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11-18-2001: Towing the GTI:
I picked up the GTI on sunday. I drove by early in the afternoon to inspect it before I towed it away. On the way there, I braced myself for a beat up wreck. I was getting the car for free, and I didn't want to get my hopes up too high. So I was quite surprised when I checked out the car and found out that it was in good shape, aside from some dirt.
My friend Stas has a Chevy Blazer, so we hoped to tow the GTI with his truck. We went to Napa auto parts and got a tow ball, then started calling rental places to find a trailer. Unfortunately, every singel rental place in San Luis Obispo had already rented their trailers out. Stas had to leave, and we were about to give up and come back for the car on Monday, when Zoltan (who was along for the ride) had the brilliant idea of calling AAA! AAA will tow any car up to 7 miles.
So I filled out the paperwork with the previous owner, and Zoltan called AAA and we waited for the towtruck to show up.
I'm a member of the Electric Vehicle Engineering Club at Cal Poly. The club has a lab on campus, with a small courtyard in the back where we keep our Mazda RX7 race car. I planned on bringing my GTI to that courtyard to work on it. The only entrance to the courtyard is a small footpath. You can carefully drive a car on it, but not a towtruck.
So Zoltan and I had the car let off on Perimeter Drive on campus, and pushed the GTI to the courtyard. At the entrance to the courtyard there's a small hill which was too steep for the two of us to push the car up. So, we backed my electric Rabbit in front of the GTI, tied their bumpers together with welding cable, and slowly pulled the GTI up into the courtyard! Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures of this. After this we called it a day... I had a great new project, and a great new car.... for free!
Next: Washing the GTI
Here's pictures of the car when I first got it: