A raccoon ran out in front of me last night and I caught him with the right front of my MINI.

At first I thought I was OK - but the light of the morning revealed a small crack in my front bumber. Closer examination and I found the right fog light mount is ripped out of the bumber and the light is flopping around in there.

AAHHHH!!!!

 

Ahh, that sucks!

-Cody

 

i bet it sucks more for the racoon. he's out one life

 

And to think I do all I can to dodge road-kill due to running so low to the ground. Poor Racoon

 

schulzmc, that very same thing happened to me last Saturday night! Except the coon came from the left side and I hit it on my front driver side. Upon further inspection at the gas station that night, the fog light was pushed inside the bumper, and a small crack in between the fog light and the indicator light.
Figures!!! I drive so slow every time im in the country, and this thing ran out in the middle of a busy town at night....just my luck.
Luckily for me i was bringing my car into the bodyshop the following Monday to get the hinges fixed under warranty (which is still there right now). So they looked at bumper and glued the foglight housing back in place, and pushed the crack back into place. Im thinking ill probably have to get tough-up paint 'seal' the crack. They said the housing was cracked inside the bumper that holds the radiator in place, but said not to worry about it.
They didn't charge me for the repair, which was great, cause he said to replace the bumper and paint, would have been about $900cdn.

 

ouch. that sucks. there are always animals running out into the streets here in alabama

 

wanna laugh? the EXACT same thing happened to me two weeks ago! right side fog light flopping around and all. no crack in my bumper though that sucks, sorry. just fixed it yesterday though. go to a home depot and buy some JB Weld Quick, take off your front bumper (not hard at all takes maybe 20 minutes) and glue it back in place. the bracket that mounts the fog lights also holds the radiator and is pretty expensive and would entail a LOT of work. be careful though because i had my foglights on when i hit the 'coon and the bulb burned into the housing of the foglight and i need to replace it anyway now but all looks normal for now. good luck!

 

You guys should list the specs of your car, namely lights, blown or not, and mods. Maybe the MINI emits a mating call sound.

Laugh you may but I had a friend that had a car that would cause tons of possum to charge to their death if the season was right, around eight in one night.

 

OK - You guys on NAM are the best.

After a quick call to my insurance agent to be sure that it would be a $500 deductible claim if I decided to make it (which it was) I decided to attempt the repair myself, as suggested.

I took off the bumper cover. It was easy, as suggested, and I even found a web site with instructions - from someone who also hit something and needed to make a fog light repair (http://mini.uglydoris.com/archives/000020.html).

I also removed the wheel well cover on the damaged side. Using the pieces I found in there I rebuilt the socket for the fog lamp and repaired the one piece of the lamp housing that was broken. I only found enough pieces to rebuild two of the three mount points.

For some reason there is a fourth mount point that MINI does not use. Since it was not attached it was not affected by the blow from the raccoon, so I fabricated a new mount attachment to hopefully stabilize the repaired mount points and make up for the one I could not fix.

Everything went together well. After overnight curing I'll try to hit a decent bump tomorrow and see if it all holds together.

Thanks again for the help!

 

Same thing happened to us 3 years ago in the '02 MC late at night while driving back to our timeshare in Williamsburg back from Richmmond, VA. We got lost and ended up on semi-deserted local highway and all of a sudden from the left a raccoon decides to make the jump and BANG!

I was going at least 70MPH but it scared the crap out of us. Fortunately, the car handled beautifully and since it was wearing a Colgan Custom vinyl bra, the only damage was a knocked out black plastic fog light blank (Car has no fog lights). In that instance, the heavy vinyl mask diverted some of the impact, otherwise it would have cracked the bumper easily without it.

These critters seem to have very poor perception when it comes to fast moving objects such as cars and thse incidents are always bound to happen.

Also, better than try to avoid hitting a raccoon, is to run it over. It is not worth getting into a bad wreck just to avoid hitting it.

 

I swerved to miss a frog and hit a giant standing raccoon. Extensive damage, did the repairs myself, saved some money, and now the AC condenser has this high tech concave shape; thanks rocky.

 

Point in case.... Better to hit head on than try to swerve around a critter. Again not worth getting into a rollover

 

I never got to test out my ASC+T feature because of the street curb on the right side...so I had no choice but to run over it.
Here is a pic of the damage. Notice the absent fog light....

 

Looks like a good time to get a S bumper, i would

 

I thought about it, but I think if I were to do any improvements like that, id just install an aerokitall. But that'll never happen because those kits cost so much! :impatient

 

Well, at least you got a good meal out of the experience. Kinda expensive, but at least it wasn't a skunk...

