Bird Strike

[rizla603104]

Driving along to Cambridge last Thursday - the car came into close proximity with a pheasant. I don't know how it did it, but it hit the very top corner of the open headlamp pod - pushing it backwards by 2 inches towards the bonnet.   It (naturally) blew the headlight, smashed the surround pulled the riveted mountings out of the GRP and put a nasty gouge in the side wall of the headlamp pod recess. Gerald at GST has repaired the damage and it is going in for a body repair in a couple of weeks.

 

Firstly, has anyone else had anything similar happen?

 

Secondly, does anyone have a passenger side black headlamp surround they no longer need? 

 

Yours miserably 

[redshift]

Once hit a pheasant whilst 'making progress' in the TVR one morning. Dead centre of the windscreen and it just exploded.

Thank god the wash bottle was full because visibility went to zero.

When I got to the office the car looked like it had just come off the set of Texas Chainsaw Massacre just as well I didn't pass any police that morning...

What was worst was the smell, took it straight to the carwash and spent all evening scrubbing the soft top clean.

[Bazza 907]

Not a pheasant smell then?

[TimSportsTourer]

I hit a rabbit in my old Elise. I got it with the front number plate. I thought it had broken the number plate, but it had shattered the front clam behind that. The hole was big enough to put my hand into. I think it was £4000 of damage, including a whole new front clam. Our cars are made of glass, not steel. I've found (to my cost) that they can be fragile in fights with wildlife. Grown-up cars probably fare better than ours. Next time, I'll just stand on the brakes to shed absolutely every last mph that it's safe to lose before impact.

 

At the rabbit had the decency to die in the process, but there was a lot of fur to clean out of the radiator too. Yuck.

[redshift]

Nothing wrong with the smell of pheasant, but after removing all those internal organs and parts that were then smeared all over the screen and the softtop.

Did also hit a dead badger with the Esprit. Was expecting lots of damage but there was just a split in lower spoiler

[Sparky]

Ran over something last week, might have been a Smart Car.

[rizla603104]

Ran over something last week, might have been a Smart Car.

or Reliant Robin maybe?

Not a pheasant smell then?

taxi for Bazza

[Whirlybird]

 

Secondly, does anyone have a passenger side black headlamp surround they no longer need? 

 

Yours miserably 

Think I saw some on eBay for £30 a pair

[rizla603104]

Sadly they are for an earlier model

[peteyg]

I managed to decapitate a pheasant with the front spoiler at about 70mph. Death by Esprit probably not a bad way to go.

[andydclements]

I think that when I spoke to him recently Mike Taylor said he has a chargcooled car in so that would be the correct headlight pods, try Lotusbits.

[J400GED]

I might have an old pair from mine in the garage. If I remember I'll have a look over the weekend.

 

 

Ged

[rizla603104]

I managed to decapitate a pheasant with the front spoiler at about 70mph. Death by Esprit probably not a bad way to go.

I certainly could think of a lot worse ways to go!

I might have an old pair from mine in the garage. If I remember I'll have a look over the weekend.

 

 

Ged

Thanks Ged! Appreciate it.

Thanks for the ideas and placed to look - SJ do the replacements - but they are quite pricey.

[Steve Type 085]

Hi, I havent hit pheasant, but late last year I hit a Kangaroo (just a small about 3 to 4 feet tall) while doing about 80km it landed on the bonnet and dragged the wiper up the screen than roll over the top and kept going. It put some make marks in the glass and destroyed the wiper that all, I was lucky

 

Steve

[rizla603104]

Blimey!

[ramjet]

We hit a rabbit once in our Volvo estate. Bugger jumped up as we hit it and went through the front grill. The metalwork behind there saved the A/C evaporator and the radiator. Made a bloody mess of everything else.

And lots of fur in the radiator fins.

[pete]

[rizla603104]

I think that would have damaged more than my headlamp pod!

[Moxie]

Firstly, has anyone else had anything similar happen?

Sort of. I was driving through Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, in Arizona, in my old '83 Buick Le Sabre. I used to smoke and had my hand out the window to flick some ashes when a small bird slammed in to my hand while I was going about 80mph. The cigarette exploded in ash/embers and I ended up with this little thing wrapped around my hand with its neck snapped. Scared the hell out of me and I almost went off the road. Would surely have done so if it was a pheasant.

 

Might want to ask Bibs. He tends to hit things on four legs. Show off!

[molemot]

Back in the 1970's I was driving back from a merry night at the Ripon Teacher's training college (a good source of ...er....companionship), I'd passed over the Aldwark tollbridge and was heading back to RAF Linton on Ouse. It was raining and the visibility wasn't that good either. I came around a bend in my trusty Alfa Romeo Bertone GTV and there, in the middle of the road, was a rabbit. A big bugger, too... no chance of stopping, so I sounded my horn hoping it would hop it. Imagine my surprise when it rose into the air, revealing it to be not a rabbit but a sizeable owl....I just had time to close my eyes before there was a very solid BANG! and it hit the windscreen right in front of my face. Nothing else happened....I opened my eyes to see that the aerodynamic deflector on the RH windscreen wiper had now disappeared! No other sign of the impact which had shaken the car as well as me!! I'm sure the only thing that kept me from a faceful of owl parts was that the wiper must have spread the impact load over the whole height of the windscreen. Phew!

The next day I went back to see if I could find the remains of the owl, and there was nothing there, not on the road or the ditches on either side. Often wondered where it went....

[Moxie]

POW!!!

 

[rizla603104]

boom!

[Moxie]

Man, all kidding aside, that photo is deeply disturbing. Not to be morbid, but I once was watching some of those Russian dash cam/traffic cam compilations and in one of them a truck was riding right up some motorcyclist's ass when the biker had to hit the brakes. Truck kept going, clipped the back wheel, guy fell off the bike, front truck wheel ran over his stomach while he was sideways and he literally exploded from the chest up, like a huge red water balloon. I was rattled for days by seeing it. Haven't watched any of those car crash, tsunami, or anything horrific on YouTube since. Some of it's just too much to watch. 

 

BTW, could have been worse: