It's not quite Thanksgiving, but that was an expensive bird!

[2015 Blue RT]

So I've had my new to me 2015 1200RT for a total of just over 2 days and I managed to do something I've never done in over 40 years of riding... I hit a roadkill buzzard in flight.

 

These are the black birds that feast on roadkill. Coming home from church this morning, I was in an S-curve on a two lane country road I've ridden plenty of times. On the second half of the S as I was accelerating through the curve, I saw a flock of buzzards in the oncoming lane shoulder. I was probably doing about 50 when one took off and I clipped it with the left side of the fairing. Damage was the mirror cover popped loose (reinstalled it) but it cracked the $176 wind deflector and one of the $340 speaker ears. The latter may have been due in part to only having 2 of the 3 screws in place since the lower well nut was spinning & I had epoxied it the night before.

 

Now I get to see if my Loctite EA 9460 will work on these materials! Specs say 3 days to reach full strength, so it's a good thing I don't use the speakers.

[TEWKS]

Bummer, glad you weren’t hurt. 

[Dennis Andress]

Isn't it interesting how some bikes don't hesitate to express their true character?

[dduelin]

I also hit one about a month ago with my Goldwing. It took flight from the left shoulder and flew into my path while I was going about 65 mph on a rural GA road north of Louisville, GA. As good fortune would have it the bird achieved exactly the right altitude and airspeed to take off the upper windshield of the Madstad system and somehow did not not destroy or even damage the front fairing and headlight assembly, nor strike me full in the face or chest. It happened about 250 miles into a 450 mile trip to the Sylva NC campground where my wife and I were staying for the next 8 days. I was able to retrieve several large pieces of the Madstad shield and base plate and the next day found that one of them fit exactly back into place and could be duct taped with sufficient integrity to allow us to enjoy the rest of the trip and get home.

 

Nothing smells as bad as a buzzard turned inside out with a motorcycle strike. 20 miles after the bird strike it began to rain and it rained hard the remainder of the trip to NC. The rain washed the bike clean. The sunrise picture below shows the clear upper portion of the Madstad in it's proper place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Scott9999]

Here, I've gotta watch the turkeys and deer.  The latter is self-explanatory.  (And now, those stupid plastic deer whistles do absolutely NO good.  Deer respond like "Who, me?  You lookin' at me?")

 

The wild turkeys will fly a couple a hundred yards from anywhere up the hill, down to the water by the lake.  They are just HUGE birds and flight.  They don't so much as fly, as suicide launch, without a whole lot of control as to where and how they land.  Since they apparently have few natural predators around here, they roam around in flocks of between 5-6, and as high as 25.  I've seen a bobcat up the road, a few moose, and there have been some deer kills (probably by those cats), but I guess predators out this way don't like the taste of wild turkeys anymore than humans do.  😏  Of course, the roads I travel daily, crisscross these birds favored flight path.

 

There's just a whole lot of wild life up here in the Northwest to contend with, and nothing's going to change that.  It goes with the (quite beautiful) territory.   That, and the occasional sandy/gravelly intersection scares me a good deal. It's not like I've never had the front or rear end slip out from me before while riding street, and recovered, but I went down that way when I was about 20 years old and in college, and I've got a bit of a foiba about it.  I don't want to do that in my mid-60's.

 

You road away from it unharmed, so any damage is WAY secondary.  Figure that you've paid your "new rider/new bike" type dues already, so everything from here out should smooth sailing. 🤣👍

[2015 Blue RT]

Thanks for all of the replies- things could certainly have been worse.

 

Here's my EA 9460 epoxy repair attempts. I tried to rough up the surrounding areas this morning and applied a second layer. I found a reasonably priced used deflector on ebay.uk, but they don't ship to the US.

 

[LBump]

Heck, what a start to riding your RT... 

 

You could always take the right hand deflector off until you find a left one, that is if you want that 'symmetrical' look. They get stupid money for plastic shapes

 

Check this LINK

 

Don't forget about Beemer Boneyard.

 

Good luck

[2015 Blue RT]

Thanks, I've hit up all of the used bike parts places I could find online. I don't think any of them have the parts I need, or if they did the price was too high.

 

That Motorworks place in the UK is funky- looks like they operate by phone only, and I don't have international calling on my plan. I tried to send in their form (they want a LOT of info for just a quote), but it gave me an "external form" error.

[2015 Blue RT]

Reinstalled the deflector this evening, seemed fairly solid. Time will tell on the repair though. I'm waiting on a new 5mm well nut to reinstall the speaker.