Years ago one of the guys I worked with liked to play with things and was building a couple AMX's and rebuilding motors. He did the first motor and complained how hard it was to rotate the motor in the stand. Working on frames and suspensions on heavy trucks and equipment he had this idea so he located some big bearings and cups that were about 1/4 to 3/8" smaller than the tube on the stand. Found some heavy wall pipe and had it machined on the O.D. to just lightly tap into the stand tube, then had each end of the pipe machined until the bearing cups were press fit. Drilled a couple holes in the stand tube, tapped the pipe in, spot welded thru the holes, tapped the bearing races in. Next he cut the tube off of the engine plate and ground the plate smooth, had the machinist then turn a big piece of rod down on one end that just fit the I.D. of the bearings then threaded it. Once done he welded the engine plate to the rod, greased the bearings and put them in, slide the rod/engine plate thru, adjusted the nut like doing wheel bearings. That thing was as smooth as ****er to turn loaded with an engine on it. He drilled some holes thru the engine plate/rod side and used a short pin to hold it in position. He had it for several years until someone saw it and offered him a decent price for it. I asked him if he had a bunch of money in it and he said not really, the bearings he had, the machinist was a great friend of ours and did it for beer and to see if it would work. Besides back then we'd trade our work or help back and forth, hardly a dollar ever changed hands between us other than to make a "Beer Run".... ...
When I pulled my very seized 331 Firepower, I put it on the stand with it bolted to the aluminum bell housing ( can't remove the converter if it wont roll over), and was worried a) about the weight on the bell housing, and b) the length/ leverage, so while it was there I kept the cherry picker chains on the front to hold most of the weight.
The Jalopy Journal
