I left ND Thursday and drove into vegas for the weekend, Sunday I drove into CA and had no problems with the car, drove great! Well I get to my parents house in CA and I pull into their drive way no problems no scraping or anything like that...

When I am backing out I hear the front end rub on the drive way, it did not sound like it hit or rubbed hard so I didnt think much of it. On my way to OC I jumped on the 405 and I hear this LOUD noise that sounds like scrapping or metal rubbing on something... so I pull off to the side and inspect the car... it was night time and didnt notice anything wrong with the car... So I slowly get back on the highway and I dont hear anything... I drive it to where I need to go and I dont hear the noise again until I am getting off the freeway and I start to hit the brakes... the noise is back....

I finally pull out my spot light and lay out some road Flares (night time and I was not about to crawl under the car without every precaution) I get under the front end and discover that the plastic cover that goes from the front bumper back is torn half way off and is pulled backwards under the car and was dragging on the ground... I pulled the plastic back towards the front of the car and tucked it into the bumper since all the holes for the bolts that hold the plastic on are ripped off or stripped

So after inspecting the car in the day I noticed that my front bumper is aligned but it has a gap of about 1.5 cm right where the side lights are...

Here comes the questions... Can I just remove the entire bottom plastic piece and permanently leave it off? Is there any negative effects to not having the plastic under engine cover?

Second How can I get rid of the 1.5 cm space between the bumper, side marker light and the car? Should I just remove the front bumper and re-install?

There is no damage to the paint or bumper except the small scratch marks from the drive way ......

 

Some people like myself have removed this underbody plastic cover and run into no problems. Yes it's sort of a common issue that this plastic cover hangs loose in our cars and gets ripped to the ground while driving, especially in lowered cars. You should be OK without this cover piece, as long as there's no extreme weather conditions like rain or hail coming your way.

Some food for thought... here's a past thread discussing this topic:

https://g35driver.com/forums/g35-sed...ipped-off.html

 

What about extreme cold weather like -20 to -30 and of course snow and ice in the winters up in North Dakota

EDIT: Thanks for the link

 

You should be fine. Mine ripped off when I put a new bumper on. I haven't had one for about a year now without any problem. In fact, I can do oil changes in less than half the time since I dont need to worry about taking the undercover off first.

 

You're driving and X so you're already pretty high up.

Are you dropped at all? if not then you have nothing to worry about even in the winter.

 

This happened to our 04 X the winter before we turned it in. After driving in snow without it, i'd definatly just spend the money and get it replaced.

Your engine bay gets sprayed allll over.

 

I just put the car up on the jack and got underneath the front end, I got the plastic back up and semi bolted in so I think I got it fixed for now, but I still cant get the stupid gap from the bumper to the car to close up...