Now, where was I? (Post # 44)

I can't believe it's been one month since my last post.  October and November were "complicated." No matter how hard I try to focus my efforts on The Alfatross, life keeps getting in the way.  It's going to take a few posts to catch up. 

Happy Trails

Getting the Alfatross to Tim Marinos' Vintage Auto Craft (www.vintageautocraft.com) before winter set in was my immediate goal after the Santa Fe Concorso.  That sounds simple enough.  Tim mentioned that there are plenty of companies and individuals who transport cars for a living.  All you have to do is get in touch with a dispatcher and decide when you want your car to be picked up.  That might work fine for a "rolling chassis," I thought, but the Alfa is on a 19 ft 7 in long rotisserie.  How would you support it and secure it?   Could I really trust someone else to do that?

Maybe I could rent or borrow a 22  or 24 ft trailer and tow it myself?  Tom Linton offered to lend his trailer, but it is only 20 ft long.  Dave's trailer for his race car is 24 ft long but with built-in cabinetry, tool storage, air compressor, winch, etc. it needs a diesel dually to pull it.  Then Dave suggested that I cut down the rotisserie to 18 ft and buy The Alfatross it's own personal trailer.  That way, I can tow the trailer with the chassis and body to Tennessee and leave it all there until it's time to bring it back.  The Alfatross will need its own trailer from here on, anyway, he pointed out.  Might as well get it now.

So I started listing the things that needed to be done and looking at the calendar.  It was going to be close. 

1. Find a trailer, buy it, and get it back to The Shed. 
2. Cut down the rotisserie.
3. Figure out how to stabilize the chassis and body once inside the trailer.
4. List all the parts that need to go with the chassis and body, box them, and label everything.
5. Finish cleaning the chassis and body.
6. Load the car and stabilize it inside the trailer while still on the rotisserie.
7. Borrow a truck capable of towing the loaded trailer to Tennessee.
8. Coordinate the trip with Tim.
9. Conscript a co-driver.
10. Plan the itinerary and make reservations. 

Except for about 40 miles, the entire trip would be on I-40.  Why the big rush?  Why worry about the weather on a major Interstate in November?  Well, it happens that the worst ice storm I have ever been in was on I-40 in Tennessee on the 400-mile stretch between Memphis and Knoxville--and I have the photos to prove it! 



My VW bus in 1978 (the same one that towed the Alfatross on its own wheels from North Carolina to Texas) after 8 hours on I-40 crossing Tennessee.  Hundreds of pounds of ice weighed the body down until the tires scrubbed the ice inside the wheel wells. 

1978: The air temperature was hovering around the freezing point.  Perfect for creating fantastic radial ice art. 

1978: Volkswagen defrosters depend on air blown across the hear exchangers under the rear engine being warm enough by the time it gets to the windshield to melt ice.  Works great . . . in the summer!  The windshield wiper on the passenger's side has already broken off under the weight of the ice. 



The brand-new "torch" blade in my Sawzall made short work of the rotisserie axle. 
The PVC pipe supports fitted into the shock tower sockets provide stability.
Threaded fittings on the bottoms of the pipes allow for height adjustment. 

While Jeff Kramer searched for trailers on the Internet, I went to work on shortening the rotisserie.  This turned out to be one of the easiest items on the list.  All I had to do was hold the rotisserie axle in place with an engine hoist while I cut off about 18 inches of length.  Before I started this process I cut 4 lengths of 3 in PVC pipe to serve as supports between the floor and the chassis so that the axle would not be supporting the entire weight.  This turned into part of the solution for how to stabilize the body and chassis once in the trailer.





The new trailer and Ridgeline coming back from Tucson.  The Ridgeline did
the job without complaint, but gas mileage was cut in half.

Meanwhile, Jeff found a new Haulmark trailer for sale in Tucson, AZ.  The 525-mile trip down was easy, and the trip back towing the empty trailer served as a good test of whether our Honda Ridgeline would be capable of hauling the fully-loaded trailer 1,250 miles from Santa Fe to Vintage Auto Craft just east of Nashville, Tennessee.  We decided we needed more truck.




