Hi all, been a member nearly a year since bringing home my '05 MCS but while I have read and learned volumes here on the forums,I rarely have much to say so i don't post much. I had a run-in (literally ) with a very large jackrabbit on Clark road here in Paradise last night.

What a mess!I was returning from Scaramento airport with my son and his wife and alot of luggage, so the car was full and swerving seemed foolish, so I got to spend this morning tearing the remains of my front end off the car.

Considering the size of Mr Rabbit, and the velocity (65 mph) at the time, I have to say the design of the bumper and assorted trim parts did a masterful job of absorbing and spreading the impact.Other than the lower lip and grille being written of, the AC condenser and radiator came through fine, much to my relief, and there is no other damage.I had a similar experience with the SVT Contour about 2 years ago, and the damages were much worse, and more expensive to fix!

As for my Mini..in all my years as a car guy I have never enjoyed a car quite like this one, Pure Silver with a black roof, Hk tunes, 16" X lites which I just shod with Yokohama S-Drives in 205-50-16, it's just a delight to drive hard on the mountain roads hereabouts and has been completely trouble free, which is nice for a car I picked up used.Coming up on one year since I bought it, so the time has come for some discreet mods....

More on that later, for now, many thanks for the incredible information resource, and if you live here in upper California, give me a shout!

Best,
Paul Fisher
"Mad Gepetto"

 

That's what the great brakes are for, avoiding run-ins. Wierd first post a year in the making.

 

You would think with those humongus ears, the sound of the SC would have kept him off the road......

Good to hear damage was not extensive. Any chance driving lights have helped in this case, or was it just a matter of bad timing ?

 

..Actually, the critter just did a Kamikaze run from the side of the road right into me...just like the last one a few years back..it's as if they decide to make a bee-line for your lights..weird.

There's alot of brush either side of the road, and living here we are very careful to scan for deer, really a drag but it was too fast to try and avoid him, and there's no way the car would have stopped in time.Oh, well.At least I know alot about what's under the bumper now!I may well install some driving lights soon, after a pulley and some intake work.The repair bits are on the way FedEx.


Paul

 

Rabbits out here just eat the heck out of my hedges.....never see any as road kills. Could be the ones out there are grazing on loco-weed......

Maybe we need to make you car louder ! Get a JCW Air box ( I hear CA has strict emissions checks ) , and do a flapectomy on it, pull out the lower box plug and install an Alta JCW foam replacement filter in there. Then find a Borla Race Performance exhaust....the sounds of that composition should scare most things away from the roadside

 

MINI - 1, Rabbit - 0, Final, no overtime.

 

Jack Rabbit mating season officially ended last week, the ole boy probably was making a run for it before she wanted to cuddle!!!

 

I get that with deer a lot here in BF VA. Two main seasons, spring and mid-fall. It's hard to keep a watch out for them, I think they hide in the brush and just wait for the voices in their head to tell them to run! I've actually had two very close encounters while driving the Prius, the first one was the second day I had the car and one youngling dashed out of the cornfield right in front, I managed to brake and swerve and I clipped his rear hoof as he went by (I found the hair in the fog lights). The second time was less than a 1/4 mile from the house at 5:00 AM, the idiot ran out of the woods and the only reason I think I didn't hit him was because he turned his head as the last moment. Of course there was the time I almost hit one as he ran across the driveway as I was pulling in, that would have been fun to explain to the insurance agent!

 

Around here we have to watch out for those pesky squirrels.

 

Yep, I used to live on Smith Mountain Lake in Franklin County, VA and the roads are littered with deer... I remember tooling around the lake in a 911 Carerra and came around a corner at night, only to see a buck standing in the road... Did he flinch, no... Did he run away, no... What did he do??? He put his head down and charged the car... I was able to swerve to miss a head-on (no pun intended), but caught the deer in the head with the passenger side mirror... It popped off the car and was dangling by the remote wires... The deer stopped, shook it's head and wandered off...

 

Glad to hear I am not alone having to dodge pesky critters...I like the idea of the JCW airbox, as California is indeed not much fun at all on e missions inspections..

I have been looking at doing simple surgery to the rear wall of the airbox to allow for greater mass flow and dropping in a foam panel filter to avoid visible alterations, the exhaust will have to wait a while , I am going to have to do rotors , pads and then struts over the next year as I am approaching 45K miles so my mod budget will have to stretch.

Having spent alot of time in wind and water tunnels in my day ( I am a model-maker) I keep finding myself wanting to do a flow test model of the car to try to find neat ideas for the intercooler airstream and the cowl induction....just not alot of spare time, perhaps someone has already done some digital or physical model studies for fun on this? I have seen the scoops for the cowl, but wonder if they get out of the boundary layer enough to really do much good.

Looking at the hood of the car, I can see a NACA type entry duct and extractor tunnel might be good,with the entire hood molded in CF it would work out Ok for a strait-thru type intercooler. Might also be possible to mold up some form of vortex generators to clip on the grille that would stream more air directly at the scoop area...Wish I had time and resources to try it!

Back to work for me! Bumper parts arrive tomorrow so I can get my front end back up to snuff.

Paul

 

WOW ! That was one tough, PO'd buck! I'll bet he shoots back at the hunters!