Here We Go!

When I checked the weather report yesterday, it showed cold but sunny for today.  With that forecast, I decided last night that today would be the day I bring the frame to the powder coating shop.  I would have to get the frame back onto the trailer and haul it to the shop.  It wasn't to hard to get the frame off the trailer when I brought it home since it just rolled down the ramps, but I was really concerned about how I was going to get it back up the ramps.  After all, this thing weighs about 600 lbs and even though it's on a dolly, I imagined it would take at least three people to push it up the ramps onto the trailer.  So I made a plan.  I'd have Laurie, Ben and Chris push from the back and I'd make a winch and pull from the front.  I hoped that would do it.  The only problem was that the boys had to go to school at 7am!  OK, they didn't know it, but I was going to get them all up early to help.  I was quite sure they'd be anxious to go outside in the dark at 6:30am during 30 degree temperatures to put their hands on ice cold metal and push my frame.  After all, what an exciting step this would be!

I got up at 6am and went outside to hook up the trailer to the car.  The trailer had been covered with a tarp, so I knocked the ice off, unstuck my fingers from the metal and got it all connected.  By now, it's already 6:30am and I knew there wouldn't be enough time for them to help.  Boy, are they lucky and they didn't even know what they got out of.  Maybe just Laurie and I can get the frame up on the trailer.  We'll see later.

As it turned out, Ben was sick today and didn't go to school.  I wondered for more than a few minutes whether I should have him help.  I heard somewhere that cold air is good for a cold (or was that fluids?).  I thought I'd get as much ready as I could and then have my helpers (whoever they would be) just come and push for a couple minutes.  After that, I could take care of the rest.

I rolled the frame out of the garage and lined it up with the ramps.  Standing behind it, I thought, "let me just give it a push to see how hard this is really going to be".  I pushed, and to my amazement, the dolly started going right up.  Then I thought, "should I keep pushing?  What if I get it halfway up and then it gets really hard -- the whole thing will come back down and run me over.  How would that look to get run over by your own car, especially one that doesn't even have an engine."  So what did I do?  Kept pushing, of course.  To my further amazement, I pushed it right up the ramps and onto the trailer by myself.  It wasn't even hard. [WARNING: Physics lesson follows.  If you aren't interested, just look at the pictures below.  It turns out that I had created a very effective mechanical advantage with the ramps.  They were 8 feet long and the trailer is 2 feet high.  That gives a 4x mechanical advantage.  Therefore, I could move a 600 lb object with 150 lbs of force.  Since I weigh a little over 150 lbs, all I had to do was lean on the frame an up it went.  Now I can see how they built the pyramids (along with 10,000 slaves, of course)]

I took the dolly out (I won't go into details), strapped everything down and off I went.  It took me awhile to find the place, but it was an impressive metal fabrication shop.  They guys were all very interested in my project and I felt like they would do a good job.  I described the colors I wanted and the owner quickly got the feel of what I was looking for.  We went into the design room and there was a wall of paint chips.  He zeroed-in on a cool looking silver with black flecks for the frame, a cobalt blue for the suspension and a low-sheen black pearl for the aluminum panels.  Now both Laurie and I can have matching black pearls!

In all the excitement of this, I did manage to get one picture of the frame being carried by forklift into the shop.

It's all supposed to be done in about 1 1/2 weeks, just in time for Christmas.

When I got home, I found my rear hubs had been delivered from Victor and Diane.  They look good, but will need to be modified to fit the brakes and wheels I've selected.  More on that another day.