When deer attack.....

Shoestring7

Member
I live in the country so am well used to being very careful on quiet country roads at dawn and dusk when the local wildlife are active. However on Sunday around noon I was turning off the A3 when a muntjac appeared in the middle of the off slip. The little b*****d sold me a dummy before darting across in front of the car. Contact was inevitable, and when I stopped the front lower grill, and foglight blanking plates were lying in the middle of the road and were hit by following traffic. The deer was deceased for those worried. There's also a split in the front PU, and I saw a puddle of liquid forming under that car, which turned out to be from the washer bottle.

It'd would be bad enough it was my tdi90, but this was my lovely 45k mile old tdi 75, which I was bringing down for a cam belt change :(

I'll put a wanted ad up, but if anyone has a immaculate lower grill and left and right blanking plates, please get in touch.
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Sorry to see your A2 damaged. Hope you can get it fixed soon, especially with such a low mileage.

Seems to be getting more frequent. Yesterday I had a lucky near miss when a small deer ran across the road. This A2 owner driving in Scotland a few days ago was not so lucky - worst than yours. I think it is repairable.
 
As the weather is warming up, there will be more wild life crossing the roads. If you're driving outside urban areas, try to be more careful, specially around forests and trees as deers can hide behind them easily.
Deer scare easily, but car/motorbike head lights can blind them, so they sometimes only react when the vehicle gets really close, which unfortunately can cause serious accidents.

If you see a deer standing by the road, turn your headlights on and off a couple of times, and sound the horn, that might scare them away.
During mating season they can became rather agressive, so if you have to slow down to let them cross, try to keep as much distance as you can.
 
I experienced the sickening sound of a sheep going under the front of the car a long time ago, and my advice to anyone faced with an animal on the move is to assume nothing, and scrub as much speed off as you safely can.
 
I experienced the sickening sound of a sheep going under the front of the car a long time ago, and my advice to anyone faced with an animal on the move is to assume nothing, and scrub as much speed off as you safely can.

I had this exact experience with a herd of sheep breaking free while being moved, suddenly a herd of sheep ran out into the road. Unfortunately I hit one, next time heavy breaking rather than trying to avoid.


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I've heard the saying, "Head down, foot down, head up, ease up" in regard to animals on the roadside. If they're grazing you don't have to worry so much, otherwise as @Imola Yellow says, your brakes are the best defence against a bad outcome of a seemingly random dart across the road. Applies to anything larger than a rabbit as far as I'm concerned.
 
I got a couple of quotes from local firms for the repairs. A big local accident repair company was recommended, so I popped along. A 12 year old came out with a clip board, sucked his teeth, and told me I should go through the insurance as it would be "Over a grand mate". Hmm. I then tried another place, this time a two man band in a smart unit on a farm. This time I asked for a quote to repair and paint the bumper if I brought it along: that was £400 which seemed a lot more realistic.

In the meantime I contacted @A2Steve and he sent me a good used screen wash bottle. I did some research and set a weekend aside to remove the wheel arch from the pax side and replace. That went well, although I did discover that as my car has the low level light I needed to modify the bottle to fit the sensor. There is a fitting at the back of the bottle which needed a bit of finagling, and one of the wheel arch lining fixings fought back, but I took my time and it all went back together ok. I was really expecting more problems with corrosion - the car is 20 years old after all - but it was all as clean a a whistle.
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Meanwhile I was watching the bay of dreams to see if I could find a decent used bumper cover I could get repainted - the split in the current one could be repaired but as the bumper was going to be painted anyway it made sense to explore the possibility. I also picked up a nice grill and blanking plates on here.

A couple of weeks ago I spotted an ice blue bumper being sold by a vendor in London. It looked to have a fair few scratches, but I bid £120- and arranged to collect it.

Pretty much all of London is now a low emission zone, so it would be £12.50 just to drive the A2 in. Sod that for a game of soldiers: the tape measure suggested an A2 bumper would just about fit in my Yaris, so one Saturday morning I headed early up to East London.

I used to live in the great wen, but nowadays it's a truly miserable place to drive, even at 8.30am on a sunny Saturday; endless 20mph zones, cameras, bus lanes and 'speed' bumps every 100metres.

The upside was that I could pop over to Islington afterwards and meet my eldest son for breakfast. Somewhat paranoid about leaving the new car with an obvious load in the street, I managed to find a secure multi-story in the new Kings Cross development:
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In the clear light of day the 'new bumper' had clearly spent it's life on the front on a London car. It was liberally covered in scratches and scrapes, and at first glance a re-spray seemed to be a no-brainer.

However, closer examination revealed that a lot of the marks might respond to a good cleaning. I cracked open the detailing box, and spent a day washing, claying, washing, polishing and waxing the bumper. I was really pleased with the results; you'd really have to be very harsh to criticise the end result:
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A week or so later, I decided to bite the bullet and replace the old bumper. I don't have any suitable hardstanding to work on, just bare earth, so getting the car in the air involves putting some material on the ground, rolling in the dirt, and losing any fixings that drop onto the ground.

The guides here were very useful, as was my previous experience wrestling with the wheel arch linings. I did end up undoing the wrong line of screws (the ones holding the support bracket to the wing are in a similar place), but in the end that turned out to be not such a bad thing.

I loosened the front of the arch linings, removed the headlamps, undid the under tray, and eventually the bumper came off.

Unfortunately it also revealed that the support bracket on the side that had impacted the muntjac was in several pieces, so after a failed attempt at a repair I called a halt and ordered a replacement part; leaving the poor A2 hanging in the air (on axle stands) for a week until I could have another go at it.

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I mentioned the support bracket. When I offered up the new one the fit seemed a bit off. Closer examination revealed that someone had been there before me, and made a bit of a Horlicks of it too. Theres a metal bracket running across the car to attach the wing support to: one of the fixings was left in and the tab it was supposed to attach was just jammed up against it, distorting the wing.

Once I'd sorted that out the new bracket went on nicely. The tips here to buy a stock of the plastic panel clips etc are a good pointer; a lot were destroyed in the process. The stalk the external temperature sensor had snapped at the top, so I drilled a new hole and cable tied (the horror!) the sensor neatly out of trouble.

Another hot afternoon in the sun and it was starting to come together nicely.

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Finally, I refitted the arch linings & undertray, clipped in the 'new' grill and blanking plates, switched the number plate from the old bumper, and put the headlights back in.

Then it was just a matter of dropping the car off the stands and giving it a good wash.

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The last bit went really smoothly, and it was very satisfying to see the car back in its wheels and gleaming in the evening sun.

In all I spent a little under £200 on the repairs. My own time is 'free' so there's no cost, and while the level of technical challenge presented by this was minimal by the standards of the work of a lot of the members here, it was the first time I've attempted something like this, so it was great to see a good result.

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One question for anyone reading this: there are three fixings that attached the back of the undertray to a cross member, there must be some sort of dzus clip with the corresponding catch that sits in the subframe. All are missing on my car; any suggestions for a suitable type that won't corrode?
 
You have done a great job there. I was wondering who got that front bumper, I was contemplating grabbing it into stock just in case
 
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