Curious to see what interesting or unusual objects have damaged your vehicles while out driving. I am not referring to damage caused when parked and/or damage caused by a collision by another vehicle, a falling tree, or 'common' animal (deer, dog, squirrel, bird droppings, etc.). I'm talking about unusual items that hit your car while driving and what kind of pain they inflicted to your ride.
My example: While running errands in a snow storm a couple weeks ago, I was heading EB and a municipal snowplow was heading WB. It kicked up/threw a 5" solid rock of road salt at my car. I'm used to small pellets of salt being thrown, but a 5" solid mass of it?!?? Upon initial inspection, it shattered the lower grille of my car and hitched a ride between my lower bumper cover and the radiator/AC condenser. Upon inspection by the body shop and insurance co., the AC condenser was dented and pushed in against and damaging my radiator, both necessitating replacement.
Quote from: DaBigE on February 23, 2018, 01:04:17 AM
I am not referring to damage...caused by a collision by...[a] 'common' animal (deer, dog, squirrel, bird droppings, etc.)
What about an actual bird?
Back in 2005, while travelling with my family in Renton, Washington, we collided with a small bird (no idea what kind). We made a sharp turn, and we must have surprised the bird. Killed on impact. Cracked our windshield.
About four years ago I hit three different birds in about a three mile span on MN 61 heading southbound into Duluth. No damage was done to my windshield but my friend who had tagged along for the day was in laughing hysterics.
Bailed-up chain link fencing on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It either dropped off the pickup in front of me, or he bounced over it, and I saw it at the last moment and had to go directly over it. Couldn't dodge right or left (concrete barrier and vehicles). A bit of bumper damage I had to hold up with electrical tape till I got back, and lost an undercarriage plastic plate, but that's about it.
The most road damage I experienced was a large tire tread on 95 in Delaware several years ago sitting across 2 lanes. Heavy traffic, didn't see it till the last moment, and a vehicle in the adjoining lane nicked it and nudged it into my lane not helping matters. The bumper popped off slightly, which I clicked back into place. It spidered the paint on the bumper, which I never got repaired. And the fog light cover popped off. A friend of ours who works in an auto repair shop got us the part and painted it the proper color for us.
Worst road damage I've ever experienced was from multiple small stones coming off the back of a dump truck (traffic was too congested for me to either back off to a safe distance or get around the truck). Pitted my windshield in several places, which eventually resulted in a large crack, requiring me to replace the windshield.
However, over my 38+ years of driving, I've had several close calls - everything from a mattress to a Little Tikes basketball hoop.
Worst for me was a slew of stones out the back of a dump truck. I'll count myself lucky.
This will sound dark, but a friend of mine can claim 'human being' in this thread. A pedestrian was hit crossing a road and was thrown airborne into the windshield of my friend's car. The pedestrian sadly did not survive the event.
Two unusual ones:
1) In 2010, I was on I-80 heading west towards Cheyenne in very heavy winds and a rock or something struck my REAR windshield and immediately shattered it.
2) In 2015, I was driving on Montana Secondary 313 and there were a bunch of pheasants on the side of the road. As I moved over to avoid the pheasants, one of them was particularly stupid and jumped up towards me, taking out my passenger side mirror but inflicting no other damage on the car.
A trucker hit a coyote once in front of me on I-17 when I was heading to Seonda before subrise. The debris went flying all the place which included a copious coating of gore all over my car. I had to get that car buffed due to the blood baking on in the sun as I drove home late in the afternoon.
Had an oncoming truck fling a rock at my windshield on a bridge in NC (i.e., rock was flung forward out of the truck rather than off the rear). Still have no idea how the physics worked there.
My parents have had two separate occasions where a deer ran into their car.
I once took a golf ball in the middle of the driver-side door. I did not hear anyone call 'fore'.
Since my divot repair tool proved to be useless in repairing the dent, a body shop technician was enlisted to make the door look like new again.
