Rabbit + 90mph = $$$
 

I went down to socal this past weekend to help my friend pack up all his stuff to come home from school for the summer. All was well until the drive home. First off about an hour out of L.A. my alt/waterpump belt broke and took the a.c. belt along with it. I had to stop at a weigh in station and have my friend turn around to help me out. It ended up taking 4 hours to fix that since we had to drive quite a ways to get the parts and tools I needed at that time of the night. After getting her running and back on the road we were driving out in the middle of nowhere when out comes a quite large rabbit into the middle of my lane. My options were to pull off onto the shoulder that was next to nothing and possibly run off into a ditch, go into the other lane and possibly hit the semi next to me, or hit the brakes and have my friend run into the back of me with his Land Cruiser and trailer. In the end I just had to take the hit. I was doing about 90mph so the impact was pretty hard. My friend called me and said that he saw the rabbit spin around and fur came up and got stuck on his windshield. We kept going because neither of us wanted to stop after having the belt incident. We had to stop in Vegas to fill up so I took the time to inspect the damage. Both of my foglight got knocked out with one of them hanging by the wires and the other one was completely gone along with the wiring, the center grill was severly damaged, and the bottom lip of my bumper has a chuck out and cracked all along the bottom. So if anyone has a front bumper lying around in good condition I'm in the market for one.

doh! i hit a racoon once that did a nice bit of damage underneath. what about the plastic bits underneath the front bumper, did they survive? mine got broken and even took a mounting bit off one of the pieces that goes up along the side of the air inlets and is a PAIN to replace.

They are cracked a bit, but in are in one piece. I have a feeling once I get in to replace the bumper I will find more things that that little bastard broke.

most likely :( if you're going to make a claim to your insurance, be sure to check everything yourself before taking it for an estimate so you can point it all out to them as they'll likely miss a bunch of things.

Do you have comprehensive insurance? If so, that is what it's for and you are not at fault. BTW- You did the right thing. Too bad for the bunny but you avoided what could have been a very bad experience.

As Yosemite Sam says "I hate that ******* rabbit". good luck on the repair.

I went and checked with my insurance agent today to see what I can do about it. I have to pay the first $500 in repairs and then they will give me another $500 if my money wasn't enough. I haven't got a quote yet on what it will be to replace the bumper and get it sprayed. I guess once I get a quote I will decide if I should file a claim or not, because even though it was just an animal a claim is a claim and if I change insurance they will look at that. I guess I gotta make some time this week and find a good body shop in town... Anyone know how to remove the front bumper so I can get a closer look at the problem area?