Our 2010 Prius is One Tough Cookie

a couple weeks ago we took our first trip in our new Prius: from Indy to St Louis for the weekend.

other than road construction and closings on the way there, a pretty uneventful trip. the return trip was, well...not so much.

after just getting onto the interstate, we merged into the middle lane of a 5 lane wide section and immediately hit a HUGE chunk of semi tire tread....HUGE! I caught it with the right front corner of the car and ran over it.

and as soon as I had hit it, the car started making a noise. so, here we are, travelling along at 60+mph in the MIDDLE lane of a 5 lane highway in heavy traffic. I finally was able to pull the car off the side of the road to check out the damage. we were thinking 'its Sunday, we're out of towners and have NO clue were the closest Toyota dealer is. GREAT! guess I won't be back at work on Monday.

anyway, I got out to check out the damage. I saw what the noise was, as the right fender liner was hanging down, dragging on the ground. I layed on the ground to check it out further and found no other damage. the liner had just been ripped out of its mounting points.....that was it! I needed a way to tie up the broken liner but had no string, rope or even '100 mph duct tape'! LOL so thinking quickly, I removed one of my shoestrings and used it to tie up the plastic liner. once secured, we were back on the road. down time: less than 5 minutes.

once home, I was a bit disappointed to find out that the piece of liner I needed was only sold as the entire fender liner, not just the front piece. oh well, needed to fix it, so I bought it, removed only the front section, and replaced the damaged part. again, about a 5 minute repair.

what really surprised me was this huge, did I say HUGE, chunk of tire carcass only broke a thin piece of plastic. no suspension damage, no broken bumper, no knocking it out of alignment....NOTHING!

this Prius IS one tough cookie. :rockon:

 

uh, I don't know about that. that 'cheap plastic' cost me about $70, and that was WHOLESALE!

but at least it seemed to absorb the impact and so it was worth $70 to replace VS all the possible damage I thought I was going to be looking at.

FYI a couple things: first, I had to use a spare pair of shoes for a week until I got around to replacing the fender liner and could put my shoe string back in my shoe. for that week, the shoe string held up very well and was reusable. second, I didn't have any Binaca, but the Mrs DID have some Wrigleys Spearmint Gum......