Decided to take the back roads to the brewery in Marlow (it was around 16:00 so decided to avoid known school-ish locations.)

So, past Wycombe ski centre and Winchbottom lane it was.

Was just coming out of the narrows where the road opens out and you can see far enough ahead to speed up... Spotted a reasonable sized rock in the road but not THAT big... Though on Eibachs, the car is not THAT low... Cue huge, clobbering, rending clonks from below the car! Huge adrenaline rush and look back to see rock bouncing off to the verge and a huge trail of oily slickness behind the car. EVEN BIGGER ADRENALINE RUSH AND HORRIBLE SINKING FEELING!

Pulled over to the verge muttering "oh nononononono" to self. Then realised oily crap also continued up the hill in front of the car. Inspected car and saw impact scrapings to front, upturn of the undertray. Also checked it on arrival at the brewery and again this morning. My sump (and therefore engine live!!!!)

Whilst stopped went back down the road and tossed the rock plus what looked to be shards off it into the verge.

1) Observed undertray/sump is lower on small/narrow road due to tighter camber radius.

2) Also wonder if car has settled due to age of springs/topmounts/dampers.

3) Pity the poor bugger who hit the rock or its bigger brother before me. The oily trail continued up the hill getting "weaker" until the T junction at the top, where there was another small puddle. No sign of anyone having pulled over or realising it had probably buggered their car.

J.

Lucky escape there!

This happened to my mate apart from the rock split a masssssive hole in his sump :-/ Lucky escape dude!

Makes me think I should look at getting hold of an undertray to put on the car as mine is missing.

Lucky escape!

Phil

Lucky indeed. I was going round a small roundabout and onto a bridge (Sutton Bridge on the A17, if anyone knows it) and hit a huge exhaust backbox; I presume from a large van, and had to drive across the bridge with it scraping under the car as the bridge has a huge lane divider on it. This meant if I'd stopped at the point of impact I'd have been blocking the whole side of the road off.

Once I'd pulled in, a huge pool of the black stuff poured out all over the floor. Of course I ran round and turned off the ignition immediately. All in all about £250 it cost.

An emotional episode.

Makes me think I should look at getting hold of an undertray to put on the car as mine is missing.

Lucky escape!

Phil

Realistically, the plastic isn't gonna do anything though. I toyed with the idea of lining mine with some kind of metal, hoping that if something "sharp" like a rock hit it, the force would be spread by the metal sheet taking the load and the impact on my sump would be at lower pressure, but people on here pointed out that it wouldn't work.

Realistically, the plastic isn't gonna do anything though. I toyed with the idea of lining mine with some kind of metal, hoping that if something "sharp" like a rock hit it, the force would be spread by the metal sheet taking the load and the impact on my sump would be at lower pressure, but people on here pointed out that it wouldn't work.

It wouldn't stop the sump from being bent but it might help enough to prevent it from being punctured or splitting. Though realistically you're not so much lining the undertray as fitting a light sump guard/plate.

As Wallace and Grommet would say close shave lol!

The sump guard is meant to roll or push away a large object rather than using the sump to do it.. I thought it was never intended to protect from pierce impact, which is what i assume your talking about. You'll need a pretty thick piece of metal for a 1.3tonne car to roll over a piece of rock without piercing it :think: .

It wouldn't stop the sump from being bent but it might help enough to prevent it from being punctured or splitting. Though realistically you're not so much lining the undertray as fitting a light sump guard/plate.

Well, no, I would have had to just attach a sheet of metal to the back of the plastic. I can't fit a commercial sump guard as I have a Forge FMIC, and there's something about that FMIC that makes commercial sump guards unsuitable somehow. I was thinking of finding a way of just reinforcing the existing plastic part. But it was an unworkable idea really as anything thick enough to offer protection would have been too heavy for the existing (rubbish) undertray fastenings to handle and it would have just made it more likely to fall off, as well as not really doing the job I wanted it to do