I built a little Ch***is Dolly for the roadster project and thought I'd share it... Some may remember "Kilroy's Amish Hot Rod Shop"... But as a refresher... I've got a really tight space to work in for the time being that needs to be a wood shop, storage shed, and hot rod shop... So things have been tight in there for a while and it's hard to get around and clean it. I decided to take a break from most of my projects and just focus on cleaning out the shop and making things more organized... Which is surprisingly hard to do when you have a car in there taking up a third of the space. I've been making progress but one of the things I really wanted to build was a ch***is dolly to get the roadster up off the ground, keep it stable, and be able to move it around to clean and get to all sides, etc. So here's what I did.
I started with some old heavy duty casters I liberated from an old defunct meat-packing plant in Downtown LA... It was right under the 6th street bridge... Such a rad building... I found them down in the sub ba*****t where they did the processing. There was about an inch and a half of built up grease on the walls from all the rendering they did down there and no light...
At first I was going to make it out of some extra pressure treated lumber I have on the property but then I figured I'd use some structural metal the previous owner left. It had to double as a dolly as well as storage for s**** etc... And it had to let shavings and dust fall through so I can clean it... I decided that 24" was the ideal hight so I cut up some of the steel and started welding.
The racks I used For the floor of the cart part of the dolly are left over from some metal shelves my wife bought... They're 48"x18" I think it turned out pretty good. It was basically free... Which was in my budget... It's incredibly stable... I'm around 270 and I can stand on the front of the frame and the trunk area and it doesn't try to tip at all... Using the material I did also kept it pretty rigid while keeping it relatively light weight... I think it weighs just a little over 100 pounds.
No problem. I love how this works for me... One thing I learned is that to make sure you have plenty of room to slide a trans in and out and your torque-tube/drive shaft in at full suspension extension. Obviously, this only applies if you plan on mocking up the motor/trans or rear suspension on the dolly. And it would be no problem without the body on mine. I'll modify mine for a little more clearance when I have time.
The Jalopy Journal
