Another safe road trip is under our belt. The Hammond division of the Ottawa Rotters made their way to the Barrie Automotive Flea Market last Friday as the precursor to our foray into Muskoka cottage country for a double recovery mission.
Barrie was exciting as usual, but no great treasures were found. The usual assortment of new and used automotive goods was available. The boys may post their finds later. After a day wandering the flea market, we headed out for a good meal in Barrie. Our spy contacted us to confirm the location for the recovery mission on Saturday morning.
After a good breakfast in Barrie, we headed north to Huntsville. At Huntsville we took a country road into the pre-autumn Ontario forest. The sunny day and beautiful countryside made the trip even more enjoyable than usual. We finally arrived at the secret location to find a CMP trailer and a 1942 HUW waiting for their new owners (Bob and myself respectively).
The 42 HUW:
We met up with our spy who introduced us to Ron, the owner. Ron indicated that he had other treasures located in the forest if we were interested. This generated a lot of talk as you may have guessed. More on that at a later date.
We had two "vehicles" to move on one float trailer. The float was not long enough for us to put both on nose to tail. The original plan was to load the HUW, remove the rear wheels and "hump" the front wheels of the CMP trailer over the rear axle of the HUW, knit them together with chains and head for home. Murphy had other plans. The nuts on the HUW would not budge. So we got the power bar and extension and heaved on the handle only to break it apart. Time for Plan B.
Plan B was simple in concept but much harder to realize...Load the HUW onto the CMP trailer and when secured, roll the CMP trailer onto the float. We had no heavy lift capability, but Bob was the man with the plan. We loaded the HUW onto Bob's trailer, ran it back to the CMP trailer and set ramps up to the CMP trailer deck. On the third attempt, the HUW rolled up onto the CMP deck. No mean feat as the HUW had flat tires on front and we had to double the winch line.
HUW on CMP trailer:
We then chained down the HUW to the CMP trailer and repositioned the float to load it. Again, we ran into problems with flat tires, but we finally prevailed. The entire load was knitted to the float with quite a few chains and load binders.
Loaded!
Well-stacked, indeed!
After everything was secured, we conducted a brake test and were happy to note that the trailer stopped (eventually) when we wanted it to.
Brian and Grant measured the height of the load and we found we were below the maximum height restriction for road travel. The only real problems we had on the trip home were the Sunday drivers and a tie down strap that Houdini would have appreciated. We made Ottawa by 8 PM and saved the off-load until Sunday morning – Bob will post more pictures of the off-load later.
This trip was not without its challenges, but was completed safely and two more CMPs joined the Hammond stable.