Last night around 7pm, I hit a deer in the Volvo. Stupid thing was just chilling in the road right behind a hill crest, completely hidden from view. This road is a 45mph zone but I was only doing 35 because genre savvy. Yet I STILL hit the bastard, probably around 25 after I slammed on the brakes a moment before impact. There was no good place to pull over to gather the carcass OR inspect the damage nearby, so I drove into the next town a few miles away.
Damage looked pretty bad, hood was crumpled up to the point where it partially obstructed my view of the road. Driver side headlamp assembly was shattered, the turn signal/marker light was just completely GONE on that side. Grill completely missing, aux hood catch release puller was gone, driver side primary hood latch was cracked and nonfunctional, one of the horn assemblies got a chunk taken off it (but still functional), and the passenger side turn signal/marker light got one of its mounting tabs broken off. I didn’t get a real good look at the damage until the morning though:
This was after I stood on the crumpled part of the hood in an attempt to reduce its effect on my field of vision for the rest of the drive home last night. Well, I shouldn’t really drive the car like that, so...
Off to the boneyard!
Scored all the lights, grille, hood release and hoot latch off a silver ‘98 S70. And the best part, a fully-intact, nearly-perfect condition hood in matching blue off a poor 2000 V70. Removing a nearly-100lb Volvo hood and taking it off a car alone is not easy. And I had to do it twice.
Upon closer inspection, the radiator support (big black plastic piece framing the lights and radiator) was cracked with a few pieces missing, but still in the correct place/shape, so I left that in until I have the time to get a good replacement unit and install it. Requires taking the lights, front fascia, and bumper off to remove, so that’s a project for another day.
After struggling to get the new hood on by myself, then just a bit of tweaking the very front edge of the driver side fender where it meets the turn signal, everything lines up pretty well for a rush job.
From wrecked to mostly-restored in just under 17 hours. $100 in junkyard parts, and about 90 minutes of labor to install everything and adjust so the hood closes and latches correctly.
This is my answer to yesterday’s conveniently timed Jalopnik front page post.
Then I drove it to work and back (about 100 miles), no further issues to report.