So long story short, hit a pigeon at 40mph on a B road the other night. Glass lens on the passenger side is the victim, and because its a Matrix LED unit its full replacement only at £655 + £120-180 fitting.

 

Didn't do any damage to the bodywork at all, pigeon turned into giblets, and the light mounts are completely fine as well. Questionable glass quality springs to mind, as i've hit bigger fowl than that with less damage done in the past.

 

(I'll post photos once i've got off the phone with insurer)

Ouch! A hefty bill, hopefully covered OK on the insurance.

 

With the danger of making this a game of ‘top trumps’, years ago (Triumph Dolomite days) I hit a pigeon head on at 70mph. What I assume was the beak took a lump out of the windscreen, which thankfully remained intact.

And I hit a pheasant with a previous car, with no damage to the car* other than having to re-spline the passenger side wiper arm.

 

*The pheasant wasn't so lucky.

Hit a possum in my F21 320d Touring at night.  No damage to the bumper but the unlucky beast managed to get past the lower mid bumper grille slat and knocked out the turbo unit!

In my Audi S4 when doing 70mph (cough!) on the M3 I hit a pigeon that was initially hit by the Transit in front and got thrown over the top, hit my drivers wing mirror casing - knocked the mirror off and left dangling by the wires. Clicked the mirror back into place, only 'damage' was a bit of pigeon blood on the mirror casing.

Edited 10 July, 20214 yr by PetrolDave

It’s not glass. Just FYI. 

Pretty sure all new cars have plastic (some version of polycarbonate) lights. Crash safety and weight savings.  Strange how your insurance doesn't cover something like that. Over here it would be covered, just 100-200 Euros for the claim. 

Edited 10 July, 20214 yr by zetzet

I used to live in the countryside as a kid and hitting pheasants was a common thing. Sometimes there would be zero damage, sometimes things would break. My dad always had plastic headlight protectors fitted on his cars just in case as they were cheap to replace but the light units weren’t. 

Got another kick in the teeth today, Skoda don't have any in stock worldwide, so i've been waiting a week for them to tell me this, so apparently this means they don't have a stock ordering database that could've told them this in 2 seconds flat either? Now i've potentially got to wait another 2 weeks for them to build one to order. So by the time i get the light it will be 6 weeks from purchase, and i'll have only had the car in my possession for half of that.

 

Not setting a good precedence for me.

 

5 hours ago, GiantKiwi said:

Got another kick in the teeth today, Skoda don't have any in stock worldwide, so i've been waiting a week for them to tell me this, so apparently this means they don't have a stock ordering database that could've told them this in 2 seconds flat either? Now i've potentially got to wait another 2 weeks for them to build one to order. So by the time i get the light it will be 6 weeks from purchase, and i'll have only had the car in my possession for half of that.

 

Not setting a good precedence for me.

 

That's the world we live in. Shortages of everything.

On 21/07/2021 at 05:08, zetzet said:

That's the world we live in. Shortages of everything.

 

Semiconductors maybe, LED's not so much. Skoda themselves owned up that the controllers will be salvaged from the existing light, so there are no semiconductors impacting this.

Just now, GiantKiwi said:

 

Semiconductors maybe, LED's not so much. Skoda themselves owned up that the controllers will be salvaged from the existing light, so there are no semiconductors impacting this.

Shipping routes of everything were disrupted. There are thousands of container ships stranded and there are also containers waiting for ships for months. My factory is struggling to get packaging materials, forget replacement parts, those take months. 

LEDs are semiconductors, aren't they?

 

Just now, zetzet said:

Shipping routes of everything were disrupted. There are thousands of container ships stranded and there are also containers waiting for ships for months. My factory is struggling to get packaging materials, forget replacement parts, those take months. 

We just had 21 LED Screen panels arrive from China in 3 weeks (the type used in the big screens at music festivals), including manufacturing. There is no shortage of LED based production elements.

 

2 minutes ago, Wino said:

LEDs are semiconductors, aren't they?

 

 

The world shortage is for silicon semiconductors related to computer chips, not compound gallium based.

Fair enough. Hope they get one to you quicker than forecast.

Many years back, when we were looking for a new car (and eventually bought mk2 Octavia), my wife took out a Mondeo for a test drive by herself.

She was only doing 60kph limit in the 'fast' lane of an urban multi-lane when a large flock of pigeons flew out of the centre nature strip and she drove straight through them.

No damage done to the car fortunately, and my wife was horrified but steered straight. She said the salesman's face said it all when he first saw all the blood and feathers that smothered the front of his brand new demo from a 15 minute test drive.

 

Some years later we discovered there was a local bird fancier who fed them there for years, hence the concentration of birds. He probably remembers it as the 'Great Mondeo Massacre'.

 

I find the costs being quoted for replacing damaged higher spec headlights (xenon, led) does seem extraordinarily high.

Edited 22 July, 20214 yr by Gerrycan

19 hours ago, Gerrycan said:

I find the costs being quoted for replacing damaged higher spec headlights (xenon, led) does seem extraordinarily high.

 

Especially given the whole right repair legal movements going on around the world at the moment. I cannot believe that an LED light unit is impossible to repair or replace the lens of, given the right equipment, this is just a copout to force customers to pay up for obscene OEM costs.

On 20/07/2021 at 23:44, GiantKiwi said:

Got another kick in the teeth today, Skoda don't have any in stock worldwide, so i've been waiting a week for them to tell me this, so apparently this means they don't have a stock ordering database that could've told them this in 2 seconds flat either? Now i've potentially got to wait another 2 weeks for them to build one to order. So by the time i get the light it will be 6 weeks from purchase, and i'll have only had the car in my possession for half of that.

 

Not setting a good precedence for me.

 

This is a worldwide problem. My son has a 15 plate Ford Fiesta which needs ABS Module and pumps. Been on back order for 6 weeks now. He is happy as he has Ford Puma courtesy car from Ford dealer.

2 hours ago, GiantKiwi said:

 

Especially given the whole right repair legal movements going on around the world at the moment. I cannot believe that an LED light unit is impossible to repair or replace the lens of, given the right equipment, this is just a copout to force customers to pay up for obscene OEM costs.

Reassembling has other issues. People who do it need to be trained, you run into sealing issues, warranty. It's better for everyone involved to get a completely new unit and that price isn't actually so bad. 

1 hour ago, zetzet said:

Reassembling has other issues. People who do it need to be trained, you run into sealing issues, warranty. It's better for everyone involved to get a completely new unit and that price isn't actually so bad. 

It is a pretty high percentage of the price of a brand new car for ONE headlight and it was just a pigeon 

I mean if he hit something like an emu then yeah, that could be expensive.

If a part breaks in a computer, I replace the part, not the entire computer - even if it's flash soldered microelectronics - Apple just lost a court case in the states with the supreme courts, you can damn well bet car manufacturers will targetted to the same effect soon.

On 22/07/2021 at 13:28, Wino said:

LEDs are semiconductors, aren't they?

 

Well you have educated me on this one,I did not know led were semi conductors

19 hours ago, Joss1733 said:

Well you have educated me on this one,I did not know led were semi conductors

The clue is in the name - LED = Light Emitting Diode

21 hours ago, Joss1733 said:

Well you have educated me on this one,I did not know led were semi conductors

 

1 hour ago, PetrolDave said:

The clue is in the name - LED = Light Emitting Diode

LEDs are originally derived from germanium diodes, used to pass current one way but not the other through a circuit. Germanium is a classical semiconductor.