I was jacking up the front bumper
and Larry was jacking up the rear of the 48 Ford. We wanted to get the
passenger side of the Ford up in the air so we could drop the
transmission and install a new clutch. We were in a very small single
car garage; you could hardly open the car door without hitting the
wall of the garage. We had assortment of 2x4, 4x4 and a couple of
bricks and a few old paint cans. When we gained 6 to 8 inches in
height, we would stop jacking, get down on our knees and add a piece
of 2x4 or a brick to the blocks under the ford. The ford ended up at a
40-degree tilt, the roof almost touched the wall, and with all the
blocks under the ford, it looked as if we had built a Lincoln log fort
under there.
There was a single bulb in the ceiling of the garage that did
not give out much light. Larry went a got a small desk lamp pulled the
lampshade off, and that became our trouble light. Our tools consisted
of a couple of pipe wrenches, a claw hammer and a crescent wrench. We
got the driveline dropped, and the bolts out of the transmission. The
transmission was in a bind, so we had to push upwards and pull back at
the same time. We were pushing upward, with everything that we had,
when all of a sudden, the ford just rolled against the wall, and there
it laid with Larry and I looking up at that single light bulb in the
ceiling.
We scrambled out from under the ford to see what kind of damage
there was to the ford. The roof of the ford was just resting against
the wall, up on its tires, much like a ballerina on her toes. Now we
had to figure out, how to get the transmission out and the ford down.
We put a 7-foot piece of 4x4, from the base of the floor and wall, up
to the exposed frame of the ford. Then we rebuilt our piles of blocks,
so that we were sure, the ford would not come down on us as we pulled
the transmission.
We got down on our knees and slowly pulled the transmission
out. After we got all the blocks out, and we pulled the 4x4 away, the
time had come to let the ford down. We came up with a hundred ideas of
ways to let the ford down, but it came down to the simple act of Larry
just pushing the car with his hand. The wheels came down hard, the
wheels on the left side came up off the ground, and the ford tilted
and almost hit the wall again, it continued to rock and roll back and
forth for a few more times then stopped.
We pushed the ford out of the garage, so we could see what damage
there was to the roof. There was a two-foot long indention, couple of
inches above the rain rail. Larry and I got into the car, and put our
hands on the bump then hit it, the bump popped out.
As I went walking out to my car, Larry was thanking me, and I was
thinking, that was the last time I would ever work in a single car
garage that small.
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