Fragile items such as the doors, exterior one-piece aluminum window frames,
and the Plexiglas rear window had to be boxed to make sure they did not suffer
damage during transit.

I knew Tim would need all the body panels and windows so he could make sure everything fit before reassembly for painting.  But the more I thought about it the longer the list of bits and pieces got.  In addition to the doors themselves he will need the windows, regulators, locks, trim, weatherstripping, hinges, and fasteners to hold all that together.  In the end, counting fasteners, the list probably included several hundred items.  Then they had to be packaged, clearly labeled, and prepared for shipping.  This was unexpectedly time-consuming. 



Does this trailer make my butt look big? 



Getting The Alfatross inside was easy, Stabilizing it wasn't.




New Nest for the Alfatross

Before we could test-fit the rotisserie to the trailer we needed to give The Alfatross and all its body panels a final blowing out, vacuuming up, dusting off, and pressure-washing.  Eventually it was time for a test fit in the trailer.  Jeff and I got it in easily using a block and tackle.  Immediately it was apparent that there was one consideration we failed to take into account: the slope in the trailer's floor in front of the door.  This isn't a problem for a rolling chassis or complete car, but  for us it meant that the last several feet of the rotisserie hung in thin air 7 in above the deck.  Uh-oh.  Time for some jackleg engineering.







The final solution: the rotisserie is supported and trapped on top of 2 X 8
beams.  The rotisserie wheels do not touch the floor. 

A rolling chassis has its own suspension to protect it from vibration  and vertical shocks.  A couple of tie-downs to the suspension front and rear and the car is secure.   But the Alfatross, mounted on its rotisserie is a completely different animal.  First we lowered the rotisserie axle until it bottomed out on it hydraulic cylinders.  Then we installed four "legs" made from 3" PVC pipe to give support to the steel chassis at suspension attachment points.  This took most of the strain off the rotisserie axle and connected the chassis directly to the trailer floor to reduce vibration.  Then we installed three transverse bulkheads, one in the front and two in the rear, anchored securely to the sides of the trailer to support the rotisserie frame and prevent it from moving laterally or axially.  Finally, we stabilized wobble in the rotisserie towers with ratcheting tie-downs secured to heavy eye-bolts set in the bulkheads. 



The chassis is supported on 3" sched. 40 PVC pipes fitted into
the rear shock towers and around the front suspension upper
bump stop cones. 


 

Tim, Tom, and Toni

Toni: "It's all yours, Tim!  See you in six months"

So now all I needed was a tow-vehicle, a co-driver, about $1,000-worth of gas, and 5 days to make the round-trip to Tim's place.  Using the old "Tom Sawyer" ploy of asking for something you don't really expect to get in order to improve your chances of getting all you actually need, I invited Tom to lend me his honkin' Silverado 2500 AND be my co-driver.  I got the truck.  Long-suffering Toni was conscripted (again) as my co-driver. 

Tim gave us a brief tour of Vintage Auto Craft, The Alfatross' new home,  before
we turned around and hit the road for the return trip.  The Alfa will feel right
at home with all those Early 911 Porsches.

No matter how you cut it, towing a 20 ft enclosed car trailer is not fun.  Even with a 26-gallon tank, gas stops are all too frequent.  You can't meet, much less exceed the speed limit.  Everything takes longer.  You have to be patient.

We made it to Vintage Auto Craft in 2 1/2 days, largely without incident--except for that wrong turn onto Tennessee Hwy 13 (no kidding), a narrow, winding two lane that led us off the Interstate and deep into Daniel Boone country.  At night. In the rain.  Give me 40 acres and I'll turn this rig around!  To my great relief, nothing in the trailer moved an inch.  Tim gave us a brief tour of his impressive facility but we couldn't stay long.  Inside an hour and a half we were back on the road again.  The trip back without the trailer was a piece of cake.