mikeg's blog

Car, meet slush. Slush, this is car. Oh, Slush decided to break up the orgy between Rubber and Road! This ain't good, the car wants to go into the curb. No problem - I can save this - I'll have to go across into the next lane for the recovery but... oh what's that? A car? Right where I need to be to recover from this skid? Hmm, well hitting cars is bad - hitting little signs on the side of the road is less bad, so off we go! THUD THUNK SCRAPE SPLASH WHUMP "GOD FUCKING DAMNIT!" (Respectively, me hitting the curb, the OTHER TWO wheels hitting the curb, some component of my undercarriage (trans, rear diff, muffler, cat, or possibly the body itself) hitting the curb, the sound of all the slush being splatted out of the way by my tires, the engine dying as I let it stall, and me - unfortunately quite alive and unharmed). Upshot? Well I've trashed my front suspension - my alignment is blown to shit, the right lower control arm has either popped its ball joint or completely snapped. Even if it's only popped the ball joint it's at the very least quite bent, as is the left lower control arm. I may have bent the rack bar, and there may be steering box damage. I've definitely destroyed both right-hand rims (curbs tend to do that when you hit them and 30MPH). I may have bent or cracked the rear sway bar, there may be differential damage from the impact on the right wheel, there may be transimission or differential damage from the shock of jumping up onto the curb (and/or from the scraping noise), and I haven't been under the car yet, but the only fucking good sign is that my oil light didn't come on so if I've managed to damage the oil pan it's probably only a slow leak. Yeah - I'm kinda pissed at the world now. I'm going to bed.