sounded like a silo tipping over

in tonight's episode, joshua gets his car stuck on a hydraulic lift...

yesterday dave said he was going to take his car to... a car dealership that shall remain nameless... to replace an o2 sensor in his m3. he has access to their shop for the work that he does there and since it was a sunday, the shop would be empty, so i tagged along with my car to install the b&m shifter i've been waiting forever to do.

so we each drove there and dave put his m3 up on a lift, but i couldn't get the r32 on a lift because the lift points on the arms wouldn't line up with the points on the car (and just barely fit under the sideskirts) no matter how i adjusted them. they had a few drive-up lifts where the entire platform would raise up, so i tried to get the car up on one of those. my front lip spoiler was hitting the ramp so i couldn't drive up and there were no planks or anything to use to get a smaller angle up to the platform. i eventually figured out that driving up backwards would work, and dave raised the platform up so i could start working under it.

while dave replaced his o2 sensor, i eventually got the cat and midpipe off my car (which were both very hot and hard to work with) and unhooked the main heatshield under the cat. i didn't want to take the o2 sensor off the cat so i had to balance the exhaust pipe between the platform of the lift and the underside of the car so it was somewhat out of the way. after removing the heat shield, the driveshaft was directly blocking access to the underside of the shifter (which none of the b&m instructions showed, of course). i couldn't get the second heat shield off, so i had to bend it out of the way to get access to a stupid metal plate that was attached under the shifter.

being a german car with everything over-engineered, this thin metal plate with rubber grommit was attached to the car by a series of metal tabs that bent around tabs on the car. in the process of removing the plate by maneuvering it around the driveshaft and the heatshield still attached, the plate easily bends and contorts to everything it's being moved around. why it wasn't just a stiff plate that was bolted to the car, i don't know.

so once that plate was off, i had limited access to the shifter cables attached to the bottom of the shifter by a retaining clip. i couldn't get a screwdriver to it since the driveshaft is still there and very large. after a while of fiddling with the retaining clip, i still couldn't get it off and since it was getting late, i figured i'd stop and abort the installation rather than disconnect the shifter cables and not be able to get them back on. the silly metal plate was twisted and bent by now, so trying to get it back on was even harder than getting it off.

eventually i was able to secure two or three tabs (out of probably a dozen) and put everything back together. i wasn't very confident about the metal plate but i didn't know how else to attach it securely. when all was back together, i had dave come lower the car off the lift, but the lift wouldn't go down.

after trying a few different times and raising the lift all the way up, it wouldn't go down more than few inches. we had no idea why it wouldn't lower and dave tried the second lift next to it and was able to raise and lower it without any problems. dave called some people that worked at the dealership and asked for help, but nobody would help us. being labor day weekend, our only choice was to leave the car up there until tuesday morning for someone at the dealership to get it down.

i packed up my tools and we took dave's car back to his house.

this morning we headed back out to the dealership to try to get the car down. after playing with the second platform lift to see how it worked, i concluded that the safety latches were not being retracted, so the platform would lower on certain corners but get stuck in the safety latch ladders on other corners (as shown in my awesome drawring on the right).

i figured out how to retract the safety latches manually with a large screwdriver (which isn't as dangerous as it sounds). i held the latch open on the corner that seemed to be sticking as dave lowered the platform and sure enough, it started to lower. but alas, another corner stuck as we got lower with the first one.

manually retracting each latch wouldn't work as we only had 3 of us there and there's 4 latches and someone has to work the controls to lower it. while playing with one of the latches i noticed that the mechanism that held the latch swiveled on a bolt and if i tightened the bolt enough, the mechanism wouldn't be able to swivel, holding it in the position it was in. i wedged the latch open as dave and i tightened the bolt, and it held it open. we did two more corners and i held the last one open manually as dave ran the controls. the platform finally lowered all the way down, i drove the car off, and we loosened the bolts to re-engage the safety latches.