Need some advice or a confirmation on this mount set up. It seems that the rotisserie factory mounts are set up for more muscle cars than 50s, but either way, this is what I got. The front mounted up easy and is only 1 degree down. The rear I had to make an extended arm set up. Factory mounts are 2" square stock. I did 3" square over the top, used the factory bolt hole to secure the sleeve and made 90 degree arms up to the body mounts. When I dropped the lift and have the weight of the body on it, I have a 10 degree drop. Is this normal and/or gunna be a major problem? Not sure what to do here... Anyone have some experience with these? Need to do inner and outer rockers and would really love to have this body sideways for the inners. Plus when I strip the inside roof, would love to have the car upside down.
I adapted heavy gauge 2x2 angle iron brackets front & rear to attach my rotisserie to front firewall braces and rear body mounts for my 46 Olds. Once you get the balance correct it will spin effortlessly
The pivots need to be in alignment as possible or things will be forced to flex when the rotation occurs. With mine I put a ratchet strap between the bases and brought them together then locked off the bottom bar. In future I'm going to join the mounting arms together so that the car body sits on a frame. Chris
As said , the pivot points need to be to same height otherwise the body will deform when rotated. I did the wife’s 56 Chev in a rotisserie I made, the firewall had 2 sets of mounts, 1 pr low and another pr high up the firewall. 1 above the pivot point height and 1 below it. This held the front in a bit of a structure. The rear of the body had longer arms going 3-4 ft under the body and these were attached at the rear of the body,also towards the front at the end of the arms. This stiffened up the whole body from front to rear and once the body was set at the height compared to the pivot points it would rotate very easily with minimal flex of the whole deal. It spent a lot more time in the rotisserie than I planned and also travelled on a tilt tray from home to a blaster then to the paint shop.
Like mentioned before......set your pivot points at the same height.....maybe use a tape measure from the floor. The long lower tube should hold the pivot points in line longitudinally. Suspend the body between the pivot points. Now comes the difficult part. finding the balance point of the body. Attach your brackets where its convenient and strong enough. Then adjust each end of the body up or down the same amount till it rotates. What you may find is that you run out of adjustment before finding the sweet spot. Then you have to modify your mounts so you can adjust the body even further to get to the sweet spot. Hopefully you luck out and have enough adjustment to get there on the first try. Just move both ends the same amount when adjusting so you maintain the same relation to both pivot points.
Should I weld the arms I made to the factory arms to keep them from sagging or will the perfect balance do the job? I think im gunna brace the door openings as well, just for added support.
I always make my braces go under the car up to the next available attachment point to relieve the stress on the supporting arms. As stated above, if you extend the arms under the car 3 feet or so, it takes all the stress off and it will rotate nicely without everything flexing unnecessarily. Think of it as one big "truss" that pivots on the two ends. I don't want anything to flex while I am working on it, so a few extra braces helps solidify the whole shebang. Sorry about the picture quality on these. Inside the trunk of my Ranchero project is one big truss. I needed it solid as I cut the roof off and transplanted the top half of a Ranchero onto a Fairlane 500 body and ch***is. And my F100 project. Braced onto the hood hinge bolts, but also bolted solidly to the firewall. The back end braces went well into the bed area, and I braced it to the crossmember by the licence plate as well.
I haven't put one on a roterisse but when I lifted my old 51 Merc body off the frame we lifted it it by running bolts though the body mount holes at the back. They went through into the trunk and it looks like most Ford products did but I don't know about GM.
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