Tuesday, May 24, 2011

The Red Coupe - Takin' it on the chin Pt. 1


All issues following the engine swap are now resolved; they were primarily self-inflicted wounds (loose coolant clamps n' what not). I got the car spectacularly clean on the outside, but still needed to cleanup the coolant from my leak and odd oil coming from the cap (old seal). I bought a new oil cap and some other odd parts from the local dealer which will star in another episode, but like all projects, I was thrown a curve ball that I couldn't quite make contact with. Well actually that's not the right way to put it...I made contact alright.

I-95N on the way home from work at 12:45am and a very large raccoon (I saw the stripes and hunched back) decided to sprint across four lanes. This girthy rodent took such a sharp angle toward the front of my car I couldn't react in time to dodge it, and ended up doing what I do with all bumps in the road I can't dodge...I put a tire on it. An audible bang/crackly/crunchy sound ensued, all within less than a second mind you, and when I arrived at my neighborhood gas station to fill up I was able to survey the damage.


Having a front lip ripped off this car doesn't sound like it; in retrospect you only hear yourself driving over the lip. I've done this before with a truck tire carcass...that time around it was strangely the same gd mile of road, on the way home at night with this cars' original apron that I replaced last summer. Hitting an adult raccoon was much worse than hitting a tire carcass, because it has the strength of bone and muscle as opposed to flexible steel belted rubber. I handled my anger better than I would've in years past, but the fact remained I needed to move quickly to fix a number of issues. This evening was spent searching online for a used apron and a driver-side foglight. I'd also need to make a list of dealer replacement parts and perform a good inspection when the sun returned.

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