I straddled a rather large turtle in the middle of the road today. It clunked under my car and made an awful racket. Turtle appeared to be ok-ish. How worried do I need to be about that plastic plate under my Prius? I pulled off to have a look, but all I could tell was that there were no obvious parts hanging out from under it. Should I have it put on a lift for examination or is it likely ok? I am still a Prius newbie and not sure what all that plastic piece that runs underneath the car is protecting, but if it's cracked or broken, I would guess a concern might be water getting where it shouldn't. Help me gauge my worry from probably-nothing to I'd-get-that-looked-at?
I guess I'm trying to gauge the likelihood that anything is torn up and whether or not I need to have it put on a lift for examination or if that plate underneath is super solid and likely to withstand a direct hit from a turtle. I can't really shimmy under there to have a good look, and I wouldn't really even know what I was looking at, anyway. This Prius is still pretty foreign to me in a lot of ways, so I may end up asking a lot of what turns out to be silly questions. Good thing I don't embarrass easily, I reckon.
Ha! Well, I reckon it wasn't that critter, so maybe it's ok. It was just awfully loud and clunky under there. Prius sure does sit pretty low.
Next time it's on a lift have them check that all the plastic fasteners are still there. The undertray is designed to flex. It's not there as armor, it's there for air control. Have a look at the rear bumper-cover. Pearl had her rear bumper-cover popped out from a "freed" truck tread. I'll bet that turtle is sore!
It's just there for air. I reallt doesn't protect much. The dealers tore my oil change door off. The only problem I noticed with that is we got 12 inches of snow this year and the hole in the panels became a snow shovel and forced snow onto the others panels and it pushed two others off. I fixed them.
My plastic shield developed a hole -- perhaps from when I had to drive through a deep puddle -- and for a while it dragged on the ground. The dealership assured me that there was no problem with leaving the hole alone because there was no electrical equipment above it.
