Topic: The rambler rescue
This story is too good not to share, so I'll do my best to do it some justice. (note i've reduced the pictures here, if you want a higher resolution of any of these just ask)
Early this morning i get a message from a couple of people people i race with (Joe and Brett) saying that there's a rambler in need about 30minutes south of me.
it included this picture and a map of the car location:
So i told Joe to forward my contact info to Sasha and i left it there.
about 2 hours later i get a call from Sasha and that's when it gets interesting. he essentially said "i'm at the airport getting on a plane, the car is still where it was at. it's a push button start, you don't need a key. it has a spare tire and it'll move under it's own power enough to get on a trailer"
Ok, so i guess if i don't do anything now this thing gets stolen or impounded. so i call around looking for a trailer because i don't currently have one. i don't end up finding one so i drop by u-haul. $67 later i was shocked that they'd let me tow a car trailer with anything but a full own 1 ton diesel truck. This does not match my previous experiences with them.
Then i head down to the location, with the u-haul stop and the distance i end up getting there about an hour after talking to Sasha, and here's what i see:
in fact, at the time i saw even less than that, i did not notice the massive scratch in the road.
So i make a few more phone calls, Sasha is on a plane by now so i can't get a hold of him. Everyone indicates that the car is where i'm looking for it. so i'm about to give up and i figured it's worth asking. i go knocking on a door and ask "have you seen a pink monstrosity" those are the exact words i said and they knew exactly what i was talking about.
this is what the problem ended up being:
it wasn't really far, but i had no reason to think it was around the corner. i looked at several spots but not around the corner.
thankfully the guy pointed me in the correct direction.
So i get to the car, the right rear wheel is in pretty sad shape, but i was told it would drive under its own power, so no big deal, I hop in and give it a go.
1200rpm let the clutch out slowly and the car just stalls, it does not even budge.
2000rpm, same thing
4000rpm, it still stalled but it kinda just barely rocked
"screw it, i just need to get this thing on the trailer and make it someone else's problem"
so 5000rpm comes out and i slip the shit out of the clutch, making my best impression of a high stall torque converter and it just barely inches towards the trailer. after about a half dozen stall/restarts i get it up on the trailer to this point:
The fun escalates again... turns out the inner sidewall is completely gone. I'm not sure how far Sasha drove on this thing after it was dead, but i suspect this thing actually died east of the ohio/indiana border and should have been off the road about 40 miles ago. the lack of sidewall means the traction is trying to come from an aluminum rim against a steel ramp.
no problem, there's a spare! i can put it on as-is and just drive it on the trailer. there's even a tire iron in the car! .... which doesn't even fit the damn wheels on the car!
So i was poorly equipped at this point. I just recently picked up this new tow rig and it isn't equipped with all the normal recovery equipment i carry around yet. I end up knocking on the same guy's door again... mostly because he hadn't pulled a gun on me last time i knocked and i did not want to push my luck with any of his neighbors.
it took some smooth talking but i talked him into lending me a chain and a jack. he even delivered them with his truck:
The jack isn't helping at all, so i convince him to pull with his truck. we end up moving the car just a few inches, his 2WD truck did not have enough traction against the dry asphalt to move that damn thing.
so i have him hold the brakes, i put my new toy in low range and lock the center diff and drive backwards. it works until the wheel got caught on the side of the trailer:
a little work with a jack and that was resolved, the car is now fully loaded:
here's a few close ups of the damage:
There we go, loaded and ready to head off to meet Brett half way, we ended up meeting in Marshal, IL
As a side note, i have just recently picked up that "new" tow rig (2008 with 120k miles). It's a V8 GTS Cayenne with a manual transmission and 405HP. These things are fantastic! This was my first tow with it and sure, it can't tow like my 1 ton diesel used to but this was probably about 6000lbs total and i had zero complaints. if your towing requirements fit under this thing's rated 7700lbs and you're looking for a new tow rig you should look at these things. they currently are pretty damn cheap.