Push, Plow and Tow.

This is where Selma Lee was located this afternoon. I'd been having a small issues with getting her started... so when D wanted Josey to get parked in the garage, we put her in neutral and rolled her down the incline of our driveway and tried to get her turned and parked perpendicular... except the momentum only get us mostly there, not quite.

While we're gone for over a week, holiday making in the Midwest, we wanted my dearest Selma in the garage... except there was still that small detail of her not wanting to start. Plus - one of the doors must have been a tidge ajar, because the battery had warn down.

First - we set up jumper cables and tried to get her started. We eventually gave up.

We then attached a tow rope on the hitching points under the front bumpers of both Selma and Josey and Josey slowly rolled backwards towing Selma as far up the drive as we could, while still allowing enough room for Josey to get free. That landed Selma mostly on the paved portion at the bottom of the above photo.

Josey then drove back around to the other side, and very slowly butted up against Selma. Due to their slightly different profiles - Josey's rear bumper slide up on top of Selma's, compressing her back suspension, and making contact with the plastic back light covers, partially breaking the mounting on one and sliding it back into the trunk - but it all worked none the less - and Selma got back up half way into the garage.

At that point - she was half way on level ground in the garage, and half way sloped downhill, so D backed Josey off of Selma Lee, the back end un-compressed, and we used our own force to push her the remaining way into the garage, to prevent the compression angle getting out of control if we'd pushed her all the way into the garage with Josey.


The slant of the driveway is too step to have pushed her up into the garage by ourselves - which is why we employed Josey. Selma weighs in right under two tones, and as we found out with Chad's car last weekend, when we needed to push his '82 300D about six inches farther up the driveway so his engine block heater could reach our pathetic attempts as creating an extension cord by connecting three surge protectors end to end, two tonnes on a slant needs a darn lot of force to move.


Good times.


Tomorrow, I install my own block heater, as well as do a bit of other work, so when we return she'll be a generally happier car.

I'd just like to extend a particularly strong Thank You to D for being a willing accomplice and particularly excellent and careful in the execution of said activities. It's hard to be delicate when driving an SUV, but he was.