Friday, February 25, 2011

Storage

Well today was somewhat successful, it really depends how you look at it I suppose. On the good side, the car is now sitting in storage and out of my garage (so I get a nice warm car in the mornings). But on the bad side, the car sustained a little bit of damage on it's way in, and definitely caused a few headaches getting it there. For the most part everything worked out though, as I'll now explain.

Basically we followed the same plan we came up with yesterday with the flatbed driver, and it worked out perfectly. My friend Tyson came over to lend a hand around 3 and we attempted to roll the car down the driveway on the wheel dollies I put it on last night. It's a very heavy car, so pushing it out of the garage didn't work, go figure the car wouldn't even roll down a hill on it's own. We later realized this was probably because we left the brakes on the wheel dollies, which caused one corner to bend in.
We ended up using the tow hooks to tie the back of the Supra to the CRV and pull it down the driveway, which ended up working until we got to where the driveway met the sidewalk. At that point we decided to pull the dollies out (since they weren't moving anyway) and let the car roll back over the crack. We ended up doing the same thing as on Monday with jacking the car up every few feet and straightening the damaged wheel, letting it down, rolling, and repeating when it bent again. It took probably 10-15 times of doing this before we had it far enough out into the street that I could drive it forwards and straighten it. I can't complain about that though, it was the first time I've actually driven my car under it's own power since I got it, which even though was only moving it forward a few feet, was a pretty good feeling.
Another thing we came across while dragging the car down the driveway was a pretty nasty leak coming from the car. I know that the exhaust has been dripping, which I still have to assume is condensation, but this time it was coming from the engine bay. It turned out to be oil dripping, which had me very worried, but after checking it out it looks like it's a bad fitting or something on the oil line going into the rad. That was quite a relief to say the least.

Once we got the car out on the road, we called John the flatbed guy through CAA to come hook us up on his truck and then sat around for a while waiting, hoping that everything would be good. We packed all our goodies in the cars, like the wheel dollies, floor jack, a bunch of tools, booster cables, 2x4's, a baseball bat to hold the hood up, and a couple other things. Here's a picture of the Supra having a few minutes in the sun before going away for a while.



Once the flatbed arrived we wasted no time getting the car loaded up. It went on forwards as planned, the winch hooked onto the tow points beneath the bumper and pulled the car up without a problem, didn't even scrape the exhaust on the ground which is a first, especially considering how low it hangs. Driving the car forward is no problem for the damaged rear wheel, so everything stayed in line going up the flatbed, but as soon as he connected the hooks to the back tow points and brought it forward on the winch a bit to settle the car down, the wheel slid right out to the side again. In the first picture here I was attempting to steer it straight onto the flatbed so it didn't tumble off the side, and the second is the Supra sitting waiting to be secured.





Once we got to the storage place everything went surprisingly well. I didn't get a chance to take any pictures there, but I'll do my best to explain it.
We put the floor jack on the deck of the flatbed and jacked it up with the winch holding the car from rolling back down and inserted the wheel dollies underneath the rear wheels, then let it down and started letting the car down with the winch. We ended up running into a bit of a problem with the dollies getting to the bottom of the deck and the car would try and roll right out of the dollies, then we realized the brake was not on. Once we put that on everything went smoothly and the truck drove right out from under the car.

Now was my next chance to drive it. We shovelled out infront of my storage spot to make room, then attempted to drive the Supra in. As I've been noticing with this car, nothing is quite as easy as it seems, and that definitely proved true for this. Since there was zero traction with the fairly bald tires and snow and ice beneath, the wheels were spinning a little bit, which caused the bad wheel to fold in. As we were going forward, the rear left wheel was just slipping while the rear right was driving all bent, so the car was basically driving diagonally.
We got the CRV to storage and roped it up to the Supra and pulled it straight on with the door to the storage in hopes of that helping, and it did, because pulling it straightened up the wheel too. I tried driving in while Tyson and my Dad pushed on the back to help me with a bit of traction. It worked great and the front end went in without a problem, but unfortunately as the back end was coming in and hit the lip of the storage container, the rear wheel folded in again, which pushed the car over sideways and it hit the side of the container. That did some pretty bad paint damage to the rear molding and the quarter panel, which I didn't get around to taking a picture of because I was just too frustrated at that point. We weren't able to get the car moved from that position since it couldn't go backwards, so we just jacked it up in place and straightened the wheel, and drove the rest of the way in rubbing the side on the edge of the container.
It was terrible hearing that noise, but on the bright side of things, I got to use my power folding mirrors to help me fit the Supra into the small storage container! It's nice to have them there for something useful.

That's really the only updates I have for now, but it will be in storage until mid-March when it will be moved to it's other location where it will be worked on. I'm also toying with the idea of picking up a second Supra for parts, since finding a part out that will include an entire rear subframe is no easy task! Next part I can be expecting besides that will be my DriftMotion intercooler kit for stock twins, and the turbo timer harness for my HKS Type-0. Updates will be here as I have them!

No comments:

Post a Comment