Ok so as you know I had my car mounted on a rotisserie, well there’s a funny thing about putting a car on a rotisserie and that’s the fact that it makes it too long to load up onto a car trailer. With the arms and frame it made it 5600mm long from castor to castor and the longest car trailer that I could find was 4800mm!
Now originally I had planned to hire a tilt tray truck and move it the few km’s across town to the local panel shop which would only set me back about $200.00 (depending on loading and unloading time, how many other jobs he had booked that day, which day of the week, the angle of the sun, the phase of the moon and a whole other bunch of nonsense that came out the drivers mouth) but hey, that seemed reasonable so I didn’t mind.
But when you have to move a car on a tilt tray some 500 + km’s it’s a whole new ball game. The local bloke just told me flat out “nah mate, just not interested” so I rang a few mobs in Perth and they started to quote some absolutely ridiculous prices! One knob head quoted me $5.00 a km, each way, plus a two day hire fee of $500 a day plus an overnight accommodation expense of $250 plus loading and unloading time of $100 an hour and that was his week day rates!! Needless to say, I wrapped that conversation up pretty quick. I think the cheapest I was going to get it was around $2500, and it was about this stage that I dropped the idea and started looking at other options.
I even looked at hiring a tilt tray myself but with the two day hire rate, plus the penalty for the excess km’s I would be doing, plus the fuel costs I worked that out to be around $2000 as well.
So I looked around town at 6m trailers, I rang all the mates I could think of and I found one mate with an uncle with a 5200mm car trailer and I considered loading my car onto the trailer, then pulling the back of the rotisserie off and driving down that way, but the trailer was unregistered, needed 4 new tyres, the brakes needed overhauling and the wiring was, and I quote, “a bit dodgy”. Being short of options I ran some numbers and worked out that it was sort of feasible, then my mate told me he had looked at the trailer and it was well on its way to becoming a minor iron ore deposit; it was that rusted! Add in a new floor, springs, axles… basically if I was prepared to rebuild the whole trailer I would be allowed to use it… um… thanks… but no thanks.
One of the hire mobs (ok the only hire mob in town that does decent trailers) had a 6m trailer but I had to drive out to their out of town depot to go look at it because they couldn’t remember what it had or didn’t have. So I did and it was a 6m flat deck trailer with no sides but it did have tie off bars on all four sides, but the thing sat about 900mm off the ground and had no way of locking in a set of ramps to the deck, so I priced up some 75 and 100mm PFC for ramps and looked at welding some angle and spacers to lock the ramps onto the rear tie down bars so they finished level with the tray.
It was about this point that I call my Dad for a few ideas. Now he has a car trailer but again its only 4800mm but he had just bought a new trailer that was 5000mm and he reckoned with a bit of modification he could add the extra 600mm to the front; he also had the channel for the ramps just give him a few weeks and he would sort it. Wow I thought, What a Champ!
But fathers and sons being what they are, he decided he didn’t like my idea of ramps to get the car up and down off the trailer as he didn’t see how we could get it up on our own. “It’s not a problem” I told him “I’ll get a bunch of mates around to give us a hand”. How we would get it down on our own was his next concern. I had that covered too in the form of a knot that I learnt when I use to yacht race; sort of a modified truckies hitch that worked to tighten and release under load, but he had no faith in my idea and so had an idea of his own.
He had built a lifting frame that he used to replace the two timber beams in his patio with a steel UB so he could get rid of a pillar and open up some space. Basically his idea was to lift the car and rotisserie up into the air, back the trailer underneath, drop it down, lash it down and away we would go.
Now I wasn’t crazy about the idea so after a few “discussions” where we expressed our “respect” for each other’s ideas I caved knowing that it was my best shot of getting the car down to Matt for less than a grand (hey I like to pretend I have a budget after all) and so after giving him some measurements (the width of the rotisserie, the track of the castors, the height of my shed) he set to work.
True to his work he rocked up at my place on a Friday afternoon two weeks later with the loaded trailer in tow. Now I don’t know if she planned it this way but my lovely wife and fantastic kids just happened to be away for that week and so when Dad arrived I fed him a steak dinner and we retired early for the night ready to make an early start.
So we unloaded the trailer and started to set up what I will now call the pendulum of DOOOOOOM. The first problem was the posts for the pendulum of DOOOOOOM (called the POD from now on) were 4000mm and unable to fit inside my 3600mm high shed and yes, that is one of the measurements I gave him! So out came the cut off saw and a few minutes later they were of a suitable height, the next issue with the POD was that the cross supports were wide enough to clear the rotisserie but not the trailer, that was a minor issue as we just spread things out past the reinforced section and the trailer was able to fit through… just. Next issue was some of the bases for the posts couldn’t fit in the space between the car and the shed wall, so we had to turn them around 180° but now the trailer would have to run over them while the car was up in the air (can you guess where name came from yet) and as much as I didn’t like the idea I was stuck with it.
