Frame table possibilities??

I picked this up over the weekend. It was used to build pontoon boat trailers. Obiviously someone put some time into this. I'm thinking with a few mods it would be ok for my model a frame too.

Any of you guys got any suggestions? I'm thinking first thing is to tie the legs together for more strength. Not too sure of the little adjusters either. All of the cross braces are adjustable from front to back. What do you think, is it workable or did I but $90 worth of scrap?

 

Looks like a good find.

 

If you plan to start building frames on a regular basis, find some thing heavier. For a home built Model A or two it ought to do just fine. Plan on some cuttung and welding as you go.
Looks right handy to me.

 

Looks decent. My concern would be how far apart the rails are and the length needed to build more than just A frames. Once you start it's hard to quit building 'em. As long as it's flat and stiff and you can set it level it will work. Just make sure its stiff enough that you can do at least moderate "pulling" without distorting. At $90 you stole it. The steel and machining for my new table cost a bit over $3,000!

 

Cool! What do you think of the funky little adjusters?

 

The adjusters are probably pretty useless for building any type of car frame. I'd tool up removable cross bars indexed to scribe marks and tapped holes in the main rails. You need one at the front crossmember that spots your crossmember and holds the front rails and crossmember to the proper width and in position to be square. I prefer this station to bolt through the front frame horns which are attached to the siderails off the fixture.

A second station locates the bend about midway in the rails and can also locate your trans mount, or multiple trans mounts, should you be building common frames
repeatidly.

A third station would locate the rear crossmember or crossmembers and hold the siderails to a correct width.

Remember, most Model A frames are fabbed upside down to allow the rear station to accomodate a set of inserts to "step" the rear crossmember 2" or deeper Z's. A lot of fixtures have provisions for both front and rear Z's.

In my old fixture I had the station tooling to hold and box both left and right rails down the center of the fixture. This saved floor space. Also the tooling to fab rear crossmembers can easily be fitted to the inside of the fixture. Unless your going to build a lot of frames, I'd keep the legs removable/foldable so the device can go against a wall when it's not in use.

I lieu of all this bullshit just use a bunch of angle iron and C clamps.