Damn!!!!
This morning on the way to work on the highway, a pickup truck swerved at the last second, not leaving me any time, and I ran over half a truck tire. It felt like I ran over a tree or something. I was praying that I didn't damage the front bumper or anything else. When I got to work, there was no damage to the front end, and there were no check engine lights on or anything. I hit it smack in the middle so none of my tires ran over it.
I noticed that I have a burning smell now coming from somewhere.

I am going to call my local garage and see if he can put it up on the lift today. I hope nothing got damaged underneath. I did see that the big plastic shroud under the motor was almost bent and you can see where the tire hit it.
Not even 1000 mile on it. I hate ****n' trucks and the road **** they leave behind.

 

hmm burning smell. i hope its minor. it could just be that some of the rubber got ripped off and stuck somewhere on the exhaust underneath and is slowly burning....if thats even possible.

whatever it is make sure and leave an update.

 

Luckily you hit something made out of rubber! I would imagine nothing too serious could have happened...can you take a pic of what you think is bent?

 

I78 in PA sucks when it comes to road crap.
I have seen wheels fall right off trucks, 4x4 wood posts, exhausts, etc laying right in the middle of the highway.
Since my car is leased, if the plastic is damaged, i don't know if I should get it fixed or just let it go, since you can't see it anyway.
If there is anything else damaged, obviously I will have to get it fixed.

 

Same thing happened to me. Driving on I5 coming back to Seattle from Portland. The d@mn tire came out of nowhere and I hit it with the left wheels. I was sure I'd bent something from the sound of the impact but got lucky and didn't do any damage. Hope you're as lucky.

 

They'll soon see if anything is bent when she's up on the lift. The burning smell may be some rubber that rubbed off/broke off and got onto the hot exhaust pipes.
G/L
C.

 

I almost had this happen to me last week but I was going about 80mph. All I can say is I'm glad for stability control in this car because I had around a second to reassess what was around me and react. Luckily I ended up going over a smaller piece and missing the huge chunk.

 

That sucks, I have almost hit those as well, ****** truckers, who the hell rides herd over those guys and their safety inspections? Hope your car is okay, I bet Colin is right!

 

That happened to my brother several years ago. The tire stripped a huge portion of paint/primer off the front bumper, looks like you may have gotten lucky.

 

Well I went to my friends garage and we put it on the lift. There is no damage that will hinder the car in any way.
The soft plastic shroud that covers the front portion of the engine took a beating the most. You can see a lot of scratches and scuffs on it. It hit the trans pan but he said it didn't look like it was dented.
The "skid" marks continue all over the underside on the exhaust, floorboards, cat converter, etc. You can see scratches on the underside of the rear bumper where it exited as well. There is no damage to my exterior paint that I can see. You would have to lay on the ground to actually see where it scratched the underside of the bumper.
We also checked all the wires, lines, etc and everything looked OK.

It did impact hard enough to take a little piece of plastic out of the front shroud engine cover but it is nothing to worry about.

I am one of those people that would always get rid of a car when something happened to it because it wasn't "new" anymore. Well now that I am leasing, I guess it doesn't matter since I know the car is going back to them. I just hate having a new car for only a month and something happens.

Be on the look out for "road gators"

 

same thing happened to me have a nice lil dent in the hood now.