Joined
·
518 Posts
Driving the 74 GTV every day this past week. A blast as usual, but the inevitable 'out of the ordinary' noise occured today as I took off from a light, hit third gear and a distinctive pinging of a loose bolt hitting the pavement pulled my eyes to the rear view mirror.
After 20 years of driving and a few Alfa rebuilds, there aren't many nuts and bolts and spare parts that I, or a lot of us, can't somehow immediately describe in our minds, even as we pull over to go chase the shrapnel and start the process of getting it back on the car.
The bolt came from the middle/right side out the back, bounced once off the underside and landed about midstream in the street. As soon as I picked it up, I reduced and deduced the general area of the car it came from. Picking it up, with oil and some dirt on the head of the bolt, the length of the bolt, how hot it was, heck, maybe even the smell of it..... it came from the transmission I thought. Hard to believe a case bolt might have vibrated loose, but it was close to those, with a 13mm head. Drove the rest of the day, got home and peeked underneath even with the transmission. One of the two transmission/exhaust bracket rubber mount pipe bolts was missing. The rubber pressed in mount had lunched itself a bit... Crime solved... Shop day this weekend..
After 20 years of driving and a few Alfa rebuilds, there aren't many nuts and bolts and spare parts that I, or a lot of us, can't somehow immediately describe in our minds, even as we pull over to go chase the shrapnel and start the process of getting it back on the car.
The bolt came from the middle/right side out the back, bounced once off the underside and landed about midstream in the street. As soon as I picked it up, I reduced and deduced the general area of the car it came from. Picking it up, with oil and some dirt on the head of the bolt, the length of the bolt, how hot it was, heck, maybe even the smell of it..... it came from the transmission I thought. Hard to believe a case bolt might have vibrated loose, but it was close to those, with a 13mm head. Drove the rest of the day, got home and peeked underneath even with the transmission. One of the two transmission/exhaust bracket rubber mount pipe bolts was missing. The rubber pressed in mount had lunched itself a bit... Crime solved... Shop day this weekend..