Livin' On The Edge

[ancullen]

Grrr, how shitty was I? After concluding my spam-whoring the session last night/this morning at 3am, I went to bed and went to sleep. Only to be woken up at 4:30am to "Adam, I've driven the car off the edge of the driveway."

 

Now this may seem an insignificant thing to you guys, but there's a problem: my driveway has a one-foot drop next to it. You see, we live in a row of units. There is a driveway in front of the five of them (as you can see in the picture below). To the right of this driveway is a drain, one foot below the level of the driveway.

 

 

Now Alisson, my fiancee, parks her car where the car is parked in the picture (with the blue circle around it). She was trying to back out this morning (as she usually does), on her way to work. Unfortunately she badly misjudged the distance to the edge and the driver's front wheel went over. The car is sitting outside currently with three wheels on the driveway and the driver's wheel over the edge, resting on the front right lower control arm. I'm hoping there's no damage, it doesn't look like there is, but who can tell?

 

I tried driving the car forward as there is a garden bed in front of where the car is and I may have been able to bring the other wheel up to the driveway there. But the car won't move when I try to drive it. It just puts all the power through the driver's side wheel, which obviously isn't going to get me anywhere due to it not touching the ground at all. My father-in-law is meant to be on his way around as I type, so hopefully we'll be able to work something out - probably skull drag the bloody thing up to the garden bed and then drive it up.

 

 

 

[Corolla_Gurl]

Oh Dear!

[Rolla__Boy]

Can u not slide a trolley jack in from the passenger side, jack it up and drag/push it back onto the driveway?

[ancullen]

Not enough ground clearance for that unfortunately. I'm thinking maybe we want to let most of the air out of the driver's side tyre, put some bricks under it with a thick, long & wide plank on top, high enough that it's touching the deflated tyre, then pump the tyre back up and try and drive it back onto the driveway.

[Nitephyre]

can't be THAT heavy to lift, can it? :bash:

 

but seriously, oops and good luck :D

[Rolla__Boy]

Use a scissor jack?

[ancullen]

Tried lifting it just to see if I could get it high enough but I forgot that all the weight will be focussed toward the lowest point (the bit I want to lift).

 

Looks like the father in law will be another hour or two, and we're going to try and puts some jacks and planks under the wheel and drive it up. Pretty much what I worked out, except I think bricks would be safer (I just don't think we've got any).

[ancullen]

It's all good now, the car is back on the road (with all four wheels!). It turns out a trolley jack would fit under the front (underneath the radiator support), so we jacked her up and pushed her back onto the driveway. No harm done, just a bit of chipped concrete and minor scratches on the lower control arm.

[Dan]

Phew, that was close... your gf would have got a bit of a shock!

[Super Jamie]

bets on how long until she does it again :D

[ancullen]

My thoughts exactly. So I'm going to get some concrete edging and put it on the edge of the driveway. That way she'll start to mount the edging and will know to stop moving in the direction.

 

It shits me how uncaring she seemed about the whole situation. She was like, oh, that was a pain in the butt, but it wasn't my fault. She even said that when she hit the brakes was when she went over the edge, and that braking caused her to slip that bit further. I couldn't believe it. I just told her as calmly as I could (and I'm being pretty f@$king calm about it with her) that this meant that she braked WAY too late.

[Dan]

Yeah, I can see where you're coming from. It shits you when someone is so ignorant to a situation.

 

Kerbing is the shit!