> Before you spend a fair amount of money on a possibly single use
> rotisserie, don't forget the very inexpensive option of one or two used
> matresses to roll the car over on. Don't laugh!! I did a complete
> restoration on a 64 Tiger which included all the underside welding with the
> car shell rolled over on its side on good sized matresses. The body shell
> is perfectly strong enough to handle this technique, and the results were
> as good as any I could have wished for (the car won awards at car shows).
> P.S. Two people were required to handle the car when rolling it on the
> matresses. Arrange bracing as necessary to keep the shell at the desired
> attitude. If I were in the restoration business, I would have a rotisserie,
> but I don't think it is cost effective for a one or even two shot effort.
>
I know of the mattress/old tire/inner tube method. I think the disadvantage is that you are not going to be able to change positions without help and a lot of care, whereas with a rotisserie you can change position if it makes whatever you are doing even slightly easier.
For my bugeye, I built a wood frame that fastened to the suspension mounts. With it, I could roll the car over easily with my daughter's aid. For example, I had to sandblast rusty spots, which gets sand into every body crevice. We turned the car over and over while poking a leaf blower into every nook and crannie, and got the shell clean before I painted it. I doubt I'd have been able to do that with the mattress approach; it seems like a one-time thing.
I hoped to adapt the plans to use a couple of cheap engine stands as pivots; it should not be terribly expensive that way.
Ray Gibbons Dept. of Molecular Physiology & Biophysics Univ. of Vermont College of Medicine, Burlington, VT gibbons(at)northpole.med.uvm.edu (802) 656-8910