I built a little Chassis Dolly for the roadster project and thought I'd share it... Some may remember "Kilroy's Amish Hot Rod Shop"... But as a refresher... I've got a really tight space to work in for the time being that needs to be a wood shop, storage shed, and hot rod shop... So things have been tight in there for a while and it's hard to get around and clean it. I decided to take a break from most of my projects and just focus on cleaning out the shop and making things more organized... Which is surprisingly hard to do when you have a car in there taking up a third of the space. I've been making progress but one of the things I really wanted to build was a chassis dolly to get the roadster up off the ground, keep it stable, and be able to move it around to clean and get to all sides, etc. So here's what I did.
I started with some old heavy duty casters I liberated from an old defunct meat-packing plant in Downtown LA... It was right under the 6th street bridge... Such a rad building... I found them down in the sub basement where they did the processing. There was about an inch and a half of built up grease on the walls from all the rendering they did down there and no light...
At first I was going to make it out of some extra pressure treated lumber I have on the property but then I figured I'd use some structural metal the previous owner left. It had to double as a dolly as well as storage for scrap etc... And it had to let shavings and dust fall through so I can clean it... I decided that 24" was the ideal hight so I cut up some of the steel and started welding.
The racks I used For the floor of the cart part of the dolly are left over from some metal shelves my wife bought... They're 48"x18" I think it turned out pretty good. It was basically free... Which was in my budget... It's incredibly stable... I'm around 270 and I can stand on the front of the frame and the trunk area and it doesn't try to tip at all... Using the material I did also kept it pretty rigid while keeping it relatively light weight... I think it weighs just a little over 100 pounds.
No problem. I love how this works for me... One thing I learned is that to make sure you have plenty of room to slide a trans in and out and your torque-tube/drive shaft in at full suspension extension. Obviously, this only applies if you plan on mocking up the motor/trans or rear suspension on the dolly. And it would be no problem without the body on mine. I'll modify mine for a little more clearance when I have time.
The Jalopy Journal