Sorry about your fog light and bumper...

 

OK... after reading this thread,,, this weekend I apparently attributed to road kill.

We were on the way to the dealership to pickup some parts for some additional suspension work. While enroute, Wife and I were conversing and she screams and waves her arms... I quickly pull over not knowing what had just happened. apparently a small sparrow flew from the passenger side into the front bumper or wheel well. Its a blindspot for me so we agree to double back to check on the bird, as she claims to have seen the bird in the rear view mirror with a wing up.

moments later we see a Infiniti G35 drive over the bird with red guts everywhere...

It really troubled me for some time as my wife said the bird was on the ground and could have been dazed however watching the car drive over it really disturbed me.

Needless to say, we couldnt do much at that point and continued on our way. It pains me to write this at the moment since im the kinda person that knocks on a few neighbors doors trying to borrow a ladder when I find a baby bird fallen out of the next. i guess many things really are out of our control...

 

Well, to make you feel a bit better, the chances of that bird surrviving a 50+/- mph hit, (who knows how fast the bird was travelling also), very slim.
Im pretty sure he didnt know what him before he took the one-way flight to a more peaceful life.
I have the worst luck for roadkill....unfortunately. :(
Dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, squrrels, and my latest one being that dang racoon!!

 

Paulo, i feel for ya... i still feel awful for that one bird.

I almost broke my neck 6 weeks ago putting a baby chick back into a next above our front door... a few days later the chick fell out and died on my doorstep... stuff like this really troubles me but in the larger picture, i guess its really trivial.

Just cant help feeling the way i feel. Guess you gotta take motoring, the good with the bad.

 

Three weeks ago I had a cardinal fly out right in front of me and vanish. My first thought was denial, no way did that get sucked into the hood scoop. Sure enough, when I pulled over and lifted the bonnet, well you can imagine the mess. Anyway, it seems I've had a lot more close calls with hitting birds than with any of my previous cars. Anyone else had similar experiences?

 

haha...glad I found this post. Was doing a search to figure out how I'm going to get my dang fog light back into the socket and it seems I'm not the only to have had this problem...check it out https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...ad.php?t=90345

Hit the 'coon and popped the fog light back into the bumper and have a small crack now...


~jeff~

 

one night a coyote jumped in front of me, and I took a look at the damage (at night) I thought the front was all messed up, but just the plastic black part of the front bumper was dented, and hung out of place, I just needed to push it back into place and lock the tabs, but my MINI still has a nice bruise

 

I hit a deer once (in my friends dad's Jetta) in college on a poorly lit back road near Ithaca NY.... and when I was 7 or 8 my grandpa ran over a black cat with me in the car. i looked back to see the cat limping off the road. burned into my memory forever. But!..... at least i have not hit any animals in my mini and will try to keep it that way. (knocks on wood)

 

I remember someone on NAM hit a Moose! that wasnt pretty

 

I hate hitting animals. Last year, while heading out to one of the National Tours, I was leaving my neighborhood on an outer road from I-70 pulling my Mini on a trailer with my Tahoe. Anyway, I'm going probably 40 as I come up over a hill and suddenly I see a family of Coons running down the road in my lane, I think there were 5 or 6 of them. Since I was pulling my trailer, the only thing I could do was hit the brakes and keep it straight. Unfortunately, I felt at least 2 impacts, maybe 3 depending on whether one of them got caught by more than one tire on the tahoe/trailer. It disturbed me for a few hours, but, I realize it was either them or me, so, I chose to put them down rather than risk my life as well as my passengers life. The bad thing is, when I got home from the long weekend, there were 2 dead coons on the side of the road where the impact ocurred, so, I had to re-live the experience.

Another thing happened back in 03, my friend and I were out driving my 350Z's(2 of them) and he was looking over at me trying to get me to race him. I was looking forward and glancing over at him when I noticed a coon in his lane. I look over and point ahead, but, it was too late, he was just laughing and looking at me and not paying attention that he had a coon in his lane. Anyway, he clipped it and we pulled over immediately and noticed it was squirming around in the road injured. Not sure what we were going to do, but, we started walking towards it and a Jeep Wrangler came through and just smashed it right in front of our eyes. Anyway, at least the car wasn't damaged at all, but, the poor coon suffered the worst fate due to the ignorance of my friend, and, I know have that sick image in my mind. I call him Coon killer now.