If thoughts could kill

[terryford8]

Well I have a rant on after finding my beautiful new SVT front bumper cracked on my MercSVT
Took my car to get undercoated hoping to fight off rust caused by road salt
When the young guy drove my car up onto the hoist the front was almost scraping against the ramp
Told the guy and the owner to be extremely careful when backing the car OFF the lift
They told me it was no problem but it scraped anyway and I was upset
My biggest mistake was not checking the car more carefully afterwards

Flash forward a month and I see the bolt holding the fender linner to the front bumper was just hanging there. Cleaned off all the muck and saw the bumper had split and the bolt then pulled thru
Frig it was late at night and I had just finished off the SVT body kit with newly painted SVT rear bumper
Now it was one step forward one step back
Anyway i pulled out the inner liner and cleaned up the area so I could reinforce the area with fibreglass
Trying to find the right mixture of glass resin and hardner was hard in my cold unheated Canadian garage. The super strong smell of the resin took me back to my youth building Meyers Manx dunnebuggy bodies.
Anyway when i am sure the area is strong enough it will be time for the beautiful Blu_Fuz bumper supports I bought from Matty K
While waiting for the first coat to dry I decided to change the oil on my Suzuki GS 1100
A couple of yrs ago i gave my brother my Kerker Exhaust system and bolded on Vance&Hines unit.
The Kerker allowed access to the oil drain plug
The V&H unit doesn't and u have to drop the system to change the oil..
Should have know better than to expect this old(63 yrs) body to enjoy working for six hours straight and today seems every muscle in my body is screaming at me....YOU STUPID OLD FOOL....:laugh:

 

[blu_fuz]

I hear ya man. The shops don't give a flying (you know what) if they scrape your car on their ramps. I had my Micah pre-98 carbon fiber front bumper CRUNCHED in half because of a shop ramming it up onto their lift. Matter of fact, it hit so hard the first try it got STUCK 1/2 way up the ramp. He backed it down, dragging it backwards on the ramp, gave it some more gas and smashed it up the ramp! Not only that, after the front wheels cleared the ramps, the rockers bottomed out and the car was teeder-tottering on the ramp so some other shop guys gave it a push from the back to make it up. All that for a stupid alignment.

 

[terryford8]

Blu
That truly is a horror story
Its crazy because most of these guys would never do that to their own vehicle
Question ...any chance I have your beautiful bumper braces on the right way???
thanks so much
doug

 

[gorman]

When the young guy drove my car up onto the hoist the front was almost scraping against the ramp
Told the guy and the owner to be extremely careful when backing the car OFF the lift
They told me it was no problem but it scraped anyway and I was upset
My biggest mistake was not checking the car more carefully afterwards

This is so common; many places won't let you drive your car onto the ramps ... because of insurance reasons.

I had a guy ram his trolley jack into my side skirt.. repeatedly. I grabbed my wheel and shoved him away and left ... dammed if was going to give him any money for that kind of service.

At home, i have a length of scaffold board laid on my ramps to stop my front bumper scraping.

When i put the car up on the ramps, the boards make the angle of the ramps shallower and stops the bumper from scraping ( even on my lowered car). Also; the tire rolls onto the board easily, pinning the ramps to the ground , stopping the ramp from sliding forward, which ramps with a steep angle tend to do ...G.

 

[blu_fuz]

I don't think it will matter, but I think the short bend of the bumper stay goes against the subframe and the long side goes to the bumper.