Those of you that remember this iconic scene from Tommy Boy:
Well - so Monday our 2005 Pilot (current mileage: 208,000) came down with a symptom of 'Engine Light' that led to a 'That will be $2K+ to fix it' prognosis.....
Anyway, we were planning to trade it in come next spring, so it kind of made sense to use that money to something that would last a bit longer...
So by Monday night we had a new 2018 Honda Pilot.
All good - except we live in one of those homes that has one of those 70's style garages - and the new Pilot is 8 inches longer and 7 inches wider than the old one; and my 2011 Accord is only an inch shorter than that.
So besides being more precise on 'calibrating' the high tech hanging tennis balls, we had to swap sides (to give the new Pilot a bit more room) and install door bumpers to protect against Luke's tendency to just whip the door open to get in.
I also struggled with how to make the stall for my Accord longer so I didn't have just 1.5 inches total between the bumpers and ends of the garage stall. There's a stairway to the loft in the front of the garage and that seemed like an obvious place to gain more length. I looked at options from putting in pull down stairs, a pulley based 'lift', using a stepladder, and just plain pulling out the stairs and relocating all our stuff in that loft (mostly holiday decorations) to an offsite storage facility.
On Wed morning I woke up and had an epiphany about how to gain about 3 inches by re-configuring the outboard stringer. The pictures below show the result. Yes - it's not to code; but technically, neither was the existing build (I didn't do it) and with (9) 5/8 lag bolts and glue making that connection section basically a 6"x12" bonded junction - it's not going anywhere and the stairway is rock solid.
Also attaching some pictures of the garage door and fridge door bumpers and 'Luke bumpers'. These are just in case the car gets a bit fore and aft from the high tech hanging tennis ball positioning system (and also to get Paige through the first year of new car paranoia).
