Saturday morning I drove down to Lexington Park with the OG-V packed to the gunwales with tools; we’re in the middle of a long-term project at the FiL’s house to replace the garage door original to the house with a modern mechanized version. This began two weeks ago with the drywall project, and after we got the go-ahead from the installers, it was time to move to the next phase: moving the Chrysler out of the way.

When last I left the Chrysler, I was looking at the brake system. Because it had been parked in the garage with the emergency brake on, three of the four drums were frozen to the pads. I’d put the front passenger wheel up on a stand and commenced to whacking it with a sledgehammer, but couldn’t get it to release. This was after several heating and cooling cycles, and at the end I’d actually taken a chunk out of the edge of the drum. So I bought and brought a set of four heavy-duty wheel dollies on Saturday, figuring they would be better than nothing. After hoisting the broken door up and out of the way, I moved stuff around and swept around the car. I had all four wheels up on the dollies within an hour, and moved a bunch of stuff out of the way before breaking out the tow strap.

I was a little nervous about using the OG-V to pull with, but the Scout is down with some unknown leakage (more info on that to come) and the new CR-V doesn’t have a trailer hitch yet. I had Jen’s sister come out and keep an eye on things, and after a lot of starting and stopping we got it out of the garage and onto the uneven pavement where it began to jump off the dollies when they got bogged down in divots and sand. The Honda did fantastic pulling the heavy beast; I never should have doubted it. The Chrysler is now far enough away from the door that there should be room to make a mess without coming near it. Then we used leverage and gravity to move his other disabled car, the Escort, down to the bottom and up behind the Chrysler, leaving a wide lane on the left side.

Humorously, I brought a car cover I was using for the Travelall, which fits with room to spare. It will not fit the Chrysler. It’s not long enough. So I rigged it up with a tarp in back and a box in front (to keep the radio antenna from poking a hole in the cover). With that done, I moved everything in the front of the garage to the back, clearing out the space for the installers to do their thing, and closed the door. After taking care of some other housekeeping, I hit the road for home.

In two weeks, I’ve got to head back down with another car full of tools, put the Chrysler up on jack stands, and beat the shit out of the three bad drums with a sledgehammer. At this point I don’t care if they split in half; I need them off to free up the wheels, because the dollies will not work going back into the garage—it needs to be on its own wheels. Beyond that, I’m going to have to buy a winch and anchor it to the floor with some beefy bolts to get the car back inside.