best way to lift body off frame??

[kmac530]

Woodsy,
I like your lifting rig, it looks like a nice piece of equipment.
Please dont take this wrong, but I would not have the confidence in the wood screws holding your ceiling eyelet that you have.

The industry standard of testing states that A #10 wood screw installed into 3/4" plywood (they did not even test 5/8") with 5 plys and using the exactly correct pre-drill bit (.190) and tightened to the exact correct torque spec (I could not find the correct spec in my book right now) only has a 395 lb. pull out strength. So that means that your 4 screws can only hold 1580 lbs....total. That number would include the weight of your eyelet, chains, pulleys or winch/comealong/chainhoist....your lift rig AND the weight of your body of the car/truck.

You could pretty easily exceed that. There could be a serious consiquence if that eyelet let go.
Please be careful.
I also think hausdok was saying that it is less the way you attach but the type of rafters you are attached to.
Housing tract houses and many modern home use a roofing truss that is an engineered truss that usually uses 2x4 that are cleated together with a punched plate. They are great to work with and easy to install. They are quite strong, right up to their "engineered" weight rating. Then they buckle like a house of cards.

If your shop has joisting that are more substantial then you are like fine on the structutal capabilities to hold you body's weight, but I would still really worry about your screws on the eyelet.

And yes to answer your question of "have I ever tried to pull a #10 wood screw out of plywood?" YES and it is not that hard. I usually clarify my technical comments with things like "I am no expert or I am not positive but you MIGHT...." or things like that....but in this case, carpentry, I am an expert and no qualifications neccesary..... 4 years of an apprenticship program, a life in construction of 35 years in tool bags, and 15 years as a Foreman reading blueprints and engineering spec binders....I would NEVER lift anything with 4 #10 screws.

As a matter of fact, in the last 2 years the UBC, UL, ASTM and all cities in California have removed ALL weight bearing allowances from ALL drywall type screws. That means we can NO longer use a drywall screw, even the heavier #10 size, to support or "carry" and downward load other than the drywall itself. We can not even mount a flourescent light to a ceiling with drywall screws any longer. That is straight from the Unified Building Code.

I would use 1/4" lag bolts and make sure that they were screwing into a joist, or better yet into a block that is nailed into the joist.
Your shop, your life, your crushed collector car...do as you wish.

[dean pearson]

My car has been hanging in my garage for a week.
I have two homade eyes, two 1/2 x 4 lags each and two cable come a longs and they hook onto a flat bar that slides in my door hinge pockets in the front and a reinforcing bar in the rear.
Works really good because I can just slide the hook on the flat bar th balance it.
My body goes on and comes off with the front fenders on.
The only pita is having to jack one side at a time three and a half feet takes a few minutes.

Dean.

Dean.

[woodysrods]

Sorry kmac530
I wanted a response but did not mean for you to type so much.
Everyone that comes into my shop and sees a car hanging from the ceiling has to throw in their 2 cents about the 4 screws holding the plate in place.
And I always use the "have you ever tryed to pull 4 2" screws straight out?" comment to answer their question.
You can sleep tonight knowing that the 4 screws are there for "SHOW" only.
The eye in the middle of that little plate is 3/4" 16" long extendining up thruough the 5/8" plywood, three 2x10's to bring the flat surface up to the top of the ceiling truss, then thru a 12' 4x4 that picks up 5 of the trusses and finally through a 1/4" plate before it is washered and nutted.
My chain hoist probably can't lift what the ceiling can handle???
Once again Sorry! Guess I had too many sweets over christmas and was feeling a little silly.
Good Roads
Brian

[hausdok]

I also think hausdok was saying that it is less the way you attach but the type of rafters you are attached to. Housing tract houses and many modern home use a roofing truss that is an engineered truss that usually uses 2x4 that are cleated together with a punched plate. They are great to work with and easy to install. They are quite strong, right up to their "engineered" weight rating. Then they buckle like a house of cards.

Hi,

Woodsy, I wasn't specifically criticising your install, because I had no idea what's above that ceiling; but kmac530 is correct - my concern is primarily with manufactured trusses and folks need to know that hanging cars on the lower chords or pulling engines with them is straight-up dangerous

It's actually scary the number of homes where owners have used the lower chords of manufactured trusses for storage and/or pulling engines or, in the case of the photos below, lifting the cab off a pickup truck. The lower chords of manufactured trusses are actually not designed to support any live load. They are in tension and are meant to keep the walls plumb. Then the diagonals function like a bridge to keep the roof plane flat and the whole thing works to keep the ridge straight. Everyone in the construction business knows that one never loads the lower chords unless they've been reinforced under the direction of an engineer and one never modifies one of these trusses unless an engineer designs a repair to take up the support lost by the modification.

Homeowners don't seem to know it though. In the case of the house below, it was a 5 year old half million dollar home. The husband's hobby was building off-road pickups before he ended up losing the home in foreclosure. According to the realtor, a week before I inspected that home the attic of the garage was full from end-to-end with spare auto parts and household goods. Photo one shows the chain that held his chainfall. Follow the chain's journey up through the drywall ceiling (Photo #2) to the peak of the truss where it's wrapped around a cleat nailed between the top chords and bolted (Photo #3). Now go back and look at Photo #2 again. Notice the diagonal brace missing from truss? Think that's bad? Look at Photo #4 where a whole row of diagonal braces have been pried out of the trusses. Photo #5 shows you how large that attic was. According to the realtor it was filled end-to-end with personal property. After seeing that and learning from the realtor about the personal property, I went up on the roof of the garage and stretched a carpenter line along the ridge. The ridge on this 5-year-old home had sagged 4 inches. Where the braces had been pried out of the trusses the roof plane sagged about 2-1/2 inches at the center and the walls were an inch out of plumb at the top on both sides. We haven't had a heavy snow here since January of 1996, but if he'd kept his house and we'd had a heavy snow comparable to what we had in 1996 this winter I think it's a safe bet that the roof of this guy's garage would have collapsed. By the way, I was told that though the cost to repair the damage was minimal, total cost due to engineering fees went over $12,000. That's fees that the bank will add to what he owes after the house is sold and he still has to pay off the balance of his mortgage.

