You can skip this one Bill. Totally non rv related. You have been warned.
Sat afternoon, I hooked up my trailer to the PT Cruiser, and we went to the local Lowes to pick up a piece of OSB for our son. We came home and I decided to park the car and trailer behind the house, as that is where we would need the piece of OSB.
Little back story here. We used to have a set of wash lines out back, which had steel pipes on each end to hold up the lines. Eventually, those posts rusted off at the ground/concrete level. I added some additional steel inside the original pipes to hold them up.
Through a series of unfortunate events, those posts were removed, but I decided to leave part of the inner pipes there. I left them stick up about 12-15 inches out of the ground, as I did not want the holes being accidently getting filled with dirt.
The second pipe had some flowers planted around it, and they grew high enough that the post could not be seen, but we, (wife and I), both knew it was there.
Anyhow, when we came home, I swung the car and trailer wide enough to miss the first pipe, and then cut sharply to miss the second post, as well as the flowers.
About this time, I realized I was not going to make the turn quite sharp enough, and was going to run over said flowers. In that split second of time, my thought process was - The flowers will survive being run over by my left front tire, so no big deal. I momentarily completely forgot the pipe, which I knew was there, but could no longer see.
Just at that exact moment, my wife also realized I was going to run over the flowers and said - Don't hit the ..... (insert crash here)!
RATZ! Well, maybe it wasn't too bad. It was a small diameter piece of steel that was sticking up.
I got out and looked, and sure enough, the front bumper was nearly torn off. The pipe hit, not the front tire, but the end of the radiator cradle underneath.
Well, that's not good. We unloaded the OSB, unhooked the trailer, took the PT up front, and looked underneath a little better.
Bummer. Bumper is cracked, Radiator is broken. The condenser for the AC is bent just a little bit. The radiator cradle is bent way more than it should be, with a couple of welds broken, holding the cradle in place.
Well, the good news is, the 04 PT that was totaled last year in the rear, is still there. I can use parts of of that, and I did.
I took what I needed off of that one and spent most all day on Sunday repairing this PT.
Got my jack out and pushed, pulled, hammered, and then welded things back to where they were originally.
Good news, is I now have a radiator that is only about 6 years old, instead of 18, so that is a plus. Also have a change of Anti-Freeze, so that is new.
Ironically, 2 weeks ago, I contacted my former employer, and told him to come and pick up the wrecked 04 PT, and he had not done that yet. I had barely gotten all of the parts I needed off of it, and they called and said they were coming for it.
Talk about timing! Ah, what a weekend. Everything is back together and functioning again, so we are good to go, and the junk car is gone, so we are all good.
Long winded story there. If I bored you, I am sorry. Hopefully, you may see just a little bit of humor there, as I am sure, nobody else would do something that stupid! Lol...
Hope your weekend went better than mine did. :)
