Be Excellent To Each Other

Today was a very productive day, with a surprising amount of shopping done, including cunning trips to two towns to get stuff for my mother and our dog. All was well until on the way home I saw something in the middle of the road that I didn't have time to avoid (and nor did the cars in front, it seems). One very large BANG later and we're wondering if we hit a rather large piece of concrete in the middle of the road, and I'm now paranoid about our car (it's too dark to see if there's any damage, although if there's a leak it's not gushing). On the plus side, there was only one bang (even if it was very loud), so we didn't drag the thing, and the car sounded OK, with no warnings lights dancing about.

I hate having a great day taken away like that though.

You killed Christmas Brick! Who shall hurl pebbles at us on Graveleve now?!

What was the damage then Craig?

Knock on wood, nothing major at the moment. The block clearly fitted under the car, since no front bodywork has been damaged. Also, there's no leakage on our drive, and my wife's since driven the car about 50 miles with no ill effects. (Her thinking is essentially that the car sounded fine after the collision, and there are no warning lights, and no obvious damage, so nuts to it. And she used to work in a garage, so I defer to her judgement when it comes to things like cars.) Maybe we got lucky. With the last few weeks we've had, which have been challenging in various ways, the last thing we'd have needed is for our relatively new car (which I only finished paying for in June) to need major repairs.

I'll have a better look under the thing later, but fingers crossed that we won't be rushing to our local garage until the car's next MOT.

if the car jerked or bounced after the bang, then you'd worry. just a bang? Pah, could've been an inflated bin bag

There is nothing really that can have gone wrong that you won't have noticed already. If you'd banged the sump hard enough, you'd have an oil leak; if you'd damaged the suspension or tyre you'd notice while driving; if you clonked the exhaust it'd be blowing. I suspect you've gotten away unharmed.

Nothing can possibly go wrong, in other words.

Meh, I'm wouldn't bet on it. You get lots of cars coming in for MOT with the lower arm crumpled like a dogfood tin where someone's driven over a rock, and the alignment totally to fuck. One emergency stop and it'll part company with the car altogether.

Likewise with massive egg shaped bulges on the inner sidewalls of tyres, bits of steel belt sticking out.

Most people just don't notice stuff like that until it actually fails properly and they end up with the car falling on the ground or the tyre disintegrating at high speed.

Probably not the case here, but it might be worth a look to make sure any damage is cosmetic.

Yeah, I'll be taking a look in a bit when I walk the dog.

I think for me it was the really fucking loud noise that made me go "oh shit" repeatedly for the next few hours, but, like I said, the car seems OK to drive and there's no leakage at the moment. That doesn't mean it won't suddenly conk out, obviously, but I'm at least hopeful I won't suddenly be hit with a stupidly large repair bill at a time when I really really don't need a stupidly large repair bill.

Gaywood is right in that it's probably not going to conk out if it hasn't already, but that doesn't rule out something being unsafe or at least an MOT fail.

Well, I had a look underneath and, in the main, things look normal. The axles both seem fine, and the exhaust appears undamaged. The plastic covering over the front portion of the underneath of the car (just feel those technical terms!) is really banged up (some tearing/splits), although it's not hanging off or about to part company with the car. We're going to ring the garage, get them to replace that when possible and do a quick once-over. Hopefully it won't be too hideously expensive (although I'm well aware it'll be hundreds...).

In that case the bang was probably the concrete hitting the sub-frame / sump. There's probably a bit of a dent, behind the tears in the plastic.

So given that it's not leaking, and if you don't really want to spend a lot of money on it, I'd be inclined to forget about it.

The car should have a re-enforced sump guard.

I used to visit a Petrol station in the US that was set between two roads. So it was tight getting in and out.. I can't tell you how many times I misjudged the exit and slammed the car on the yellow curb. Half of my sump protector was covered in yellow paint

Torque steer's a cunt.

I had a similar experience the other day... again, no visible damage... but I do have a pair of very small dent/chips in the rear door which were either caused by this mysterious object (there's a special place in hell for cunts who litter heavy or otherwise damaging objects on streets) or more likely by the gritting trucks which spray the stuff out with surprising force.