Thanksgiving 2007... Time to drop the body onto the chassis. The chassis was in roll around mode and the Europa body was on its tall rolling cart. Two stout males can lift and manipulate the body into place but you run the risk of cracking fiberglass because there is nothing thick enough to hold onto. 4 stout bodies are difficult to get together at one time so instead I wheeled the chassis out of the way and rolled the cart under a garage beam where I hung a come-a-long. I looked around the garage for something I could place in the engine bay to hook the come-along to. I first tried a real long old aluminum level but that quickly twisted once I started ratcheting the body up so I switched to a steel pipe I found in the attic. More better! At the front, I just crawled underneath, lifted the body up a bit with my back and pulled in a stack of old metal milk crates to support the front. So now I had the body suspended in the air. I rolled out the cart and rolled the chassis into place. I then placed a couple of short garbage cans on each side of the body as a safety catch in case anything decided to slip and go Ka-whump! I hate unwanted Ka-whumps.
I woke up my sleepy son John at the crack of Noon and he helped me with the lowering of the body. I would lower the back end a bit with the come-a-long and then he would lift up the front end so I could remove one of the stacked milk crates. He would then drop the front onto the crates. We repeated this process until the body engaged the chassis. The jute blanket made it a snug fit and we actually had to push down on the body to get it all the way down. Hey, the holes even lined up - imagine that! John went back to sleep a little more before we left for Thanksgiving dinner at a cousin's house. I popped open a pre-bird beverage and reflected on this milestone. I got out my tally sheet and added up the hours I had spent on the Europa restoration so far. 447 hours to get to this point from the first nut coming off to this point where the body is back on. Is that a lot? Is that a little? I don't know, but that's what it is and it's far from over. Maybe I should have kept track of how many cans of beer I consumed at the end of every milestone. Maybe not.
Next - Europa Euphoria, Part 22