Now, that's not to say it's OK, when a ceiling isn't part of a manufactured truss, to simply run a bult up through a ceiling and wrap it around a timber that's lain across a few ceiling joists and expect it to be safe. Just because it's worked for a few folks here and they didn't have any disasters, doesn't mean it'll work for everyone in every circumstance. When that kind of thing goes bad, it goes really bad and really bad quickly. Someone could get badly hurt. Again, if you're going to be lifting that kind of weight, spend a few hundred bucks to have an engineer come by, look at your structure, look at what you want to do with it, and sketch out a plan for you to adequately reinforce the timbers that you're going to be hanging that weight from. A friend of mine hired an engineer to help him design truss modifications when he raised his living room ceiling. The engineer came by, looked things over, sketched out a plan on note paper, stamped it and it cost my friend just over $300. The city accepted the drawing, which allowed him to modify the trusses legally and his living room ceiling came out beautifully. When he goes to sell and an inspector finds those modified trusses, he'll be able to pull out the engineer's stamped drawings and immediately quell any question/concerns/objections that a potential buyer might have.







Mike O'Handley
Kenmore, Washington
hausdok@msn.com

[jclary]

All the discussion about rafters, bolts, etc....Kinda lets me know that taking the body off without lifting it from overhead is not such a bad method after all. (Post # 10) Keeping the chassis rolling on its wheels allows you to maneuver it as needed. Once the chassis is rolled out, the body can be lowered to the dolly of your choosing or mounted on a rotisserie if you happen to be fortunate enough to have one.

[mmagic]

Thanks... You just confirmed what I intuitively believed. DR Horton may by build a decent tract house but even if the design could support an extra load of dead weight in the center of the garage span, there is no assurance that the hired help who couldn't speak English would build it exactly as designed or the city inspector trying to get through a list of houses by lunch would catch any mistakes.

I'll jack from the bottom with what I can see. My bigger problem is restoring a 17' car in an 18' garage!

[jclary]

Thanks... You just confirmed what I intuitively believed. DR Horton may by build a decent tract house but even if the design could support an extra load of dead weight in the center of the garage span, there is no assurance that the hired help who couldn't speak English would build it exactly as designed or the city inspector trying to get through a list of houses by lunch would catch any mistakes.

I'll jack from the bottom with what I can see. My bigger problem is restoring a 17' car in an 18' garage!

Make sure to back the car into the garage before you start taking it apart. The chassis needs to roll forward if you leave the steering gear box and column shaft in place.

[kmac530]

Woodsy,
Not a problem on the typing....I think that was a funny prank, I bet you get alot of "oh wow....no no no".
I am sorry if I was long winded explaining a basically simple thing. I just wanted to be clear as to WHY that is a bad idea, and that it was not just my "opinion" in this case but actually based on research and independat testing. But it sounds like you have it pretty well covered. I am very glad it was a joke. Good on you.

If my long typing, coupled with the Doktors structural info actually helps even one person make a safer choice then it was worth a few minutes of typeing and pulling out some spec books.
I would bet the Dok feels the same way, better safe than sorry. Just like everyone here is so helpful with what they know, Stude stuff, then we are happy to share what we know...construction stuff. Well at least I feel like that, at it looks to me that dok feels the same based on his informative posts.

[mmagic]

Make sure to back the car into the garage before you start taking it apart. The chassis needs to roll forward if you leave the steering gear box and column shaft in place.

Good point. As much planning is going into this part of the project as procuring missing parts. First step will be a stop at Sports Authority to pick up a set of soccer shin guards!

I plan to set the body on 4 car dollies so it can be rolled to maximize useable floor space or even moved to storage. The chassis may make multiple trips to storage. Working on sequence of body vs chassis work. While I always believe in working from the foundation to the finished product, I'm more concerned about parts procurement and delays on the body element...

[Retired]

All preseeding post offer a lot of good ideas. but remove all four fenders if you want to do a good job. leave the doors on. 4 healthy young men can lift the body section off, roll the chassis out from under it. make sure you mark the body shims, rubber/mretal where the came off. reuse them in the same places, same direction, why you ask, doors will operate as before removing the body.

[woodysrods]

I have another hand set of tools we use lots. They were a simple build, and are light weight and require little storage space.
They are like saw horse ends made from thin wall tubing. A4x4 slips thru them to form the top of the horse.
I made them tall enough, that once your body is raised almost "ALL" complete chassis can roll out from under them. Even with the carb and air cleaner.
They put the body up high enough that you can get under it to scrape of undercoat before sandblasting, weld in patches, replace rockers, etc, at a comfortable level.
They also work great for the reverse proceedure of putting the body back on after the chassis has be restored and reassembled.
I will post some pictures.
These were another one of those great investments of time and very little money.
Good Roads
Brian
PS
A Cherry picker attachhed to a chain bolted to the two rear body mounting holes inside the trunk is a great way to get the back up.
And a second Cherry Picker (engine hoist) can be hooked to a longer chain hooked thru the forward firewall body mounts to lift the front from above the cowl. Or one end a little at a time if you do not have two Cherry pickers.