads up to about 40k miles a year of highway driving, so the car will have at least 120k miles by the time I graduate. Should I definitely invest in protection? Is my paint and windshield completely screwed without protection film? I'll be using the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway every day. If anyone has any experiences I'd love to hear about it.
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Experiences on the New Jersey Turnpike? Yes, everyone there is auditioning for NASCAR and NJTPA gets a kick out of running up people's credit card bills through EZPass violations. I had a friend who didn't have the auto replenish on his credit card linked to EZPass (obviously his fault), and he went through the million toll barriers every 10 miles and racked up over $1,000 in EZPass violations on vacation. Fun times..
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Clear..
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My round trip per day is 150 miles. I can tell you after 52000 miles and about a year and a half the front end of my car has taken quite a beating. I wish I had thought to put some sort of protection on the front end when I bought it.
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Clear bra is awesome stuff. It's not cheap to get done but neither is getting the front of the car re-painted. With that kind of higway abuse I would do it for sure, and don't wait until your car already has a bunch of chips to get it done, because you'll see them below the clear bra forever.
The other thing to think about is damage from other cars and in-animate objects. We had teh front of our BMW done and it has paid for itself already. There was a HUGE scuff on the corner from scraping a concrete wall and she sterted crying when she saw it (her car). I peeled the clear bra off, touched up two tiny spots with touch up paint and the bumper looked like NEW. I paid the guy $100 more to put a new piece of clear bra on and now you'd never know it was damaged. Well worth it.
I didn't do my Cruze because I have an easy slow commute that doesn't involve much sandblasting from other cars. I do get the odd small chip here and there, but nothing big (knocks on wood...)
Or, as others have suggested, spend all that gas money on an apartment closer to school!
The other thing to think about is damage from other cars and in-animate objects. We had teh front of our BMW done and it has paid for itself already. There was a HUGE scuff on the corner from scraping a concrete wall and she sterted crying when she saw it (her car). I peeled the clear bra off, touched up two tiny spots with touch up paint and the bumper looked like NEW. I paid the guy $100 more to put a new piece of clear bra on and now you'd never know it was damaged. Well worth it.
I didn't do my Cruze because I have an easy slow commute that doesn't involve much sandblasting from other cars. I do get the odd small chip here and there, but nothing big (knocks on wood...)
Or, as others have suggested, spend all that gas money on an apartment closer to school!
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