Re: vehicle dollies

[JJK1204@domain.elided]

In a message dated 8/24/99 10:54:41 AM Central Daylight Time, 
richard.broughton@domain.elided writes:

<< Subject: Vehicle Dollies
 
 "Has anyone found a good way of moving a vehicle (in this case, my Spider)
 around when the axle has been removed - instead of just resting the body on
 jackstands?  I was thinking of buying some heavy-duty casters and mounting
 them to wood blocks."
 
    When we needed to move our TI out of the garage to clean and prep
 the underside after we removed the rear axle, we built a wooden I beam by
 nailing 2 2X10's face to face, then nailing a 2X6 to the top and bottom
 edges to form the beam. With the car on jack stands, we slid it under the
 car and placed it on a floor jack. Jacked the beam up so that it picked up
 at the rear jacking point, removed the jack stands and then lowered the
 jack. With the rear of the car sitting on the I beam, which was in turn
 sitting on the floor jack, we could, very gently , pull the car out of the
 garage. If your floor jack has swivel casters like ours, you can actually
 steer the rear end as needed. You have to be very gentle as you don't want
 to knock the car off onto the ground, but it wasn't any trouble to move the
 car around this way. If you attached heavy duty casters directly to the
 beam, I would think you would have even better control. Total cost was under
 $20 for the lumber. Hope this helps.
 
    Richard Broughton
    1966 Giulia TI
    Columbia, SC
  >>

I used a similar approach when I went to pick up my free GTV (a.k.a. 
Batmobile). I went to our local Home Depot and purchased four furniture 
dollies. They are around 1.5 ft. by 2 ft. with four casters and carpeting on 
the short ends, cost around $20 a piece. I the cut 4 pieces of 5/8" OSB 
(oriented strand board) to fit in the gap (you'd know what I mean if saw the 
dollies). They worked great since two of the wheels wouldn't rotate. With the 
help of my son, brother and a fellow digester we moved the GTV around a 
corner, down a driveway and onto a trailer with very little difficulty. I now 
use the dollies for storing engine and transmissions while they await rebuild 
and reinstallation.

John Katos 

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