I was commuting to work at 5:30 am and in fairly heavy traffic for that hour. I was traveling "above posted speeds" in a group of cars three lanes across and several deep and I was moving along next to an 18-wheeler. All of a sudden he threw up a large piece of road debris of some sort. It came at me too fast to really tell what it was and I had nowhere to go. Just the luck of the draw that it happened to come at me. So I hit it on the right front (passenger side) bumper and ran over it, and my car started making 'unusual' noises. Damn! Was my thought. (okay, it was more colorful than "damn", but you get the idea).
I worked my way across traffic, took the next exit and looked for a street light (not much out there where this happened). I got my trusty flashlight and went to look and originally thought I was dragging the debris. A big chunk of stuff was dragging and rubbing on the front tire. I tried to pull it loose and discovered it was attached! It was part of the undercarriage of my car. So I twisted it around and stuffed it back up in there and drove the rest of the way to work. The car didn't overheat or lose gas or make any more unusual noises except it was (and is) very loud when I accelerate. When I left work, there were no drips or fluids under the car, so since I had to fly to DC the next day, I put off taking it to the shop until I got back.
Turns out that piece of debris ripped my engine shield off the bottom of my car and loosened or damaged other pieces. The good news is that it missed my fog light and headlight on that side, and it looks like the front bumper (which wraps the whole front of the car) can be salvaged. Tomorrow I'm taking it to the shop to be repaired and renting a car for the three days they will have it (hopefully only three days).
So where does the amateur auto mechanic come in? Friday as I was leaving work I approached the car and thought "what the hell?" A large piece of the undercarriage on the driver's side was hanging down to within about 2 inches of the pavement. I got down on my knees (thankfully I wasn't wearing a dress) and determined that it was fairly solidly attached and then drove the car home that way, carefully skirting any road conditions that would cause the car to bounce. When I got home, I waited for the car to cool down and then laid down on the ground and got under it to see what was going on. I even got under the car on the passenger side to see how the same piece on that side was attached. Scarily, it's not attached. That's apparently the broken piece that I stuffed back up in there and it's just sitting in there! Anyway, when I pushed the hanging piece back up into place and looked at it by looking in the wheel well over the tire, I found a place where the hanging piece has a hole that matches up with a hole on another piece of the car. So I found a nut and bolt (almost too small so I put a washer on it to make sure it doesn't come through), and bolted the hanging piece back up in place. I have no idea if it's intended to be bolted there, but it's working fine, and I have my car to get around in until it goes to the shop tomorrow.
You can see in this slightly fuzzy picture, the shiny new nut and bolt holding the piece in place behind the edge of the tire (lower left corner of picture). I have a tendency to try to fix things myself, although I admit I usually leave car things to real mechanics. I needed to be able to use the car this weekend though. Desperation is the mother of invention. I know it's "necessity", but in my case it was desperation. I had to be desperate to try to tackle car stuff.
So that's my car saga.
On a bright note, it's raining!!!!!!! And the sunshine girl is dancing for joy. It's amazing how good a mood I'm in without the sun being out. We need it so badly. My roses are loving the nice temperatures and with a little help from me watering and now the rain, they're blooming like crazy. Pretty.
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