All week Holly tells me that the car is making a funny noise.
This morning I drive it a bit and don’t hear anything until I am about a few miles from our house and then it sounds like normal engine noise, but louder, like the muffler is going bad. Then I hear a clunking noise that grows louder until it culminates in the sound of parts falling off the car and hitting the road.
I pull over. I put the flashers on and find this laying in the road behind the car:
Pop the hood and everything looks fine.
No idea where the part came from, so I toss it in the car, finish my errands, and head back home.
Coming round the corner to my house, I hear a dragging noise. I think some piece of the exhaust system is dragging. I pull the car into my drive way and look under the car:
Holy crap! — That doesn’t look like the exhaust system!
Pop the hood:
Not sure if you can tell by this picture, but the whole damn engine is seriously listing to the left about 10-15 degrees.
It looks to me like the head of one of the bolts may have snapped off. I can see the threaded bottom part sticking up from a spot where it looks like the piece that I retrieved from the street ought to go.
I’m just glad the damn engine didn’t drop into the street.
The tow truck driver was surprised that it still ran. I laughed because, aside from the dragging noise, it seems to run a little better than it did before. We had it in the shop because the engine light kept coming on, but that problem seems to have been solved (although if you’re having a similar problem with your engine light, I don’t recommend you try knocking out the motor mount on your car).
Crazy!
Present Tense 
is the engine that thing in the front with the 2.0 on it? (This is one of the areas where I’m totally a girl.)
No kidding, me too. I seriously considered driving it for the rest of the weekend.
Glad you weren’t hurt while you were out there taking pictures. Love it — it’s just what I would have done!
Life is full of unexpected events, but the thought that a hunk of what makes my car go might fall out the bottom onto the street has never, ever been on my radar screen, until now. Think I’ll get a flashlight and go take a look. . .
I guess you can never be too careful, Beth. To be honest, I was more worried about the $500 oil pan we had to replace a few years ago after a botched oil change. Fortunately the tow truck operator was a really smart man who knew all about these sort of challenges.
I hope no stray comets come crashing into the living room later on tonight!
I think the technical term is “prolapse”.
Funny, Alan! You expect a certain amount of this with bodies: gravity will have its way with jowls, breasts. Your spine. But a man’s engine should never fall out of its chassis. That’s just wrong.