October 16, 2006 - First look after the accident.
That crease along the width of the hood is from the guard rail.
The most painful of all:
SSR no longer makes these wheels, and I put a feeler out for more on
Vortex a few weeks ago with no potential sellers. The other three are completely
unscathed. Finding a replacement will be the most difficult part.
That's the auxiliary radiator in front of the wheel there, not an SMIC. It got hit, too, hence the wonky angle.
A series of pictures trying to capture the hit the skid plate took:
For the sake of comparison, pics of the plate when it was first
installed can be found here.
The front portion of the plate was shifted towards the passenger side of the car, and
really pushed in on the passenger side. (In fact, we saw that the subframe itself
was shifted a little bit.) Note the mounting bracket in the second photo--it's
supposed to go straight down (roughly parallel to the orientation of the tire). Both
front brackets and the plate itself need to be replaced. There's some oil seeping
from one of the plate's holes in that last pic. We don't know of the oil pan
actually got crunched or if it's actually a wasted oil filter. We won't know for
sure until we pull the plate off. We're waiting for the insurance adjuster to be
present before doing anything. (I can practically guarantee that there would be very
little of the oil pan left if not for the skid plate.)
October 18, 2006 - Began tear-down with adjuster present.
As you can see, the skid plate took a helluva blow and my fragile aluminum oil pan is completely unscathed. Unfortunately, the secondary air injection pump got shoved up into the stock oil cooler--and that's where the oil leaked from. Hopefully, I got the engine shut down in time to prevent damage. :\
Basically, everything from (and including) the radiator fans forward got crunched bigtime.
Driver's side HID ballast got jammed into the battery. Good thing it didn't rupture (last pic).
October 22, 2006 - Reviewing the scene of the accident
The exiting side of the bridge:
The corner beyond the bridge:
Did I leave that mark on the opposing curb? The driver's side wheels/tires appeared to be untouched...
The guard rail that cought us, and the light pole the tow truck driver alleges we "broke the glass out of" (doesn't look like it to me):
Where the right front tire struck the curb:
Remains:
Where we came to rest: