i don’t have photos because THANKFULLY this was not my situation and i felt really bad asking for photos, but it’s quite a story.
my friend and i drive up to the MTB trailhead. it’s a new spot pretty far from home. there’s a pristine white new BMW 5 series, lowered, on aftermarket rims with some aftermarket trim. it looks good. two women are looking carefully at the back, where one bike is on a hitch rack.
we get out and start to set up. they’re recounting to some other riders that they hit a deer on their way to the trail. the deer bounced off the side of the car and into the hitch rack.
the car is dented (they hadn’t seen this yet and i got to be the bearer of bad news). the hitch rack is twisted so the passenger side is a few INCHES closer to the car than the driver’s side. this caused them to have to remove one bike further up the road and put it in the back seat.
the fairly new ibis ripley on the rack is cracked. the women are pretty devastated. we muse about whether auto insurance covers your not-car shit that is attached to your car.
upon further looking, the hitch RACK seems fine, the actual hitch itself is bent!
so they’re in for a quarter panel (not severe), a hidden hitch, probably a hitch rack, and at least one bike.
that’s a pretty big asplode. honestly the worst part (for me) would be driving almost an hour and then not getting to ride.
this is a good reason to not trust the hidden hitches atmo. some cars just shouldn’t have stuff attached to the back of them. that 5 series would probably look sick with a roof rack.
I think the opposite: The preload was a little loose, when I swapped to a new front wheel that was really grabby on the brake. So the fork flexed while braking heavily and, once the cup was a little pitted, it got worse and worse; probably some neglect and user error on my part. That said, I also acquired the headset for free about a decade ago, presumably the lowest of quality. I remember the measurements were quite out of spec back then, while installing it. The mileage since was some 5 digits.
