Zen And the Art of Automobile Maintenance.

Grudgingly, I am discovering that I am reasonably good at fitting towbars.  We fitted one to our old Polo, so we could carry the bikes when we went on trips/holidays.  We didn't get much use out of that bar, before we had the motorbike crash and then later traded the car. 

Then we didn't ride bikes for a couple of years before Mrs G got back into it over the summer.  So When I realised that I was missing cycling, we bought a towbar for the Skoda and fitted that in September.  In November the Skoda was written off.  We were hit from behind on the 3rd November, which was even more of a pain because we had just spent a reasonable amount of cash repairing the engine.  Ah well, it's only a car, and we've now got a nice Mazda.

We still want to take the bikes places, so today towbar number three was fitted.  The purpose of this blogpost is so that some time in the future I remember exactly how to do what I had to do.

Towbars are bolted to the chassis of the car.  How this happens differs from one vehicle to the next, and for todays effort I was presented with a bolt on a stick. 

This has to be fed up through a hole in the bottom of the chassis rails, and should come out the side.  The hole that it goes in is not much wider than the bolt, and the stick, while being the thing that helps you maneuver the bolt out the side actually gets in the way.  It's at times like this I really miss my Dad, because he would probably have worked this out quicker than I did.

The solution, developed after an hour or more of barked knuckles is to the right.  I took a roll of masking tape, made a couple of turns round the bolt before making a paper rope out of a foot or so of tape.  The tape was firm enough to be fed up through the hole at the bottom and then out the side. 
I was then confident enough to put the bolt/stick into the chassis rail  and very carefully draw the bolt out the side hole.  The pic to the left is looking up from under the car showing the offending holes.  now all I had to do was fit a spacer, the towbar side rail, two washers and a nut, repeat four times and torque the whole thing up.  


Note to self.  When fitting bolts in confined spaces, masking tape is your friend.  Or gaffer tape, because like The Force, it has a light side, a dark side, and holds the universe together.