Like with most of my car projects, this wasn’t a planned purchase but if you see a really low price for something, well, I just have to place a bid. It’s a sort of compulsion and I’ve had to delete my eBay app on various occasions to stop me doing it.

So I bought a beetle project, blind with no reasearch or warning for my wife ( still rebuilding brownie points to this day)!

So i borrowed a trailer and off I went to pick up my purchase, what’s the worse that could happen……

i lived down Portsmouth way and the car was M25 south London way so I was looking at a 4 hour round trip with about an hour loading the car onto the trailer. I wasn’t allowed to leave until the kids went to bed so I left my front door at 8:30pm.

The trip up was not eventful and found the house first time but it was a tight squeeze to get the trailer down the local roads. Loading was a bit fun and managed to fill the back of my estate car with spare parts and panels and the car onto the trailer with a little shoving and a good trailer winch. Tied everything down then hoped for the best.

By the time I set off the time was close to midnight but all was well until the first stop. I parked up at the service station had a cup of tea then back into the car, ignition light stayed on……..

i had lost the ability to charge the battery, I had another hour and half to go, I had work the next day and I can’t be too late because I had no brownie points left!

I had a good battery so I switch everything off except the engine and lights and took off as fast as possible for home. I got to my street with every warning light on the dash on, dim headlights and a miss firing engine. It cut out just outside the block of garages that housed my garage. I had blocked every garage in that block and I couldn’t leave it where I was so I needed to charge the battery but my battery was in the fully loaded boot and the lid wouldn’t open with the trailer attached.

On my own I managed to pull the beetle off the trailer and detach the trailer but in the process I managed to wedge the beetle between my garage door and the back of the trailer, there was no going up and no going back and I had no where to put all the parts from my car because the garage was blocked!

After getting some air into the beetle wheels and preforming a 50 point turn by hand, I regained access to the garage. After unloading and securing the parts, getting the battery out and putting it on charge it was about 4 am so I grabbed a little sleep on the sofa until I had enough battery charge to move trailer and car.

Nights like these make good stories but I like things to go a bit smoother next time I decide to move a car.