Home Again
So I figured, now that the car is back home, I should chart our trip to Tampa to meet up with Shawn and collect my car.
Although we made arrangements to ship the car after Thanksgiving, we (my wife Helen and I) decided we would drive down, spend a week on the beach to eascape the Michigan weather, then bring the car back on a trailer. Having booked a condo on Treasure Island for the week, I needed a trailer. After some research I got a great deal on a 'utility' trailer from Trailer Sales of Michigan in Jackson. This was the same spec. as their diamond plate car haulers, but with a wooden deck - and it was lighter and cheaper. Having got it home, I parked it in the snow bank at the top of our drive and then spent a few hours out in the cold (5 deg F) removing the center planks (more lightening), fitting E Track and making up a stone shield for the front.
The drive down went well and I found the trailer well-balanced and easy to tow. Arriving at the hotel/condo, we found somewhere to park the trailer and spent the Sunday on the beach. On the Monday, I had arranged to meet up with Shawn and take a look at the car - it looked great, and I left Shawn to finish off a couple of jobs before I returned the following weekend to collect the car and head for home. Having not had my car on a trailer before, I was a bit concerned that my tie downs would not work the way I had intended, or that it might be difficult to balance the load, making towing difficult, so I was a bit nervous when we showed up at Shawn's shop to load up. The car was ready and sat there gleaming in the sunlight. The paintwork was spectacular and really showed off the the Stacy side skirts and 02+ valance that Shawn had fitted for me (along with OE tubular headers, NSX-R chassis bars, CR harness bar, billet gauge rings, etc.). As it turned out, the E Track and the tie downs worked perfectly, and the car was easier to balance on the trailer than I had expected. Saying goodbye to Shawn, we headed for I-275 North - slowly at first but, as confidence grew, we found we could run comfortably at 75, touching 80 at times. The trailer worked really well and will be a great help getting the car to and from the track days I have planned. It always seemed a bit daft to drive 3 hours to a track, thrash the car all day long and then expect to drive home. Having a trailer will make that all a lot less stressful. Our Chevy Traverse was also a great vehicle to tow with - comfortable, lot of space inside, and enough performance to cope with the hills on the way back through Tennessee and Kentucky.
We stopped in Knoxville on the Saturday night and arrived back in Canton at about 6.00 on Sunday evening. The stone shield on the front of the trailer seems to have done its job well - though the car needs a good wash and polish to restore the lustre to the paint after the long haul (1203 mile door to door). I'll post more pictures once the car has been cleaned up but, in the meantime, here's some pictures from the trip....
Thanks again to Shawn for all his help and attention to detail.
If any of you out there are thinking about having some work done on your car, give Shawn a call.
Get that BAD BOY back up here.