A story in this week's Philly Inquirer mentioned one of the Phillies' players during batting practice hit a ball over the outfield fence...and it smacked into the manager's rental vehicle, leaving a nice-size dent.
The boss wasn't upset about it. It's a rental after all. :-)
1996: Struck a seagull with my bumper which chose the wrong time to fly off the curb in rush-hour traffic on FL 838. No damage.
2010: Had two small birds hit the bumper of my car while travelling on CR 621 near Sebring. They were flying very low...only popped out my towing eyelet cover.
When working in a service department, customers would run over all sorts of things. Usually, they're found in the tires (or even the wheel cavity), but typically animal or vegetable. But sometimes things struck the front grille or undertray/splashguard; my favorite was a Swiss Army knife that thankfully didn't puncture anything else (though we found an unrelated nail in his tire). He then feared someone had tried to sabotage his car, but that knife looked like it had been laying the road for a while, so he calmed down.
Quote from: jeffandnicole on February 23, 2018, 12:46:23 PM
A story in this week's Philly Inquirer mentioned one of the Phillies' players during batting practice hit a ball over the outfield fence...and it smacked into the manager's rental vehicle, leaving a nice-size dent.
The boss wasn't upset about it. It's a rental after all. :-)
I seem to recall hearing that Jayson Werth hit his own vehicle with a spring training home run a few years ago.
Not a projectile, but a slightly odd flat-tire story...
Thirty-ish years ago, my mother got a new car. An aftermarket thing it had was some sort of goop, sprayed on the inside of the tires, guaranteed to automatically seal punctures or else the company would replace the tire for free.
A few weeks later, she called my brother and me to come change a flat tire. The culprit turned out to be a little piece of metal that was bent into a sort of triangular tube. The anti-flat stuff sealed around the outside of the tube, but couldn't do anything about the inside. The dealer had quite a fight with the supplier to get the free tire.
Mother liked to joke about how her only flat tire was the one guaranteed not to get a flat. :-D
Quote from: Rothman on February 23, 2018, 10:20:46 AM
Had an oncoming truck fling a rock at my windshield on a bridge in NC (i.e., rock was flung forward out of the truck rather than off the rear). Still have no idea how the physics worked there.
This happened to me on US 90 in western Texas. By the time I got to an auto glass place the resulting crack had run big enough that I needed a completely new windshield.
I can see two ways this might happen:
1) the rock becomes loosely lodged in the tread of one of the truck tires, but then gets flung outward by centrifugal force when it nears the top of the wheel's rotation. Due to the physics of rolling the top of the wheel is moving forward faster than the vehicle it is attached to (while the very bottom of the wheel instantaneously achieves zero velocity - this is why the coefficient of friction while rolling is the static coefficient, and you lose traction if your wheels lock and you start sliding). Any projectile flung off of a wheel near the top would thereby be flung forward at a greater velocity than the vehicle is traveling.
2) The projectile is flung backwards by one of the truck's wheels but then hits some protrusion of the truck's body (or the back of the wheel well) such that it ricochets forward like a batted baseball.
I had a wild turkey take off from the side of the road directly over the hood of my car. The turkey grazed the hood. I later noticed a few minor scratches in the hood from what might have been the turkey's feet. Don't know if the turkey was injured, but he kept on going.
My father in law had a large piece of metal that fell off the back of a truck hauling scrap in front of him go through the center of his windshield and land in the back seat. A foot or so to the left and he probably would have been dead. Luckily he only needed a new windshield.
Quote from: jakeroot on February 23, 2018, 02:59:00 AM
Quote from: DaBigE on February 23, 2018, 01:04:17 AM
I am not referring to damage...caused by a collision by...[a] 'common' animal (deer, dog, squirrel, bird droppings, etc.)
What about an actual bird?
Back in 2005, while travelling with my family in Renton, Washington, we collided with a small bird (no idea what kind). We made a sharp turn, and we must have surprised the bird. Killed on impact. Cracked our windshield.
