Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Moving The Radio

My roommate got married and moved off-base. He took most of his stuff with him, but one of the things he left to be moved at a later date was an old floor model radio. One day me and another guy decided to bring the radio to where the roommate now lived. The radio was big enough that it wouldn't fit in my car, a '64 Corvair 2dr coupe. The other guy had a Chevy Impala convertible, so we decided to use it to haul the radio. We had trouble trying to get it into the car until we put the top down and then just lifted it up and over into the back seat. If we had laid it down on its side on the back seat, we could have put the top back up. We decided that because we would have to put the top down to remove the radio that we would just leave the top down. In hindsight, putting the top up might have been a good idea as the temperature was about -10 degrees. Anywho, with the heater on high we made the trip to deliver the radio. We got some funny looks from other drivers, especially when we would wave over the top of the windshield. We managed to make the trip without getting frostbite, but the trip back was not so lucky. After consuming a number of beers while warming up (it took a long time, several hours), we headed back to the base. It was a little drunk (a little drunk, maybe a lot) out and doing crazy things like sliding around curves and corners caused us to hit a frozen snowbank. We didn't get stuck in the snowbank, but it caused the radiator to spring a leak. We made it back to the main gate at the base before the car overheated (in below zero weather no less).

4 comments:

Dr. Zaius said...

Ack! Did the radio even work???

Kulkuri said...

Yes, at least I think it did.

Tracy said...

That reminds me of a Christmas day quite a few years ago, when I was driving to spend the day with family, and the thermostat locked up in my '68 F100 with a 390, 3 on the tree. It was about 0F but the engine overheated. I stopped and removed the thermostat, but didn't have any antifreeze so I put water in it, thinking it would be OK until I got where I was going, then I could just drain it and deal with it next day.
Didn't work. Soon the engine was overheating again, and when I stopped I found that the water froze in the radiator even as the engine was running hot.
BTW, are you going to the gunshow in Norcross in a couple weeks?

Kulkuri said...

I guess some of the new thermostats will fail in the open position. Some cardboard or something in front of the radiator might have helped keep it from freezing up.

No, I'm not going to the gun show.