This is not my story, I only wish it were. But its the story of an adventure to pick up a BABE car that is worth sharing because it completely captures what BABE is about and what will get you though. The ability to stare adversity in the face and say "pass the beer" When people want to understand what BABE rally is all about, this is it, staring down Murphy's Law with your friends and finding a way to get through it, then sitting back and having a good laugh about it.
This is the story of the 45 hours it took Team Reaper to exhume Angeline (all hearses are named when built) from her grave in a suburban driveway in Northwest of Madison, Wisconsin.
Team Reaper entered into BABE 2012 with the goal of a hearse being our chariot. Between the three of us, for hauling we have zero trailers, an 85 F-250 with front brakes that do not fully disengage that also leaks fuel from the carb onto the exhaust manifold, and a Ford Ranger. Naturally we decided to buy a 20' long 3 ton hearse from about 500 miles away near Madison Wisconsin. After calling in several favors, Craig came up with a Dodge 2500 from a coworker, and Cody got a newly rebuilt 18' car hauler from a family friend.
Knowing that we had what should be about a 24 hours round trip, I stayed at Craig's the night before and we stayed up until about midnight watching wedding shows (It was his girlfriend's fault I swear!) so that we could get up at 3:30 to take the truck over to Cody's and hook it up to the trailer and go. Let me tell you how great of an idea it was to start this whole thing off with less than 4 hours of sleep!
By the time we got to Cody's we were almost awake, and Cody wasn't even out of bed yet. I thin we made friends with his neighbors when we pulled into Cody's driveway a few feet from their house in a lifted diesel truck with dual 5" stacks and no mufflers. They liked it so much, that by the time we got the truck turned around and backed in that several of their lights came on and they were looking out to see the awesomeness that was our redneck tow vehicle (complete with camouflage steering wheel cover and country CDs in the visor!)
Despite it being cold and dark we got the trailer hooked up pretty quickly and were ready to go within about 30 minutes of getting there. Since we were borrowing the trailer we did a light and trailer brake check on the trailer to make sure everything was good and......#&^&#(@&&^$!!!!!!!!!!! No tail lights, no turn signals, no brake lights, no emergency flashers, no trailer brake. After checking the fuses and relays (both good), we crawled under the truck to see if there was anything obviously going on with the wiring. What we found could be best described as a bowl of spaghetti. The 7 wire connector had 3 wires connected and 6 loose wires on the truck side.
We spent little time on Google looking up trailer wiring and then used a crowbar to bend the butchered bracket for the wiring connector far enough to pull the connector part. Since we were off to such a great start, it was only natural that the connector housing was so corroded that it was unopenable. We also realized Cody didn't have a volt meter. Keep in mind this is at 5am and we are out of luck if we need anything that cannot be purchased at Wal-mart. In the interest of getting on the road ASAP we decided to go out to breakfast and wait until the U-Haul store was open and just pay them to fix it.
After a heart attack inducing breakfast at some hole in the wall 24 hr diner, we went to U-Haul and talked to a guy that made it seem like he could take care of us without to much trouble.....at 2:30pm when he had his next available opening to look at the truck. After explaining our situation he at least came out and looked at the truck and gave his idea of what it looked like we'd be into. He also recommended another place that does work on trailers down the road. We tried the place only to find out they we not open for another hour, never mind that we have no idea if they can get us in ASAP or not.
During this Cody was in contact with the owner of the trailer we borrowed, who offered to get us on the road if we couldn't get in somewhere else. We made a trip to PepBoys to pick up some wiring and a new 7 way connector, and headed to his shop to wait for him to get in. Craig and I both immediately declined to try to back in the 18' trailer into the single wide door of the shop, citing lack of experience with towing. No problem, Cody was all over it. ...And all over the wall about 10 feet to the right of the garage door. At the third attempt, which was just as bad as the first two, the shop owner had had enough and took over. A couple minutes later we had the truck in.
It quickly became apparent that the spare tire under the bed would have to be dropped to get to the wiring and test it out to figure what's what. To continue the trend of everything going smoothly for this trip, we found the spare wobbling all over the place and dropped down several inches from where it was supposed to be. It's simple to use the glorified manual winch setup that holds the spare up to lower it down.....if we have the tool to do it. I bet you know this outcome already, don't you? The tool was nowhere to be found in/on the truck. After about 40 minutes, a big steel hex bolt, some square tubing, a bench grinder and a portable welder later we had a very sorry looking but functional tool to drop the winch for the spare.
