I have meant to share this contraption I’ve been using for the last few years for raising, lowering, and storing my 36 Ford body safely. The first time I took the body off the frame I used an engine hoist to pick up each end at a time, block it up off the floor, then carefully try to move the chassis in and out without hitting the supports. I didn’t like how that worked and made me nervous so I decided I needed something safer and easier. I wanted something I could lift and lower each end incrementally, that I could store the body with for long periods, be movable with the body on it, be relatively compact, and finally affordable. I figured I could buy 1 or 2 gantries but they seemed a bit too wide and price wise It was going to cost quite a bit. My wife parks in the 2 car garage with it so I needed something not so wide that I could push tight to the wall. I measured the out to out dimension of the chassis and body with the widest part being about a little over 5 ½’ wide’. I considered building something out of wood when I found these baker scaffolds at the Harbor Freight. The bakers scaffolds have a 70 ½” inside clear width dimension so there was enough room to roll the chassis out and is suitable for smaller car bodies. Height wise, even with the angle braces, there is enough clearance to lift the body high enough to pull the chassis out. Each scaffold is rated for 900 lbs which is more than enough for each end of a body shell. I bought 4 HF hand winches which are each rated for 900 lbs and mounted them to 30” Unistrut pieces that sit on top of the scaffold spanning front to back. I didn’t trust mounting winches to that thin plywood wood on top (I’m a structural engineer so I checked its capacity and it was not enough for me to feel comfortable). I then cut some slits in the plywood for the straps to feed down through to pick the body. Current prices for bakers scaffolds are $200 each , winches are $27 each, two 10’ long sections of Unistrut is about $50 so all in you can do this for under $600. I made multiple trips to HF with my coupons so all in I did it for under $500. Of course one can find used baker scaffolds to do it for even less. A gantry at HF right now is about $740 each so going this route was much more economical than buying two of those. Using it is pretty easy . I can winch one end at a time with 4x4s bearing on the rungs that I add or remove as I go up or down so it can only drop 4” should something happen. When I’m done I leave a 4x4 on the rung and set the body down on it and just winch it to put tension on the straps for redundancy. I kept the body up at the second rung height so I could store stuff on dolleys underneath when the chassis was out. With the scaffolds being on casters I can move the whole body as needed by myself. I also stored stuff on top of them which was convenient. Once I’m done with them I can break them down to not take up much room for storage or just sell them if I don’t need them.
Very cool idea, love it! But what holds the 2 scaffolds together? I'd be worried that they would start to move independent of each other. Did I miss something?
It actually rolls around pretty easily without connecting them together when they are bearing on the 4x4s. I typically push the body at the firewall or the trunk. I was going to take a 2x4 each side to attach them together but found it wasn’t needed but someone could do that if they wanted.
I agree with Sporty45 that it's a great idea but would tie the two scaffolds together so I could move it if I wanted to.
Great idea! They could double as storage shelves when not needed for body lifting. The way my luck rolls though, I'd have to tie them together. If I didn't, I'd most likely find that nut I dropped and couldn't find with one of the wheels, while rolling it around
Slick idea but I am like the others in that one time or another one of those is going to catch on something and tip causing a crash because they aren't solidly connected to each other. I see those scaffolds for sale on FB marketplace or Craigslist fairly often after people finish home redo projects.
Part of why I didn’t tie the scaffolds together was if I tied them together up high I can’t open the doors where I keep parts inside and down low I wouldn’t be able to roll dollies of rear ends, transmissions, and such in and out from the side. For the most part it stayed in one spot but when I did move it it was a few feet one way or another. The casters lock which is nice. It’s really quite stable and with the straps and 4x4s it has redundant support. A simple 2x4 bolted to each one would give that extra piece of mind.
Wow--this is amazing! My neighbor was getting rid of his roll around scaffold and I picked it up for similar purpose of putting a pickup body on the chassis. Glad to see the idea in play. Happy to see this and thank you for sharing.
Nice, great idea. I already have scaffold. I generally lift the body and throw cross beams from pallet racking under it. Stack structural rated concrete block with osb spacers for supports. Nice and wide, roll the chassis out. Then the body is stuck in one spot. Just cause I have extra pallet racking beams, 4x4 or steel tube would work fine. Lot of places are selling off their scaffolding to meet OSHA or other regulatory requirements. I bought a stack very inexpensively from a construction company.
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