TECH: taking a body off the frame by your self with all the wrong tools.

So i often like to do some kind of tech post for tech week but they allway suck ass. Im sure this will be the same. For this one i actully have a complete story and tons of pics. Its dumb i know but i was scratching my head last night trying to figure out how im going to get my 41 plymouth coupe off its frame this morning. I was only armed with a cherry picker,jacks,jack stands, and a few engine stands. And some how i managed to get the thing off in two hours this morning with out dropping it on the ground from 5 feet up in the air. I really would suggest trying to find at least one person to help you with this but the more people the easier it is. I had it in my mind that the thing was comming off today come hell or high water so i had to go at it alone.

Here is how she started out when i brought her home sunday



I started Monday morning striping the car down of all the added weight. Doors, front clip,rear fenders, glass, and interior all need to come off any way so now is the time to do. The lighter the shell is the better. Make sure to cut or save all the wires that lead into the body. This will get all new wiring of course so they were all cut


Then brace the shit out of the car. Mine has some rusty rockers and a very soft floor so i was worried about it flexing. I used 3/4" conduit for this. and tried to make lots of strong happy triangles.


Then i braced the trunk with a X and a few cross braces.


Yesterday i removed all the body bolts either with the fire wrench or the few that wanted to came out with a impact. This moring i had two bolts that i overlooked to take out. I also relized once i started jacking the front up that i forgot all about the thru the floor pedals. so those got removed as well. Here is the front starting to leave the frame. I used a chain around my bracing at the cowl and just started lifting it thru the widsheild. The once door brace is kinked cause late last night i tried lifting it there but thats when i found those two xra body bolts. I threw in the towl after 10 hours on it. I was starting to get in a hurry and screwing shit up.


No flex the bracing is doing its job! watch out for my fancy painted cherry picker.


I then postioned some jack stands the second body mounts. There is good strength there to support the body while i moved to the back. .


I placed the chain at the cross of the X in the back. This prooved to be a fine lifting point. I took it slow cause i was worried about the bracing flexing but it stayed true.


At this point i was at a loss. I had no idea how to support the back half while i lifted the front half again since my jack stands were up against the running board mounts. I went into the garage and saw my engine stand and had a idea. I stuck it under the back half and i was able to move back to the front.


Now with the back some what supported i went to the front with the cherry picker.


Got the frame pushed all the way up against the cherry picker and again i was scratching my head. The one Engine stand on the back made me a little leary cause it was pretty tipsy.


Then i had a brilliant idea. (not really but it was 9am and im not normaly out of bed untill afternoon so give me a break) I got the other engine stand out of the garage and put one at each corner. For more stable But still super ghetto i know.
At the same time i had this problem of the damn back tire hitting the cherry picker. I rememberd from when i put my old 51 ford back on the frame we took one tire off and used a jack. Brilliant!


The sad frame In the garage now waiting its turn to go to the scrap yard.

But the damn body is still 4 feet in the air.

I then lowerd the front back down on to jack stands so i could move back to the rear and get that on the ground.


I have these two furniture dollys that allways come in handy. I had wanted to built a nice body dolly for this but the ole lady said i have to wait till next week something about needing to eat for the rest of the week? So i used one at the back and one at the front with some scrap 2x4 up front to span the gap.


Well this is just about the stance im after but not a very good working height to fix all that rust down low. That problem will be adressed as soon as the budget alows. For now i plan on taking it down to bare metal so this is a good enough height for sanding.



And that concludes " how to allmost die and ruin a car all in 3 days time"

Pretty straight forward i know but sometimes you need to do things all alone and it can be a challange when the job calls for 4 or 5 guys.

Thanks
Bryan

 

THIS is good tech... something that can be done alone (which is how 99% of my shit is done...) by usin your head and what you have available... love it

 

I too pulled the body off my 40 by myself, but the engine was out and I put the floor jack in the engine hold with blocks of wood. Some times you got to do what you got to do. Nice job, keep us posted.

Mick

 

Yeah, i enjoyed that. Makes me want to pull the body off of my project. Anybody know how many body mounts are on a '51 Chevy 2dr post (Styline) ? Ole Pork

 

great job dude! next round get beers and a buddy with engine hoist also. then their is always the "upgraded" version of by yourself.

 

wow.... That is pretty cool..

I really appreciate how hard it is doing this by yourself. A few times during my T build i had to lift the body by myself and had ot come up with all sorts of interesting methods for raising and supporting the body ranging from an engine hoise to ratchet straps, old tires, plywood, levers, pulleys, you name it.

I hope you find someone to help during the next 1000 times you'll have to take the body on and off during your build .

 

Thanks for the good words guys. I often dread that one guy "you did it all wrong what the hell are you thinking" Im glad he has not shown up yet. Well see who it will be this time.

I just got the chassis on the tow dolly, that was allmost harder to do by my self then getting the body off. I really need to buy a come along! Off to Detroit and the wonderfull scrap yard!

 

Ghetto...who cares. Most of the people who say the shit ur sayin do way worse in thier own garage behind closed doors. It got the job done. Besides, if it fell it didnt seem like you were under it, prolly coulda somersaulted out of the way in time haha.

I have to do this to my 51 Merc soon. Going to (hopefully) start cutting apart its donor car this weekend. I want to do the reverse, do the motor swap/bags/rewire/new brakes on the donor car before even getting the Merc to my shop. This way as soon as it is attatched on its own its already a runner. I HATE pushing shit around haha.