While dropping the spare we notice the brake line was rubbing the shock body on one side. The thought of 18,000 pounds of truck/trailer/Angeline going down the road without brakes or with a blown shock prompted us to pause in our wiring project to bend the brake line so that it no longer rubs.
We got a volt meter and started testing one wire at a time to figure out what was going on and noticed a few strange things. First was that one of the wires metered 40v and another one metered about 77v. Second was that 3 different wires changed voltage when the brakes or turn signals were applied. While retesting due to the strange results, I notice that sometimes the left rear brake light and turn signal would light up on the tuck and sometimes it wasn't. With no other ideas we removed the tail light to see what was gong on there. Everything looked okay including the filaments on the bulbs so we removed the other tail light to switch bulbs and try to see if we could rule out a bad bulb as the cause. The bulbs were pretty nasty and the connectors pretty well bent to hell so we bent the tables back correctly and used some contact cleaner on the bulbs. Bingo! Next test got good readings on all the wires and we knew which ones were which and which ones are not needed.
Cody being productive on the phone, Craig not liking me taking his picture, and the shop owner actually doing work (out of frame), lol:
We had a good couple hours cutting, stripping, splicing etcetera before we had a hooked up and working wiring harness. By this time we were around 8 hours behind schedule and were still In Louisville around the time we expected to be exhuming Angeline. the shop owner loaded us up with rechargeable flashlights (since we are now looking at a nigh exhumation), duct tape, tie downs, some odds and end tools, and some random wheel off of a van that was a 5x5 bolt pattern because Angeline had a wheel so flat it was off the rim.
We finally hit the road go for lunch only to find out once we got going that the brake controller was all or nothing. It either applied full power or nothing. Several skidmarks and very jerky start/stops later we parked at the Mexican restaurant to refuel ourselves and figure out what we were going to do. When the trailer brake was engaging the back two trailer wheels were locking up and the front two were coming up off of the ground. NOT a good situation! After eating resisting the urge to order margaritas we decided to disconnect the brake controller for the ride up since the trailer is empty and the full power should be what we need anyway once Angeline is on board.
Did you think it would be that easy? Well of course it wasn't! With the brake controller completely disconnected the trailer behaved exactly the same. By this time we just want to get on the road. Our consensus was that at least in Kentucky, it was legal to have a trailer without lights as long as the tow vehicles lights are clearly visible. No problem, we have an empty car trailer. We get on the road and finally leave Louisville.
Fast forward about an hour and the shop owner called Cody to see if we were getting along alright. We related what was happening with the trailer and got a very concerned response. He informed us that Indiana (in which we still had about 3-4 hours of driving remaining) is very strict about trailer lighting and if we got by a cop we are very likely to get pulled over and have his trailer impounded. We pull off at the next exit that appears to have civilization and reconnect the trailer to see what happens. As expected it's skidmarks and wheelies. And unexpectedly some creepy looking street urchin blatantly standing there staring at us the whole time. We felt it prudent to keep someone on lookout and so were down to two working on the trailer while the other one tried to make sure we didn't end up starring in a horror movie.
Our best option was going to be to cut the trailer wiring for the brake controller so we could have lights without skidmarks and wheelies. After managing to cut all the wires to the trailer brake batter backup, we finally cut the right wire and had working lights without a wonky trailer brake. Back on the road.
Things actually went smooth from there the rest of the way up with possibly the exception of Craig's squirrel bladder. We FINALLY roll into the suburban neighborhood that was Angeline's resting place at midnight, with much excitement when we saw her sitting there in all her evil glory! Sadly we were too sleep deprived and excited to think of getting and pictures or video. Craig and I got to getting the ramps on the trailer (that we had removed for tail light visibility when we unhooked the wiring harness to the trailer) while Cody got the van wheel and went to work changing out the flat on Angeline.
With the trailer ready to go and four inflated tires on Angeline we were ready to start her up and load her on the trailer. silence That was the sound that greeted us upon turning the key. You could visibly see all of our excitement deflate as we hung our heads, resigning ourselves to doing battle yet again. Angeline's previous owner jumped in and said there is a wonky battery terminal and that it should start if you wiggle the cables. We popped the hood and cranked it with him wiggling the cable and then the most epic part of our trip occurred.
