| COMMENTS FROM THE CORNER........... |
| I am nominating myself for the "Dumbass of the Month" award. Sunday, September 14th.......just sitting at home enjoying an afternoon of flipping between watching the Chiefs beat the Steelers and watching the Cubs lose a close one to the Reds. Josh called from Ankeny, he and Ashley had just finished eating at Taco John's and the Bonneville would not start. All it would do is "click". A little background is in order here: I've been working on cars since before I even had my driver's licence, and did a 9-year stretch in the automotive electrical field, rebuilding starters and alternators, along with trouble-shooting problems. Therefore, common sense would tell me to have him check the battery cables before doing anything else. Now, the rest of the story: Josh tried the jumper cable thing, and called me back with the results: nothing! I assumed, since I failed to have him check the cables, that the starter was probably bad and the car would have to be towed home so I could fix it. So with that being the plan, I headed to Ankeny, with my neighbor, Larry, behind me towing my friend Paul's car dolly. We got to Ankeny, and the Bonneville, and tried starting it. Still, just a "click". Again, I didn't think to check the cables. So we needed to get the car on the dolly. Which meant, since it wouldn't start, pushing it on. We pushed, got about halfway up the ramps, and it came back down. So we rolled it back a little farther and tried again. This time, up the ramp it went, onto the place where the front tires go, and on over the end! Somehow, in our haste to get the car loaded, we neglected to make sure it would get stopped in the right place. So we now have a car sitting with it's frame on the dolly, and the front wheels dangling down in front. We're all scratching our heads, among other areas, when somehow I come to my senses and open the hood to look at the cables. Gee, I wish I'd done that before, as the positive cable was just loose enough to prevent a good connection, hence no power to the starter! Duh! So now we have a perfectly running car unable to find it's way off the dolly. So now we need to get the car off. There is nothing around to place under the front wheels to provide traction so it can back up and off the dolly. BUT, there is a curb just ahead that, we figure, will allow the front wheels to get the car up and off. Larry slowly pulls the whole mess toward the curb. Just as the front wheels of the car come up on the curb, the dolly shifts to the left. In case you're not familiar with car dollies, this one has ratchets on each side, to tighten up the straps that hold the front wheels to the dolly. When the dolly shifted to the right, the right front tire got up against the ratchet, running a hole in the sidewall. WHOOOSH! So now we have, in addition to the other problem, a car with a hole in the tire, which, by the way, only had about 2000 miles on it. I came up with the idea of using Josh's Lincoln, which I had driven to Ankeny for him to get around in while I "fixed" the Bonneville, to pull the car off the dolly. Fortunately, I gave up on that idea before doing any damage to either car, but I did try it briefly. We ended up calling a tow service, and had the car lifted back up on the dolly so Josh could start it up and back it down off, flat tire and all. This little adventure ended up costing $58.30 for the tow truck, $70 for another new tire, plus $30 in gas for Larry's truck (we live an hour plus from Ankeny) and food. All because, you guessed it, I failed to have Josh check the cables. BTW, I asked the tow truck guy if he'd ever seen anyone else do that before, he laughed and said "yea, two or three weeks ago" he'd had to pull another one off! I felt better immediately. |
| copyright 2003 James W. Grace |