Towing out snowed in cars - a cautionary tale!

Ah, yes. The expression "use a shovel you f****it" springs to mind.

Alex

could you summarise for those of us on 28.8Kbps dialups?

rhys

Thanks Peter for saving that. It's a good laugh!

I can't help but wonder if it's satire or stupidity!

Marshall. snipped-for-privacy@swiftdsl.com.au

Whoa fellas, I'm getting hit like 2x a minute now for that video! Hope my ISP doesn't notice ;)

Peter

A total classic of what not to do. GGJ

Wait till you get to work, then download it on ASDL ;-)

Seriously, though - bunch of American youngsters with a newish Japanese saloon car (Toyota Celica? dunno) stuck in snow. The road surface is clear, but there is a small pile of snow stopping the car from reversing out. Rather than spend 2 minutes digging the snow out of the way, they hook a towing strop to one of the rear lash-down eyes and the other end to a pick-up and try to pull the stranded car through the pile of snow and dig it in even worse. The pick-up pulls again and there is a crack from the back of the saloon - the towing eye must have shifted and cracked the bumper moulding. Not deterred, our boys get the pick-up to pull even harder and after a lot of revving and slipping tyres, the whole back end of the saloon rips off. It's spectacular - you can hardly believe the damage. Rear bumper, cross-member, boot lid, lights - the lot. It has probably popped every spot weld in the back 12 inches of the body. Shattered plastic everywhere. Owner of the car just doesn't know what to say - he's completely gobsmacked. Ends with a couple of re-runs of the critical moment and then a couple more repeats of the crunching sound. I think the guy who edited the file was having fun.

It made me laugh till I cried. The guys are such d*cks, the car so smart and posey, and the damage so devastating. Well worth the download time, even at 28.8Kbps. Set it to download, then go and have your tea. Come back in an hour. You won't regret it!

Rich

RR 4.6 HSE Tiggrr 3,5 V8 trialler

Couldn't resist mirroring it here:

Martyn

On or around Wed, 28 Jan 2004 13:04:01 +0000, Mother enlightened us thusly:

what I want to know is why Mozilla is dead set against interpreting .wmv correctly, despite claiming to have the plugin for it both installed and enabled... ie6 manages 'em.

p'raps I'll see if there's a newer mozilla out. or re-install this one...

If you can manage a 600 kb the vital moments are here, thanks to VirtualDub and DivX:

From seeing the license plates they were Canadian as the car had British Columbia plates.

Martin

I really enjoyed that... It looked like the tow hook was attached to the rim of the spare tire or bumper... Irregardless, not a strong part of the car.

But very funny. Hope it wasn't too bad to have repaired.

__________________ Note: To reply, replace the word 'spam' embedded in return address with 'mail'. N38.6 W121.4

Thanks.

Barry S. ( snipped-for-privacy@spamsack.org) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

You can clearly see the towing eye and mount sticking out of the ripped-off back end. The spot welds holding the eye's mount to the boot floor have given out.

Oh, I dunno.... The idle cretins deserve a nice big bill.

Talked to the other half about this, she used to work as a car designer, showed her the vid. Apparently the car is a write off, if you look carefully the damage extends right back almost to the C frame and will certainly have major stress damage to every weld point up to the C frame itself. The damage is consistent with having a rear end shunt, only in reverse.

PDH

This just gets better ;-)

After careful re-viewing, you are correct!

I think they totalled the car.

I guess using a shovel has just gone out of style...

__________________ Note: To reply, replace the word 'spam' embedded in return address with 'mail'. N38.6 W121.4

Last year I encountered a Mini stranded in a very deep ford - the water came up to just below the window line. The rear of the car was sticking out of the water. I offered to tow the car out but told the driver he had to attach the tow hook. Then I had to intervene because his first attempt was to put the hook onto the rear valance.

I've often wondered what would have happened if I had tried to pull him out. Now I know.

On or around Sat, 31 Jan 2004 23:41:54 +0000, snipped-for-privacy@malloc.co.uk (Steve Firth) enlightened us thusly:

mind, you'd not have had the big lump of snow impeding the progress. Unless, of course, he'd left the brake on.

Yes, but with the bonnet mostly underwater I think the suction would have taken the place of the big lump of snow.