Have you ever seen the creepy scenes in scary movies where they are in a cemetery and there is rolling fog and a full moon and it just looked creepy as hell? When Angeline's straight piped 425 literally ROARED to life (this thing sounds like a dragster when it starts!) in the 20 degree Wisconsin air, the foggy exhaust rolled out from under the middle of the car where the exhaust was broken off and you'll have to take my word that it was truly epic watching the fog roll out all 4 sides and surround our evil hearse in the driveway. The previous 20 hours or so of hell trying to get up there to exhume Angeline were totally forgotten with the hellish roar of Angeline's 425 firing up and the the fog roaring out from under her! The full moon only added to the scene. While we suspected it from the beginning (and thus signed up), this was the moment we all knew BABE 2012 was going to be truly epic!
After about 5 minutes of Cody fighting intermittently working power steering on a 6000-ish pound car we finally had he lined up and ready to go up on the trailer. I kept looking for neighbors coming outside to see what all the racket was about since it was going on 1am at this point and we had diesel truck with 6" stacks and a straight piped 425 driving around the cul-de-sac. No one came out or looked outside that I am aware. I choose to think that evil pouring out of our newly exhumed Angeline kept everyone cowing in fear behind locked doors.
So now we have Cody driving, me watching on the passenger side to make sure he stays lines up, Craig doing the same thing on the driver's side and the previous owner watching the front of the trailer to tell Cody when to stop. Everything was going well until the Angeline got her front wheels at the top of the ramp. It was then that we all received freshly browned underwear. With her evil Roar Angeline began shoving the entire truck and trailer forward, with all 8 wheels locked. Once my heart started beating again I sprinted after the runaway truck and trailer to stop it if I could or at least steer it if it takes off down the hill toward the cars and houses across the intersection. I don't know if Cody realized what was going on and stopped or if the truck/trailer just hit a more grippy spot on the asphalt, but everything stopped moving after about 10 feet as I was reaching out to the door handle of the truck. What a near disaster! The resulting adrenaline rush kept me wide awake while getting Angeline strapped down and ready to go.
We were all shot and there was no way we were going to be able to go the 500 miles back home, so we found the closest hotel with the plan for Craig to use his points accumulated from traveling for his job to get a free room. Being only 10 minutes away or so, we left the trailer wiring unhooked and carefully took back roads to the hotel just in case. The next morning we had to hit up an auto parts store for wiring connectors to get the trailer wiring spliced back together and hope the trailer brake worked okay so we could begin our journey home.
The hotel stay was uneventful. We crashed after a much needed, much earned trip to the hotel bar for some local brews. The only other thing worth mentioning about the hotel was that it had a freaking water park in it! Our hotel window actually overlooked the indoor water park. It's quite invigorating to wake up in the morning and look out the window to see women frolicking in bikinis. In a stroke of luck, it happened to all be the type of women you would want to see in a bikini as well. Resisting the urge to take a picture (because the water park is so cool of course, not related to said women in bikinis), we went downstairs for breakfast (AWESOME breakfast buffet!).
Pic from the internet, but this is part of what our third floor window looked down on:
Parked at the hotel:
Now all we had left was to get the wiring spliced back together for the trailer brake and test it out to see if it works right with the weight of Angeline on it. Of course our trip to Pep Boys came up short when we found out the the trailer brake wiring was a size or two larger than what they carried connectors for. Luckily there was a Menards right around the corner. We wandered around the largest Menards I have ever seen (they even sold breakfast cereal!), we finally found the electrical section and got the connectors and some electrical tape to replace the duct tape we used to tape up the wiring the night before.
We got everything connected back up without issue and took a short brake when a random couple in an SUV pulled up next to use and asked if we were looking for any passengers. I'm not sure but I think they may have have been offering themselves as human sacrifices to Angeline. We chatted a few minutes and went back to work. A few hotlaps around the Menards parking lot proved that the brake controller was working wonderfully with Angeline on the trailer. Finally! Time to head for home!
Rewiring the trailer brake in Menards parking lot:
The trip home actually went very smooth. We took a little detour down some dirt/gravel roads to get up close to the wind turbines around the lake so we could get a closer look. With two engineers and someone who is mechanically inclined, we couldn't resist getting a closer look. Total time elapsed was 45 hours from 2:30am Saturday until 11:30 pm Sunday. Below are some random pics I took of that little detour and some random shots of Angeline. I especially like the one with the dead end sign. That shot was totally candid and not staged.
This crazy guy in a hearse tailgated us all the way home!
My favorite picture:
A few random pics I took of the Angeline:
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Parked on the dirt/gravel road to check out the wind turbines:
More wind turbine pics:
Home safe:
I found this bonus this morning in a storage compartment under the cargo area. It might have to be our theme song!
Angeline isn't my first 70's Cadillac:
The first chapter of BABE 2012 is complete for Team Reaper. Now on to repairs/upgrades/decoration!
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