<VV> Move Your Corvair Day

[Karl Haakonsen]

For Corvair Heritage Day, Bay State Corvairs organized a gathering at 
Fort Adams State Park in Newport, RI for today (Sunday), which I hear 
was great and included 19 Corvairs in attendance. Today was also the day 
of my community's annual local parade, in which I was scheduled to drive 
“ROZZIE” the art car (my 1993 Saturn SW2 festooned with art), as I 
always do. However, ROZZIE has had the “Service Engine Soon” light 
flickering on intermittently for a while and given that driving 
stop-and-go for about an hour and a half is pretty hard on a car, I 
scratched on the parade. I did use the time (and the spirit of Corvair 
Heritage Day) to fix the sorry state of affairs that my 66 Monza vert 
was in.

The Vair was up on two jack stands for a few weeks, enabling me to work 
under the rear of the car and in preparation for the pulling of the 
powertrain (and just to get the rear of the car up out of the dirt it 
had sunk into). However, heavy rains last week caused the car to slide 
sideways off the jack stands and nearly into the fence separating our 
yard from the neighbor’s yard. Seeing the car in this cockeyed way, with 
the two front wheels sunken into the ground was quite pathetic and 
distressing. So, last week, I purchased three sheets of 3/4″ pressure 
treated plywood and intended to reposition the car onto the plywood to 
prevent wheels, jacks and jack stands from sinking into the ground.

Today, I moved the car onto the plywood…. no small feat given that:

A) I did it all by myself
B) The car has no brakes
C) all four tires are flat
D) the front two tires were sunken into the ground.

Whoever invented the “come-along” is someone who deserves a Nobel prize. 
Through extensive use of a recently purchased Come-Along, I was able to 
pull the car forward (the trick was finding something secure enough to 
attach the other end of the come-along to), position two sheets of 
plywood behind the car, then, attaching the come-along to the back of 
the Corvair and the other end to Elle (the 2001 Saturn wagon), I was 
able to pull the car back beyond the two sheets of plywood and the front 
wheels onto the plywood (the last part, I just towed the car directly 
under the power of Elle), position the third sheet of plywood in front 
of the other two. Then used the come-along to pull the Corvair forward 
and back onto the plywood in the correct position. Then I was able to 
once again jack up the back of the car and place the jack stands on the 
firm, if not perfectly flat surface of the plywood where it will 
hopefully stay until I let it back down.