Fiance was driving her car yesterday and bottomed them out. She was only going about 2 miles an hour but it did slam pretty good. It drove fine, no rattling or noises or smells. But when we got home about 15 minutes away there was smoke coming from underneath the car through the tires. It stopped after 2 minutes of the car being off. It was absolutely pouring with freezing rain yesterday so I couldn’t get a good look at what was going on under there. Anyone have any thoughts? And do you think it’s ok to drive short distances until fixed?
Thanks!
In my opinion, until the source and cause of the smoke can be determined it should not be driven at all. It could have damage transmission line, oil system component, or cooling system. Any of these could cause much more damage if driven. If you are lucky, maybe just a splash shield and the smoke was steam from water hitting exhaust components.
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2 miles per hour is barely crawling. what did you bottom out on? what type of car is it?
Yeah, I would definitely not drive it until I knew what got damaged. There’s a lot of potential for catastrophic engine damage otherwise.
I’ve known several people who continued driving after hitting random rocks on the road, one cracked a Jetta’s oil pan and starved the engine, the other cracked an old Saab’s transmission hosing and roasted the gears.