The rattle is driving me crazy
What rattle, you may ask? The rattle that my car makes every time I drive. It started a few months ago when I accidentally ran up a slight curb when parking my car. You know what I'm talking about. It happens to us all, you pull up a little too far when parking and your front bumper scraps against the curb making a horrible crunching sound. Well on this particular day, I apparently hit the curb a little harder than normal because there is this big plastic piece underneath my car that is now slightly dragging on one side. No big deal, right? Well, occasionally since then, when accelerating there is this rattling sound that my car makes. It only happened every once in awhile, until...
The other night Charles and I were driving, actually, he was driving, let's just make that clear...HE was driving, not me. So we're driving down the highway at night, talking, when we hear this really loud noise and the car kind of swerves a bit.
"what the heck was that?" (thinking to myself that we just blew a tire)
"I think we just hit something." (my husband's response)
"of course we did, why did I let you drive?" (I didn't actually say that part out loud)
"is my car ok?"
"yeah I think it's fine" (as he decides to pull into a gas station to check it out)
We pull into a gas station, where they promptly turn off all the lights, so we can see nothing. On to the next gas station. The car was driving fine, so we figured it was no big deal, but we still wanted to check and make sure before we made our way home.
"what did you hit? I didn't see anything." (I'm still not convinced at this point that we hit
anything in the first place)
"I saw something, right before we hit it."
Great, so he saw something, that's helpful. Saw what? Are we talking a raccoon? a possum? a dog? a cat? a deer? I'm still trying to figure out what the heck we hit when we pull into the next gas station. Charles gets out and checks under the car. It's then that he notices the dangling piece of plastic hanging from underneath my car.
"oh that, it's been like that...I hit a curb a few months ago"
He isn't at all surprised, which I suppose could be an indication of my driving skills, although once again, I was not the driving during this little incident.
So I'm sitting in the car as Charles lays on the gross pavement at the gas station examining the underside of the car. It's at this point that I begin to notice a strange smell, not good strange, really bad strange. About that time Charles comes back to the car to inform me that we definitely hit something because there are pieces of whatever it was on "every piece of metal under the car on the right side". Wonderful, I now have pieces of, who knows what, under my car, which accounts for the strange smell I was referring to.
Charles then decides that it is utterly important to find out what exactly we hit, so we proceed to drive back down the highway looking for some sort of dead animal on the road, while I try to convince myself that the animal was already dead when we hit it. After a few minutes we spot it. Of course we can't really see it, it's dark, so Charles slows down as I peer out the window and tell him it's bigger than a raccoon, with a long tail. A dog maybe? I hope not.
On the drive home we discuss what kind of unfortunate animal we hit. I think it may have been a dog, although I'm still convinced it was dead when we hit it, but Charles is completely convinced it was a possum.
" A possum? It looked nothing like a possum. It was NOT a possum."
We go on with this argument for a good 5 minutes before I finally say,
"It was furry, not scaly. It was not a possum." ( I obviously have no clue what I'm talking
about)
We figured out that I apparently need some animal recognition skills, because the whole time we were talking about possums, I was picturing an armadillo in my head. Oops. Ok, so maybe it was a possum. Yeah, it was a possum. The smell was horrible so the next day I took my car and washed it. By washed it, I mean drove through some really big puddles that hopefully splashed everything off the bottom of my car.
Now back to the rattle. EVERY time I drive it rattles, not just occasionally anymore. I don't know if mister possum knocked something loose under there or just increased the problem I was already having. Either way, it's annoying! I need to take it to get looked at, although that's tough because I need a car to get to work, pick up kids from school, etc.
Hopefully it's no big deal and can be easily fixed.
I just realized how ridiculously long this post is, so if you've actually read the whole thing, I applaud you. If you just skipped down here to the bottom, then shame on you. Just kidding, I probably wouldn't read it either.
The other night Charles and I were driving, actually, he was driving, let's just make that clear...HE was driving, not me. So we're driving down the highway at night, talking, when we hear this really loud noise and the car kind of swerves a bit.
"what the heck was that?" (thinking to myself that we just blew a tire)
"I think we just hit something." (my husband's response)
"of course we did, why did I let you drive?" (I didn't actually say that part out loud)
"is my car ok?"
"yeah I think it's fine" (as he decides to pull into a gas station to check it out)
We pull into a gas station, where they promptly turn off all the lights, so we can see nothing. On to the next gas station. The car was driving fine, so we figured it was no big deal, but we still wanted to check and make sure before we made our way home.
"what did you hit? I didn't see anything." (I'm still not convinced at this point that we hit
anything in the first place)
"I saw something, right before we hit it."
Great, so he saw something, that's helpful. Saw what? Are we talking a raccoon? a possum? a dog? a cat? a deer? I'm still trying to figure out what the heck we hit when we pull into the next gas station. Charles gets out and checks under the car. It's then that he notices the dangling piece of plastic hanging from underneath my car.
"oh that, it's been like that...I hit a curb a few months ago"
He isn't at all surprised, which I suppose could be an indication of my driving skills, although once again, I was not the driving during this little incident.
So I'm sitting in the car as Charles lays on the gross pavement at the gas station examining the underside of the car. It's at this point that I begin to notice a strange smell, not good strange, really bad strange. About that time Charles comes back to the car to inform me that we definitely hit something because there are pieces of whatever it was on "every piece of metal under the car on the right side". Wonderful, I now have pieces of, who knows what, under my car, which accounts for the strange smell I was referring to.
Charles then decides that it is utterly important to find out what exactly we hit, so we proceed to drive back down the highway looking for some sort of dead animal on the road, while I try to convince myself that the animal was already dead when we hit it. After a few minutes we spot it. Of course we can't really see it, it's dark, so Charles slows down as I peer out the window and tell him it's bigger than a raccoon, with a long tail. A dog maybe? I hope not.
On the drive home we discuss what kind of unfortunate animal we hit. I think it may have been a dog, although I'm still convinced it was dead when we hit it, but Charles is completely convinced it was a possum.
" A possum? It looked nothing like a possum. It was NOT a possum."
We go on with this argument for a good 5 minutes before I finally say,
"It was furry, not scaly. It was not a possum." ( I obviously have no clue what I'm talking
about)
We figured out that I apparently need some animal recognition skills, because the whole time we were talking about possums, I was picturing an armadillo in my head. Oops. Ok, so maybe it was a possum. Yeah, it was a possum. The smell was horrible so the next day I took my car and washed it. By washed it, I mean drove through some really big puddles that hopefully splashed everything off the bottom of my car.
Now back to the rattle. EVERY time I drive it rattles, not just occasionally anymore. I don't know if mister possum knocked something loose under there or just increased the problem I was already having. Either way, it's annoying! I need to take it to get looked at, although that's tough because I need a car to get to work, pick up kids from school, etc.
Hopefully it's no big deal and can be easily fixed.
I just realized how ridiculously long this post is, so if you've actually read the whole thing, I applaud you. If you just skipped down here to the bottom, then shame on you. Just kidding, I probably wouldn't read it either.
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