Disaster can strike at any time!
Discussion
Just a warning to all you other builders on the site to not let your concentration drop:-
I was in rather a bad mood on Saturday morning as my registration details and tax disc had not arrived leaving me unable to use the car yet again!
I had left the car on the trailer after the DVLA inspection, It’s an Ifor Williams trailer which is dual purpose and hence higher than a normal car trailer, the advantage is that it is useful to work on the car at a higher level and I use the ramps as a low level pit. Anyway I had done some work on the back suspension with the front still strapped down, then worked on the front and undone the straps to enable access to the front wheel arches. I then decided to position the trailer in front of the Barn so that I could roll the car just on to the ramps and fit the grills to the rear bumper.
Hitched up the trailer to the car and looked in the mirrors to see that everything was clear as I pulled away, pulled away easy enough then…. Oh my God! The trailer was pulling away but not the car! I had no straps on the car and NO BRAKES! (I had knocked the handbrake off to paint the rear disc centres) I watched in horror as the car rolled backwards off the trailer with a solid brick wall just ten feet behind.
Thank the designers and the Kit car Angels, the car has two long square section chassis rails at the back, this meant that as the rear dropped off the trailer they dug in the trailer bed and stopped the car dead! Luckily they are the same level as the sills or these would have smashed to bits, the only damage appears to be two chucks taken out of the trailer bed.
Huge lesson learnt! Don’t take your eyes off the ball just because the game is nearly over. I could have wrecked two years work in ten seconds by not thinking.
Still, I always was a Jammy Bugger!
Nick
I was in rather a bad mood on Saturday morning as my registration details and tax disc had not arrived leaving me unable to use the car yet again!
I had left the car on the trailer after the DVLA inspection, It’s an Ifor Williams trailer which is dual purpose and hence higher than a normal car trailer, the advantage is that it is useful to work on the car at a higher level and I use the ramps as a low level pit. Anyway I had done some work on the back suspension with the front still strapped down, then worked on the front and undone the straps to enable access to the front wheel arches. I then decided to position the trailer in front of the Barn so that I could roll the car just on to the ramps and fit the grills to the rear bumper.
Hitched up the trailer to the car and looked in the mirrors to see that everything was clear as I pulled away, pulled away easy enough then…. Oh my God! The trailer was pulling away but not the car! I had no straps on the car and NO BRAKES! (I had knocked the handbrake off to paint the rear disc centres) I watched in horror as the car rolled backwards off the trailer with a solid brick wall just ten feet behind.
Thank the designers and the Kit car Angels, the car has two long square section chassis rails at the back, this meant that as the rear dropped off the trailer they dug in the trailer bed and stopped the car dead! Luckily they are the same level as the sills or these would have smashed to bits, the only damage appears to be two chucks taken out of the trailer bed.
Huge lesson learnt! Don’t take your eyes off the ball just because the game is nearly over. I could have wrecked two years work in ten seconds by not thinking.
Still, I always was a Jammy Bugger!
Nick
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