Oh good Lord! In Hind sight, this is funny. At the time though, it wasn't.
If you remember, this past spring I got a new Honda Pilot. She's my new baby. Maybe I am a little more careful with this car than any of my others. Maybe it's that she's still "new" to me.
I bought a bike rack that goes into the hitch and holds 4 bikes. It had a "sleeve" type thing so that it could fit into two different sized receivers. much like the one in the picture above. (I took that picture from www.target.com) In our case, we needed to use the sleeve, as our receiver is a 2 inch.
It worked fine the first two times we used it. Nothing fancy, fairly simple, although I wished I had bought a nicer one, it worked.
Third time out, not so much. Hubby had a hard time getting it tight in the receiver. It had a bolt that we'd tighten with each use. It was threaded within. (now we know, it was threading into plastic)
We couldn't get it tight enough that the bikes were stable, but decided the steal would have to snap before it would break, so we went on our ride. (not that this matters at any rate)
We got home, took the bikes off, and the bolt wouldn't come out.
I mean, it wouldn't come out. At all. It just kept spinning. After about 30 minutes, we decided to use the reciprocating saw and cut the "shaft" so that we could get inside of it and hopefully grab the bolt that way. I was a nervous wreck that he'd scratch my new baby's bum. Eventually the shaft was severed, and her bum was fine.
New problem. No tools will fit inside to grab the bolt. The *&^%$#)@in plastic thing is too large.
Ya know how I melt glass in a torch? I went and got one of my torches to see if we could melt the *&^)%$@#!#"{
But what if he doesn't keep the flame focused exactly in there? (What if he burns her?!!?)
I set up some flame proof barriers to protect her bum, and some sheet metal underneath to catch any molten drippings. (over kill. I know this now)
So, he lights the torch, the *&^%(#@$!/in plastic thing took like 3 minutes to melt, and then it took us a few more to get a good grip on the bolt and remove all of the pieces from my baby.
I returned the damn thing and haven't been on a bike ride since. It all seems so tainted now.
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