So the frame was erected, the block and tackles put in place and slowly the car on the rotisserie was lifted into the air. Now even though I have backed into this shed nearly every day for the last 7 years (yeah I am a reverse park sort of guy, slower in but quick to escape you see) and I have my semi licence; Dad felt he would be better suited for the task and so Dad lined up the trailer and started to back in.
Eyes and age being what they are at one point he yelled out the window “you better guide me cause I can’t see anything in the shed now”, so after numerous calls of left hand down, right hand down, straighten up etc. etc. we hit that critical moment, the moment that he had to drive over the first post base. And of course it moved back, twisting the frame and causing the car to swing back at least 300mm, back and forth. So there was my car, nearly a meter up in the air swinging like a bugger and each time it swung the frame would move just a little causing it to swing just a little more, so I rushed forward and stabilized it by hand, my heart in my throat the whole time, and that is where the name the pendulum of DOOOOOOM came from.
Not being one to make the same mistake twice, I quickly attacked a few guide ropes to the rotisserie in preparation for the next base being run over but this one went a lot smoother (thanks to the ropes) and there it finally was, suspended above the trailer. Next we dropped it down. I had scabbed a set of old 4x4 tyres and I wound the car down on the rotisserie so that rather than being supported by the front and rear bumper connections the whole way to Perth, the tyres and rotisserie were sharing the load. Then we strapped it down. With that done, we loaded up the rest of the panels, which I had wrapped with a bunch of old blankest that I had scabbed and bought from the local 2nd hand shops to avoid damage to the panels on the trip. And so ended day one!
The next day we were up early and set off. Now I made sure to never drive my car in the rain and to be honest I can’t think of a single time it has been wet since I’ve owned it, apart from washing it of course. So with the inside, boot and underneath all taken back to bare metal I could have cried (but I wouldn’t because I am totally manly and would never cry) when as soon as we pulled out of the garage it started to rain and it proceeded to rain most of the way down to Perth. Not heavy rain, just that constant drizzle that give you they shytes and wouldn’t you know it, the skies dried up about half an hour away from Matts workshop. Bloody typical!
We did have a few interesting things happen on the car trip down. Just out of town my rear spoiler, which I had just sat in the back of the car and forgotten to tie down took flight. Well it tried to, the air running through the car got under it and lifted it up so that it got wedged in the back window but each time we slowed down it would drop down again, so as soon as we noticed it we stopped and strapped it down. Thankfully it did no damage but how’s that for aerodynamics.
Then as we didn’t put any stabiliser bars on the trailer and with the wet roads and wind (speed had nothing to do with it or so I was told quite firmly by the man who wouldn’t let me drive) the trailer tried to push the car around on a few of the sharper corners. It was at this point that I merely stated that we had the whole day and why not enjoy the ride, i.e. slow down and drive to suit the load and conditions and fortunatley it was all good after that. Though my nerves took a battering and I’m pretty sure it cost me a few precious square cm’s of hair from my already balding head.
Then we got to Matts workshop in Rockingham. I got to have a closer look at some of his work and was very impressed with the quality and finish so with my final inspection over, in front of a very interested crowd, we set up the POD once again! This time we had a lot more space so the trailer didn’t have to run over the bases (thank god). Up she went, no problems, forward the trailer went and after a few quick pics she was lowered back down to terra firma without a hitch. Whew!!
It was then that I lamented to Matt about the rain, but being the top bloke he is he put a positive spin on it for me telling me that he would treat it straight away and that the small degree of pitting it had caused would only help to give the primer a better surface to stick to, Cheers for that Matt.
Matt asked me why I had wrapped all my panels and packed them in with old foam mattresses etc. which struck me as strange. That’s when I told him, “no offence mate, I want to pay you the least amount possible to get the best possible job so the last thing I wanted was for you to have to repair a bunch of dents and scratches put in because I just threw everything in a trailer.” He seemed to appreciate it and told me most people just throw them in figuring that he will be doing the panel and paint anyway, so why bother. Saving money is why I bothered, I think I spent $20 and got nearly a dozen blankets/donah covers etc., money well spent/saved in my book.
Then after rolling the car into his workshop and the usual car banter Dad and I set off back to his house as after all, we had already been on the road for over 6 hours and I needed a drink! So after a quick pic of Matt with my car and I’m not ashamed to admit it, a hug goodbye to my girl (I keep telling you honey don’t ask me to choose) we left her.