I had a similar incident. I collided with a vulture. The only damage was a torn windshield wiper. The windshield and wiper assembly smelled bad, too.
I once collided with a small bird in an older car with a square face, so instead of gliding over the car the bird was embedded face-first into the grille. There was no damage.
Years ago I read what I seem to remember as a real news story, not some kind of urban legend, about a pickup following another vehicle at a high speed in west Texas. The first vehicle ran over a piece of metal and kicked it up into the air. It hit the pickup and penetrated the windshield, impacting the driver in the chest at high relative speed and killing him.
Oh, I totally took out a turkey vulture with a 26-foot U-Haul truck, right at the grill on I-70 in WV, east of Wheeling. Guts covered the inside of the engine compartment. Used a power washer to get them off.
A baby bird, looked like it was just learning to fly, crashed into the grille on my car back sometime between 1995 and 1998 (don't remember when, but I remember it was in Durham and those were the years when I lived there). I pulled off at the next corner and found it dangling dead from the front of the car. No damage to the car, so I used two sticks to pull it out and left it next to the curb under some leaves....felt awful about it even though there was nothing I could have done.
Probably the worst projectile damage I have had in recent years is a dimple and small area of missing paint on the hood of my 2005 Toyota Camry (roadtrip car) that I think occurred on US 281 somewhere in central Texas. I suspect chipseal broke up under the wheels of a vehicle overtaking me, sending a chip skimming off my hood.
After I inspected the damage with a jeweler's loupe, I did some calculations to try to determine the minimum following distance I would need to leave to avoid driving into a small stone thrown up by the wheels of a vehicle in front. Working on the assumption that a chip travels the farthest when it is tossed up at a 45° angle, I came up with following distance in seconds equal to 9% of the speed in miles per hour--for example, at 70 mph this is 6.3 seconds.
While it is possible (though not especially easy) to maintain a headway this wide on a freeway with other drivers socialized to the two-second rule, it becomes more difficult on congested two-lane roads, since dropping back to restore following distance encourages other cars to pass and cut back in well within chip impact range. I have had to rethink driving chipsealed two-lanes in Texas.
Quote from: J N Winkler on February 27, 2018, 12:35:13 AM
After I inspected the damage with a jeweler's loupe
Did you buy one for the occasion, or did you have one sitting around? I'm hoping it's the former.
Quote from: jakeroot on February 27, 2018, 02:20:31 AMQuote from: J N Winkler on February 27, 2018, 12:35:13 AM
After I inspected the damage with a jeweler's loupe
Did you buy one for the occasion, or did you have one sitting around? I'm hoping it's the former.
Sorry to disappoint--this one has been in the family for at least 30 years and possibly much longer.
Rocks from a truck were shot and actually punctured two holes on the lower skirt of my front bumper. No damage to critical systems, but it looks like I got shot at
Quote from: ET21 on February 27, 2018, 01:51:32 PM
Rocks from a truck were shot and actually punctured two holes on the lower skirt of my front bumper. No damage to critical systems, but it looks like I got shot at
Let me guess, I-55 near IL-126?
Quote from: Brandon on February 27, 2018, 02:49:35 PM
Quote from: ET21 on February 27, 2018, 01:51:32 PM
Rocks from a truck were shot and actually punctured two holes on the lower skirt of my front bumper. No damage to critical systems, but it looks like I got shot at
Let me guess, I-55 near IL-126?
How did you know??? :-o :sombrero:
Ran over an aluminium ladder on I-99 north of the Turnpike a few months back - in a snowstorm. It surprisingly did not do any damage to my tires or undersides.
Quote from: ET21 on February 28, 2018, 12:03:37 PM
Quote from: Brandon on February 27, 2018, 02:49:35 PM
Quote from: ET21 on February 27, 2018, 01:51:32 PM
Rocks from a truck were shot and actually punctured two holes on the lower skirt of my front bumper. No damage to critical systems, but it looks like I got shot at
Let me guess, I-55 near IL-126?
