So I'm sure I'm not the only one who's encountered this, but I went to wash my truck this weekend as I regularly do and after taking off the roof rack air dam to do this (my normal MO) I noticed an alarming amount of wear on the roof itself from all the rubbing.

I have the factory weather stripping on it still, and I was regularly washing and waxing this area to keep debris from sanding down the clearcoat and paint (or so I thought), but now I'm seeing that the air dam just causes more damage than anything.

What have some of you done to fix this? I'm toying with either painstakingly touching it up by hand and discarding/selling the air dam altogether, all the way to just Durabaking the part of the roof that the air dam rests on and being done with it. Thoughts?

IMHO Xterras look stupid without the air dam. If it were me, I would repaint it. Did yours have the clear tape on there to prevent that from happening? some of the earlier models didn't. You could repaint it and get some of that tape. It's a 3m product called "stone guard," I believe. You can get it at an autoparts store and trim it to size. Normally it's used on rocker panels.

the ruber gasket flew off mine three times but my room has a clear piece of something protecting it. now the airdam is off

Yeah, never came with the clear protective tape. I didn't even think about putting that on right when I purchased the truck since I didn't think the air dam would cause that much damage.

I'm thinking I may just call a few body shops and Nissan dealerships to see if they have any granite (aka metalic beige) Xterra's they're gonna be painting up to see if I can maybe squeeze in for a few $$$ to have them do the touch up with the left over extra paint they may have blended up to do a color match rather than using the scratch touch up pen.

I'd hate to touch this up by hand since my painting skills SUCK (especially freehand) and I really don't want to take the air dam off since I agree; Xterra's without it look a bit odd for some reason.