Pete's story of the car transporter reminded me of one or two of my adventures...
Back in the days when I did a lot of autotesting, one of my sponsors use to lend me a van whenever I needed it. For a while they were giving me a transit tipper van to tow my car trailer. Another pal was just getting into autotesting, but did not have a trailer or tow car to get his autotest car to events. One evening, while loading my car onto the trailer behind the tipper van, I had an idea... I could drive my car onto the trailer, take the ramps off the back of the trailer, put them on the front, going up to the back to the transit, drive my car onto the transit, and then load my pal's car onto the trailer! So, I thought lets give this ingenious plan a go. I put the ramps in position, and started driving up onto the van,... just before I reached the van, as the angle of the car became steeper, I needed a bit more powaaarrr, so gave it some more beans
. This action managed to pull the ramp on the driver's side off the back of the transit, and it crashed to the ground... at the same time the car nose dived and tipped over / down. Bearing in mind it was a significantly lightened metro, with no weight in the rear. the car was gently rocking diagonally, with two wheels in the air, and the remaining front wheel on a perilously positioned ramp. I very gently engaged reverse gear, and went back down onto the trailer. Phew. Next attempt, I fixed the ramps in position so they could not move. With the tipper, tipped about 15 degrees, I could get the car on - just! The plan was implemented successfully thereafter.
On another occasion, another pal had crashed his super sheddy XR2i near the yard where I kept my "project cars". He was on his way to do some spannering at the yard with me at the time. So, I grabbed a van and went off to recover his car. He had properly ruined it, and was incredibly lucky - he had managed to crash into a big cheveron sign, end on, sending the edge of the sign up the bonnet, throught the windscreen and creating a massive "V" in the roof. The edge of the sign ended up resting against the headrest of the driver's seat!!!!
. One of the sign posts smashed the front of car, tipped over, pulled it's concrete base out of the ground and went under the car, therefore requiring recovery. Anyway,... the car was scrap. Months later I was taking a scrappy metro that I had striped of spares to the scrapyard, so took my pals XR2i too. This would require two journeys in the trusty transit tipper van. Metro was deposited safely, but the scrappy was a bit disappointed there was no value left in it in parts. I told him the XR2i was probably better, just a bit tatty, and a bit crashed. So it comes to loading the XR2i on the tipper - I was using a big 4x4 JCB forklift to load it. I picked the car up with it, but had to travel a few hundred metres through the yard to get to the tipper. I could not really see where I was going too well, so lifted the car nice and high to give me a better view. Good, now I can see where I'm going, time for some beans
- hmmm, JCBs on rough terrain, at speed get a bit bouncy.... and the car fell off - landed on it's roof totally flattening it, and was rammed by the JCB for good measure. By the time I had turned the XR2i over, and loaded it on the tipper, it was a total wreck... poor scrappy was disappointed again.
Then,.. there was the time the car fell off the trailer.... I was moving it around the yard, using my XR4x4i rally car / shed as a tow car. I forgot that the metro was not tied down to the trailer, when I gave it some beans...
There are other stories, but will save them for another day,.... I think most of them are the result of "giving it some beans" too...
)
