It's nearly impossible to determine if opti-coat actually makes a difference in real world scenarios, because you can't take into account all of the rock chips it did prevent if it actually worked. Honestly if i could do it all over again i would get a clear bra since i am big on aesthetics.

yes, get a clear bra.

Had water based paint on my 2006 TSX. Chips Ahoy.

I think if I could do it over I would clear bra just the front bumper. It has a shit ton of rock chips and I don't see any elsewhere...

waterborne makes really no difference at all. besides all that is waterborne is the base coat. it tends to be a slightly thinner than solvent but again, any base coat is supper brittle no matter what. the clear is still a 2 part, activated clear. it is lower voc than stuff years ago but really not that much different. i sprayed solvent for years, now we are converted to waterborne/low voc. thickness of the finish doesnt have a whole lot to do with chips. honestly the thicker the finish the worse the chips usually look. i get people in the shop all the time that say they want X amount of extra clear on their car. first off there is a tech sheet for every product that states the min and max mil thickness for it, so stacking a ton on can cause all kind of issues of its own. solvent pop and solvent cracking to name two.

best bang for your buck is clear bra, and someone who is good at it. i have Xpel film on my bumper, whole hood, and whole fenders. finding the right person is key. all edges will wrap around and no lines will show. just my 2 cents.

If clear bras are like plastic covers, what are the old-style vinyl bras like?

awful , had one on my Eclipse back in the day, destroyed the paint underneath it.

Grandma's underpants

I try to do this also but notice people behind me get angry and overtake me to get to that "prime real estate" in front of me only to get caught behind another car going the same speed. These people have such low foresight, thinking that I'm the only car on the road in front of them and that by overtaking me they can speed on ahead and get to their destination anywhere from 10 seconds to a few minutes earlier.... :thumbdown:

The worst part is I'm not even sure leaving a big gap necessarily helps with rockchip issue since these drivers kick up rocks as they overtake and cut me at higher speeds. :mad0259:

Guh....

Cheer up guys, you have yet to see mine. My BRZ looks 3 year old at least.

Lol! They do that to me too! I'll just usually find a less busy lane at that point. At the end of the day, its just a car, and a rather cheap one at that. Imagine how a Ferrari driver feels ;)

if your clear bra does not wrap around the edges... well, you've got crappy clear bra.

Good advice. Also, as people become more and more enamored with their cell phones, I notice more and more people having trouble staying in their lanes. This causes them to disturb the little islands of debris that accumulate in the center of lanes and at the very edges. I can usually hear sand and small pebbles hit my car whenever someone veers out of their lane in front of me.

I had my car opti-coated and a week later the clear bra treatment from a third party installer in Toronto area. Front bumper, 24" of hood/fender, mirrors, a-pillars, 10" of roof and the trunk lip for scratch protection on a Firestorm.

I drive 85km per day, a lot of it at 130-140km/h and the bumper on my previous grey G37 was amazingly pitted after 3 years and 60k km but hidden at least a bit due to the color. I've had the bra on my Audi wagon for 8 years and only wish that I had done the roof like the FR-S - many chips there, one deep enough to make even the Audi start to rust as it gouged through the galvinization. I plan to get that corrected as best I can and then the entire car brought back to near factory and the clear bra redone (now including roof).

The week after I got the clear bra a dump truck ahead of me hit a bump and lost a ton of loose dirt out the back - got it done not one day too soon!