How did you know??? :-o :sombrero:
Not really a hard thing to guess...
Has anyone ever had someone throw a cancer stick out their window, the remains of their trash enter your car through an open window, and actually burn your upholstery? I've heard of this happening, but it's never happened to me.
Quote from: ET21 on February 28, 2018, 12:03:37 PM
Quote from: Brandon on February 27, 2018, 02:49:35 PM
Quote from: ET21 on February 27, 2018, 01:51:32 PM
Rocks from a truck were shot and actually punctured two holes on the lower skirt of my front bumper. No damage to critical systems, but it looks like I got shot at
Let me guess, I-55 near IL-126?
How did you know??? :-o :sombrero:
I've only lost three windshields to that section of I-55.
I've had a few bird strikes causing body damage to my vehicles, including a ph*cking pheasant walking across a US highway in eastern Nebraska ($1000 in front end damage), and a disoriented old crow on US 12 in Idaho causing a $600 dent in my truck's hood.
Small rocks coming out of nowhere damaged my car's glass, including a windshield ding in Saskatchewan that grew into a top-to-bottom crack forcing me to get the windshield replaced, and on Prince Edward Island a rock or something shattering my driver's side rear window. The folks on PEI speculated that someone's mower kicked up a rock. They were properly appalled at my explanation that, where I come from, when a car window shatters your instinctive response is to not hang around to investigate (could be someone shooting at you), but rather to keep driving to a safe place.
Quote from: Brandon on March 01, 2018, 11:35:08 AM
Quote from: ET21 on February 28, 2018, 12:03:37 PM
Quote from: Brandon on February 27, 2018, 02:49:35 PM
Quote from: ET21 on February 27, 2018, 01:51:32 PM
Rocks from a truck were shot and actually punctured two holes on the lower skirt of my front bumper. No damage to critical systems, but it looks like I got shot at
Let me guess, I-55 near IL-126?
How did you know??? :-o :sombrero:
I've only lost three windshields to that section of I-55.
I thought you were mentioning the other talk in IL Notes about this, but yeah I can understand. We always get calls from truck drivers that they have to slow down in this section because of how bad it is and that they don'rt damage the tractors
Quote from: inkyatari on March 01, 2018, 09:34:16 AM
Has anyone ever had someone throw a cancer stick out their window, the remains of their trash enter your car through an open window, and actually burn your upholstery? I've heard of this happening, but it's never happened to me.
I used to throw a lot of lit cigarette butts out of my window when I smoked, and I think it would be impossible for it to fly out of your car and into someone else's car, let alone fly out of your car and into someone else's car without having gone out first. I don't even think the scenario from Planes Trains and Automobiles, where John Candy throws his out the window and it flies back into the car and sets the rear upholstery on fire, would even be possible.
My late dad was particularly cursed by this problem; it seemed that every time he got a new car, he'd have a big pit or crack in his windshield within a week or two. This happened with his last two Chrysler New Yorkers in '86 and '91; the first one got pitted on Biz 80 (CA 51) north of Sacramento (he was living in Roseville at the time), while the second happened on CA 99 in Bakersfield on an L.A. trip. The first was from a piece of machinery on a flatbed that shed a large metal nut; he actually got the trucking company to compensate him; the second was from a large hunk of gravel; that he had to eat himself, as he wasn't able to get a plate or truck number and the windshield replacement was below his deductible.
Quote from: inkyatari on March 01, 2018, 09:34:16 AM
Has anyone ever had someone throw a cancer stick out their window, the remains of their trash enter your car through an open window, and actually burn your upholstery? I've heard of this happening, but it's never happened to me.
That's one of the theories of the cause of the 1999 Mont Blanc Tunnel fire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Blanc_Tunnel#Mont_Blanc_Tunnel_1999_fire).