Car Storage, Part 8: Wrangling Resolutions

It’s been almost a whole season since I last gave an update on my weird car storage commune, housed in 105-year-old foundry full of garbage vehicles and their enthusiastic young owners. Over the last four months, I’ve tried to make good on my resolutions to keep improvements going via a reasonable balance of DIY, paid experts, and other willing hands. Through our collective efforts, I feel like we’ve finally hit a tipping point. For one, the shop is cleaner, drier, and more than ever has a certain jalopy je-ne-sais-quoi.

There’s an ether in the air, as they say, but I have a feeling that might actually be starter fluid. Is that why I’m so dizzy? Or am I just so excited we’ve courted several new renters/members since the start of the year? Either way, let’s dig into the strides we’ve made at Troutman Foundry.

Warming Up

We’re making strides in comfort. Here in the North Carolina foothills, the summers are long and hot enough to forget that winter could ever occur again, and vice versa. That’s a vague way of explaining how I neglected winter prep until the last possible minute.

Thinking I should at least make an effort, I headed over to my neighbor’s yard sale. There, I was able to procure two heaters of questionable functionality. (And full of unknown fuel, too!) Was that a large heating oil tank at the far end of the property, which could possibly hold more precious heater juice? I asked about it, and for my curiosity I was granted the responsibility to remove it from the premises as quickly as possible. How hard could that be?

I went over later that same night and let the tap drip into a scavenged container. I deduced that there couldn’t be much fuel in the tank, or why else would it be free? Before long, my blue five-gallon can started running out of room. I ran around the property and started combining the varied and unknown substances from a half dozen blue fuel containers I found standing about. Steadily, I filled four five-gallon jugs while cautiously avoiding both spillage and the small snake slithering between my boots.

Feeling optimistic, I gave the tank a nudge. An audible tsunami of fuel sloshed between the tank walls, and I was out of cans.

This sounded increasingly like a job for my friend and fellow foundry member, Thomas. He and Fuggles, the jolly-but-increasingly trouble-prone Dodge shop truck, soon arrived to assist. “The loading should be simple,” I lied. “We just need to back the truck up with the tailgate down, tilt the drum back until the legs slid onto the bed, and then back the truck up until the tailgate hit the back legs. Easy, right?”

Well, it would have been easy if I hadn’t still underestimated the dozens of gallons of fuel left in the tank, even after lifting its first two legs into Fuggles’ bed. I might also add that our chances of success may have been better if someone other than, uh, me were driving. The moment I let the clutch out and the Ram lurched rearward was the very same moment I apparently stopped paying attention. The truck’s tailgate struck the horizontal supporting tube of the elevated tank and toppled the whole mess backward and onto the ground. With the yard at risk of becoming a brownfield site, we scrambled to tip the vessel back on its feet. With a mighty heave and probable herniations, we loaded the tank into Fuggles’ bed at the expense of mere pints of fuel. Thomas, who understandably took over driving duties, ever-so-carefully piloted the truck the six-tenths of a mile to the foundry. (Spoiler: Unloading happened weeks later, with far more people to assist.)

Our far more romantic source of heat—the foundry’s wood stove—needed a pane of glass installed. The current bubble-body Caprice SS aluminum intake shroud, which merely redirected wayward sparks, wasn’t up to snuff. With the addition of some custom-cut ceramic glass, the stove became the coziest way to transform termite-eaten wood scraps and stray cardboard into warmth. Thomas and another tenant, Deko, further fitted the place with a face cord of firewood that was pirated from a relative’s backyard. And then came our reward: Snow. Maybe one year I’ll get super motivated and try to get the 600 linear feet of overhead iron pipe heaters working, but that won’t be a 2025 task.

New Heights

One challenge about foundry life: Building elements in need of service are far out of reach. The one piece of equipment we had that could reach such heights—a ladder—had to be scrapped in the interest of self-preservation. When confronted with the prospect of scaling a wobbly 36-foot aluminum ladder, with loose rivets and several missing rungs, one tends to beg off and simply not change the belts on the building’s exhaust fans.

I started off scouring Facebook Marketplace for anything that goes up in the air: ladders, cherry pickers, scissor lifts, and the like. I found two 30-foot Genie man lifts, listed as a pair for $1200 and located in my hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina. As luck would have it, I was headed to Raleigh later in the day anyway, but I couldn’t risk family fallout by trying to piggyback yet more garbage collection on top of grandparental visitation. Again, Thomas came to the rescue to snag the hot bargain.

That brings us to the other hoisting device in dereliction of duty: the Towmaybe. I’m ready to admit it now that this was a bad purchase. Had I spent, maybe, an extra $200 I could’ve had a real, working fork lift that didn’t drain all of its fluids onto the shop floor after lighting peoples hair on fire and causing a scene with the police. (Yes, all of that happened, and in that order.) At any rate, I could afford to throw good money on top of bad as long as it was in small doses. The large chunks of carbon I found holding the valves open was sufficient evidence that I need to blow a further $43 on a head gasket set and valve compound. I predict this will be the final $43 I spend on the Towmaybe. Definitely.

Drain the Swamp

Troutman’s most significant effort borders on a public works project. Think something slightly larger in scale than the TVA but smaller than the Hoover Dam. Regular readers may recall how I’ve constantly struggled with the foundry’s drainage. It started with a large swath of roofing before expanding to involve with gutters, floor coatings, and then even bigger gutters. Rain nevertheless continued to pour in. During Hurricane Helene I had the pleasure of emptying Harbor Freight’s biggest shop vac over twenty times.

Fresh out of ideas, I called in professional reinforcements. There was a crew in my home neighborhood renovating house, and I asked them if they handled industrial or commerical structures. They did? Great. Would they be interested in stopping by the next time they went idle waiting on subcontractors? Maybe, but what did I have in mind? A drainage project of epic proportions, my good men!

Yes, they’d love to do it. Unreal.

After explaining my past experiences with ingress, we came up with a plan. It involved excavating the dirt clogging the entire foundation trench system and replacing it with a French drain system, as originally envisioned by the building’s architects. Given the topography, this work had to be done completely by hand. Ultimately, the guys relocated over eight yards of dirt, Wild Irish Rose bottles, and cinder block fragments by wheelbarrow and replaced it all with drain tile, moisture barrier, and gravel. I can’t believe it’s done. On more than one occasion I’ve stopped in on my way to work just to admire the job-well-done.

More Ambition!

Having unlocked the power of this crew and felt the instant gratification of tasks not sitting in limbo forever, I was addicted to progress. I’ve since scheduled several more jobs: replacing the boarded up man door that the crackheads kicked down, fixing some fire-damaged rafters, roof leaks, and securing some very sketchy stairs. That will finish out the cold season nicely.

So what’s on the docket for next season? Suggestions welcome, dear readers! I think we can keep this good momentum going. Once it warms up, I can paint, pour footers, pressure wash, and epoxy floors. For now, though, I think I’ll throw another log in the stove and just admire the place for a bit.

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