 

i have yet to find my donor car/s10 so i get to do this all again. IM doing the same thing ill set up the air ride and motor on my new chassis then set the plymouth over top and build mounts and floors around it.

 

I was going to do some similar tech this week on how I took the 49' Fleetline's body of its frame. I guess I will turn it into a "how to channel your car" instead!

Was it you who still had the wiper parts that would fit the 49? I came up with a pretty good idea on how to convert to electric wipers for next to zero dollars, but I need to have the complete linkage.

 

Do you need an S10 chassis? I have a mostly complete 4x4 laying around you can pillage. I stole the rear end out of it already. Its a standard cab long bed.

 

yea but i sold the car to my budy. he wont be running wipers so ill see if i can still snag that shit from him. Yes do the channeling tech or how you lengthend the frame. I would like to use a g body frame but the wheel base is 9" to short.

 

Elcaminos are longer than the rest of the g bodies, by 9 inches. 117 elco versus 108 for everything else.

Cool tech. I've seen far more ghetto methods of swapping bodies, yours didn't even involve using a pickup's tailgate as a temporary support. The 3 wheeling trick is a really good tip

 

If i would have thought of the tailgate thing i would have done it! thats even better then the engine stands! I allso want to add that i love you for your knowledge of the elcamino now i need to find one. My wheel base is 117"

 

Hahaha, that's awesome, man. Nice tech!

 

On the G-body frame, assuming ElCamino is basically like passenger...
You have a massive front and rear structure, amply strong, connected by the spindiest looking pieces of channel iron frame rail you can imagine.
All the strength in that area presumably comes from the body structure, so I think you will need to make new side rails anyhow. Your body looks like it might be a tad less rigid than a G-body

 

awesome!

 

I would've ended up rolling the body completely over, ruining the roof, and wasting the time and money spent getting the car home. Nice job. Either that or I would've done that inside your garage with the 3 foot ceiling and rammed the crane through the roof.

 

i like your style

 

Well done - it's a good feeling when you get something like that done by yourself!

One thing I have found that works well when you have got the front of the body up in the air, is to put a long piece of wood (or steel) under the body and put the axle stands under that. If the wood is long enough, the axle stands can be wider apart than the wheels and you can just roll the frame out. You may still need to remove the rear wheels and put the rear-end on a jack if it isn't high enough.

 

I like what you have done. I do most of my work by myself... you are inspirational

I am looking to do the same thing to a 54 Buick super. It has a 127" wheel base. Does anyone know what donor I could slide under it?

 

I did the same thing with our 48 Sedan Delivery last fall. Used sign posts from the road commission. Bent ones were a buck at their sale. I doubled them up and put them on some saw horses because I didn't know about the 3 wheel trick. I used my chain fall and ran the chain through the broken windshield like Bryan did. Worked like a charm. Rolled the old 48 frame out and the 'new' S10 frame under in 2 days. Now it has sat since October waiting to be channeled onto the S10 frame...

 

Better get at it if your gonna make Billetproof!!!!

 

That's almost verbatim how I've done mine, 'cept I don't have two engine stands... I made some B.F. sawhorses the first time, and my fancy schmancy body dolly the second time. I thought you said the Plymouth was gone? Are these old pics?

 

Your conduit is way to light and is already bent/compromised or bending.

Use square tubing even if only 1/2 square tubing

Or angle iron as a worst case scenario.

It looks like you used electrical conduit which is round and possiblly galvanized (fairly dangerous to weld (fumes)) .
as well as it is very difficult to weld to and the Light tubing is easily bent.

By using non galvinized square tubing, you give yourself a parrellel and flat surfaces to weld to (each other) that doesn't emite toxic galvinized Zinc Oxides when you weld them.

Also, I hope you used a quality respirator or mask when you welded that, I can see most of the existing welds have residule white zinc smoke/fumes/fibre still attached. That's what ends up in your lungs when you weld conduit or zinc coated metals.

 

Bryan will be the first to help others with there projects as well.

Here he is giving someone building tips on the phone when he was supposed to be helping me .

Great post there little buddy, you and Pat are my heros, ask him about the body he removed from the 50 chevy 30 years ago with bumper Jacks!

Thanks again for all the help on the roadster too man. You are a good friend.

 

Not sure why you're swapping frames instead of a front clip or leaving the current one in it, but a
'67-'72 Chevy Long Bed Trucks have a 127" wheel base, have the cool "Nascar" trailing arm rear suspension, and the front ends can be swapped with '73+ truck parts for the disc brake conversion. All the parts to Bag are readily available and cheaper than most others. The best part is the rear as you don't have to do much modification to Bag it, just replace the springs with bags, maybe notch the chassis.

It should be narrow enough for that Buick Super? - You'd have to check that


As far as the body off using "none of the right tools"
Good job, I agree with the conduit though - Galv. is nasty stuff to weld/grind.

I've seen people do worse and survive

 

Well done.

Thats pretty much how I did it too, but I only had a floor jack. I went between all 4 corners about a hundred f#$% times...I felt like Austin Powers trying to do a K turn with the golf cart. I used a pair of 2x4s in the front and another pair in the rear. I nailed them together figuring it would be stronger. They stuck out past the body so the frame rolled right out. I got nervous once the body was about 30" in the air, so I took off both rear wheels off & stuck the frame on a floor jack just like you did so it would clear the body. Great minds think alike ;-)

 

Kinda like dejavu for me, scenes from a couple of weeks ago...

 

You gold chainer.....I did Fuelpumps 37 by myself without a cherry picker....just a floor jack, jack stands, two by fours, and sturdy shop stools.