[alfa] impact

[ethan schartman <eschartman@xxxxxxxxx>]

yesterday while visiting a friend i drove my '87 2.5L
milano into a veritable canyon. there was some
construction for which a 2 foot strip of the road had
been cutout and then patched over. from down the
block, it didn't look like a problem. i thought it
would just be like a speed bump. it was, in fact, just
like a speed bump turned inside out. at less than 10
feet i realized what i was heading for and *stood* on
the brake pedal. managed to scrub a lot of speed, but
anything above a creep was too fast. and with a
stomach churning *WHAM*! the front end bottomed on the
far side of the ditch. the engine sputtered to a halt
and i coasted across the ditch and then to the side of
the street. engine would turn, fire, go a couple revs
and then shutdown. i was also expecting the oil light
to come on at any second, figuring that i had probably
shorn the oil pan off, in addition to the damage that
was causing the non-run. 

so i cursed a fair amount, hopped out and found to my
relief that the oil pan took the hit on the forward
part, basically at the root of the screws holding it
to the block. it was scuffed a bit, but the fins were
unharmed and there was no oil dripping. thankfully the
road was asphault and not concrete! so i then popped
the hood and started to hunt around (futiley, i
figured) for the source of my non-running condition.
surprisingly enough, it was simple - the intake hose
had pulled off the AFM outlet (i keep the connection
slightly loose in case of backfire). the engine had
moved far enough back to just pop it off, so i pushed
it back and the car started right up, sounded pretty
normal. a few hours later, there was still no oil
dripping on the ground, so i drove across town to my
sister's and later on, the 200 miles back home. no
problems i could detect. 

i got incredibly lucky. but also, the V6 is a pretty
robust motor, not counting the t-belt tensioner (which
is static on mine, allowing me to park facing uphill
with no parking brake in 1st gear with complete
impunity:) far more robust, i think, than most of us
give it credit for (except fred, who *knew*)!

-ethan
-87 milano gold (bruised chin)
princeton, NJ

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