Car on Rotisserie

Today, after months of thinking about doing it, I got the car on the rotisserie that I borrowed. It wasn't 100 percent smooth, but it wasn't bad either.

The rotisserie I borrowed bolts to both the front and rear fender mounts. This is a fairly sturdy location, but it would probably be better if it bolted to the front torsion bar tube and rear transmission carrier instead. I can't argue with free though, and this is a proven design. It turns out that my welds on the front battery box side panels were pretty damn spot on, the front piece of the rotisserie bolted right up with no trouble. The rear was a slightly larger challenge. Where I have repaired the right rear frame section in the engine compartment, there has been some minor warping of the metal. That should affect alignment, but it might affect bumper placement a tad, we'll have to see. Luckily the bumper has adjustment "slots" to provide wiggle room. The net effect of the warping was that it was a pain in the ass to bolt up the rotisserie bracket, but in the end it did bolt up with a bit of clamping beforehand.

I had the assistance of my friends Gillam, Brad, Alex, and Dave. Thanks to all of them for coming over and doing the heavy lifting. We bolted the brackets on to the bumper mounts first, and then lifted the car up to meet the front and rear rotisserie pieces. First the front, all 5 of us, and then after it was slid home 3 people ran around back to pick up the rear. Once picked up, we let go of the front and helped hold the rear while the last person maneuvered the rear section into place. Not the best way to do it perhaps, if people have suggestions on how to get it on and off more efficiently/safely/easily, please let me know.

We rewarded ourselves for the manual labor with pizza and beer, and called it a night on the car. The rear bolt that secures the car when it is flipped up on its side is stripped out, which I should have checked before but didn't get around to examining until tonight. I'll replace it tomorrow and then get rolling on the inner longitudinal again, this time without having to weld "out of position."

Posted by pbrown at March 10, 2004 10:31 PM