A couple of years into this restoration now, I saw something on one of the TV shows about a rotisserie for turning and manipulating car bodies. I wrote away for the brochures and pricing. They came, and of course, they were EXPENSIVE and a ton to ship! I kept looking at the pictures and over the winter investigated steel tubes and shapes. I decided I could build one, so I drew up a plan and bought the necessary steel.
Using my trusty hand grinder with cut off wheels, I cut up the pieces per the plan, laid them out pieced them together to be sure of fit and function. After I was sure of everything, I proceed to weld them together. I then assembled everything and drilled holes for safety stops, different locations for height adjustments and of course spots to attach the car to the lift. To rotate the unit/car I bought an extra heavy duty six (6) foot piece of pipe. I simply raised the car, stuck the pipe into the open end of the lift and levered it over, dropped a bolt through the hole to keep it from further rotating
As it turned out the first thing I noticed was that using my floor jacks to lift and lower would not work real well. I made a jack extension using an axle and hub welded on to give me a total lift height of 55 inches.The hub sat neatly in jack saddle.
I had a large boat and trailer. To get it back on the trailer required a winch and heavy duty rated cable. My son, by now old enough to work after school, was working at a local outlet of a marine supply store. I had him get two (2) heavy duty winches, cable and pulleys. I added them to the design. They worked okay with the jacks and were more than able to support the entire car shell. It was just kind of a pain going from one end to other alternating lifting or lowering each end and keeping everything in balance and keep everything from binding.
The next thing I noticed was that the entire unit was very stable on soft soil in the yard while I was working on the frame. On the hard garage floor it wobbled a little due to the slip fit of the removable leg extensions. It was just slightly unnerving!
The next flaw in the design was that with all the attachments bolted to the car I could not close the back overhead garage door as the unit stuck outside the garage door/house frame. To keep the weather out I put a tarp across the door opening.
The last flaw was easily overcome. The design did not rise high enough to completely invert the car body. The best I could do was 90 degrees. Good enough for all that I needed to do. I later sold the unit to a young guy who like wise could not afford what was on the market at the time.
We live in an area with a lot of different ethnic peoples. Many of them struggle with the English language. When I sold the CAR ROTISSERIE on Craig's List I got several calls about the rotisserie and whether it could handle a pig or side of beef! It was a hoot trying to explain what I was selling!!!!!!!
A couple of pictures follow of the rotisserie showing key sections of it's construction while being used to manipulate the frame of the parts car.
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