Bodytub support frame.

[dusty]

A question to those of you who have carried out body off restorations and made a trolley for the body tub.

Do you have photos of the frame you made?

Where on the body did you place the supports?

And how did you fix the body to the frame, did you have to drill new holes?

Cheers
Jon

[mikealdren]

Jon,
I've simply jacked my body off the chassis and I now support it with two large beams (about 4" by 3") longitudinally under the floor pan about a foot from each side. The beams are then supported at both ends on concrete blocks. It?s very solid and the beams distribute the load well to avoid any stressing of the fibreglass.
I did look into making up a frame to locate in the jacking points of the sill members but it didn?t seem worth the work and it would have stopped me taking out the sill members to repair the fibreglass in that area.
Mike

[dusty]

I will need to be able to move the shell around and also potentially load it on a trailor so need to fit wheels to the frame.

At the moment I have in my head a frame that sits under the floor so access to the sills is not restricted.

[stugilmour]

Here is a photo of how I did it. There is probably an element of how not to do it in this...

The side rails are square profile aluminum tubing. Used pre-threaded ready rod to connect the side rails to one another, with light weight conduit pipe to hold the rails outwards. Ready rod is inserted into the jacking points, and the body supported by connector nuts on the ready rod. I pre-made the side rails. Joined the rails together with the car in the air with the ready rod. Rolled around on the four castors that had the same size threaded rod as mounting points.

You can see the 2" x 6" x 8' boards that were used for the lift. Will definitely be using heavier boards or doubling them up when I put the body back on. We jacked the car up using the side rails until we could feed the boards through above the chassis tunnel. We could then complete the lift with the four block and tackles attached to the rails

I was lucky and did not have to remove the side rails, so the above worked fine as the rails were in good shape. While positioning the above, had no problem supporting the body on four jack stands with 12" x 12" plywood pads to spread the load over the floor area. It appears to me you would have to support the body in this way to gain access to the side rails and bolts. Perhaps if you can arrange to do this portion of the job without having to move the body around the shop floor, you could use a simple temporary support method. Then support the body similar to the above for the rest of the job.

The castors worked OK for shuffling the body around on a smooth floor, but one buckled when we rolled the body on to a trailer with grated decking on the ramps. Once buckled, it bent to collapse during transport to the body shop. We managed to get it unloaded OK.

I notice the body shop now has the whole body sitting on a very heavy steel table affair at about 3 feet of the ground This is ideal if you can spend the $ and effort to make up such a dolly, but it has to be pretty solid. Remember to do some sums on your available ceiling height so you can get the table under the car.

I had the glass and doors on the car when I did the lift, so pretty much full weight.

Cheers!

[r.agnew]

How about something like this?? I saw it at <<http://www.vistagrande.com/lotus/photo.asp?indx=4 >> & copied for future reference(if I ever get time to get the body off my own car!)
"A 4 inch by 4 inch wood dolly with casters allows easy movement and a convenient working height. The body was bolted to the dolly in 4 locations through the existing body bobbins." it sez here.




Rob
'71 Sprint

[gerrym]

Jon, re your body off restoration, I'm assuming that your sills have been replaced and that the fibreglass that they bolt to is sound. If not, start with this part of the job before removing body from the chassis.

My view on body off restorations for the Plus 2 is that it's best to keep the chassis and body together for as long as possible, certainly whilst any structural repairs are being carried out to the nose, wings, inner wings, tail, boot surround etc. Without the chassis, the front and rear sections are likely sag and/or to loose alignment with the rest of the body, especially if there is any significant body problems. This has been my experience, cost me a lot of extra hours of work. If you want to rebuild the chassis, running gear etc, do this at the end of the job when the body is sorted.

Regards

Gerry

[Chris-72-Sprint]

I made my own which has worked well. If I was to do it again I would put make a 4 x 4 frame top and bottom as well. The current set up was not as rigid as I would have liked when sanding

cheers
Chris

[elansprint71]

Jon,
Here you can see the Cheshire Lotus Owners Group dolly

[dusty]

Thanks for the pictures guys, I have four 6" lockable castors and 30' of inch box section ordered, I'll post up pictures if it comes out any way decent!

GerryM - point taken about restoring the tub whilst detached from the chassis, I might leave the bare chassis in place for the time being and just strip all the suspension from it.


Cheers
Jon

[rdssdi]

When the body was being restored we made a simple frame to support it upside down to allow work on the bottom.

[dusty]

When the body was being restored we made a simple frame to support it upside down to allow work on the bottom.

Very handy. Can I ask where you got the new front end from?

Cheers
Jon

[rdssdi]

Purchased front mid section from SJ sportscars in UK

Bob

[elj221c]

I just found a picture of my '82 body dolly!

[robertverhey]

I can't believe only one of you bothered to get dressed up for such an important occasion!

[Sea Ranch]

Is Dolly still available for these sorts of things?