[Davo1954]

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..

 

[Davo1954]

My other GTV, back in 1992, was tooling along the freeway to ABQ for some reason. I hadn't really started tearing into the car yet, exterior primer red, interior looked like a badger had done a hit of acid and tried to play an air guitar with my seats.....A long downhill part of the freeway, maybe doing 70-80. A large 'clunk' noise, a weird feel to the driveline and a large piece of rubber passed my car off to the right, actually staying even with the car for a second...
Giubo...
and the car kept going and worked 'fine' until I replaced it a week later..

 

[bianchi2]

on my audi 5000 wagon, 1985 model.. some how the 4 screws that held the sunroof( metal came loose after about 15 years...only 4 screws held it to the car..strange..... but i was driving down the highway( sunday morning, luckly) i got to about 75 mph.. then like an over pressure.pop.. the sunroof ejected itself off the car, saw it in my rearview mirror in flight,it got some elevation on the flight.. untill it hit the ground.. no traffic, so i stopped ran down the side of the road.. picked it up, tossed it in the car.. could not figger out what happend... found only 1 screw in the sunroof tray...it just shot off the car.. still have memorys about that one..

 

[alfa2go]

Dropped a slat out of my Giulia Super 5 bar grille one day on the way home from work a few years back. It made a helluva noise as is clattered and ricocheted under my car. Took me a bit to figure out what it was actually (early days of ownership) but was very glad it was nothing serious!

 

[ducatibruce]

At 120mph* the eyeball dash air vents blew shut, closely followed by the dash top vent blowing out, bouncing off the windscreen & narrowly missing the driver's face (mine).

*Many, many years ago - when Oz derestricted speed zones meant derestricted! Hay Plain, Sydney to Adelaide 12 hours door to door. Don't try this at home kids.

 

[S.Lang]

Three times now the circlip holding the centercap in one of my Alfaholics wheels has let go, allowing the cap to seek its own fortune. Twice I heard the clip depart the scene and was able to go back and reunite both it and the center cap with the car. The third time, I got home and noticed that again, an escape had been made. I hadn't heard it this time so was resigned to the cap and clip being gone forever...I had no way to know where to go look. Then my 6 year old daughter comes into the garage and produces both the cap and a smile, saying "Daddy, look what I found in the driveway". A quick search of the driveway also allows me to re-capture the circlip.

They're good at getting gone, but bad at staying gone.

 

[gigem75]

Notice the hood pins on my avatar, they are there for a very real reason, amazing you could even find a windshield for one even back then.