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On a 51 to 54 the weight for a senior is 4200 pounds and the engine and utramatic is 1000 pounds. If the body is separated from the frame and front clip any thoughts on weight? I am guessing around 2000 leaving the reamaining 1200 for the rolling frame and front clip?

Designing a shop and want to be able to lift the body from the ceiling/roof trusses. But need to know weight to design.

John

You also want a safety factor, especially if it's wood construction.
The best way to remove the body is with a "twirler" or rotisserie or post lift from below. Trying to lift sheet metal from above without proper structural support is a recipe for disaster. Even needs extra bracing when below or rotating.
Cost between 1 ton and 2 design is neglible.

Maybe contact Ross Miller and pick his brain or do a search of the forum for what he has done in lifting the body from the frame. Unless the photos were lost in the server migration Ross posted some info and photos on how he needed to do some work and found it easier and quicker in that particular case to lift the body off the frame to change an engine/trans combo and do some other stuff rather than trying to do it all with the body in place.

Good point on safety factor. I could just assume whole weight of car less engine and trans for body even though frame weighs something obviously.
Thanks
John

Looks like the safety factor for a crane as a whole is 1.25, but there's a lot to consider which I would suggest making it more like 2x, mainly because of the difficulty of estimating the actual weight of the loads, and other things, such as there's a possibility that a user of the crane would drop something onto a load, delivering a shock to the crane.

Another thing to consider: if you're mounting it to the ceiling, will it be structurally independent from the rafters? Or will the roof and crane share components? If so, having e.g. snow on the roof would limit the usage of the crane while it's there. How would it be supported vertically, and how will those components be braced?

Etc...

If you make it so it can hold the entire car, it will ultimately be more versatile. Call it 5000 pounds, or 6. I build with wood all the time and cannot imagine the difference in structure required to hold the difference will amount to much.


But that was pre-Covid, so who knows?

If you're still in design mode, then put in four steel supports into the walls and mount rails to them to make it into a multi-axis gantry. That way it will be safe. The main gantry portion can probably be purchased so would need no engineering although in your case you'll probably need two devices on the rails, one for each end.

The photo is of a free-standing commercial one but something like this can easily be mounted with the posts inside the wall is easy as not with only the rails showing.

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Just get a 2-post lift. Ross had a post some time back of him removing entire bodies from cars using the 2-post, then pushing the frame, engine and drivetrain out as a single assembly. Easy and probably way less expensive than designing trusses that can support that kind of weight. You're going to want a lift anyways if you are doing work on the car. A 2-post is very high on my list of purchases.

-Kevin

I have a platform lift which doesn't work for lifting a body. It is stored from my last house. I like the gantry idea but will likely attach the I beam tracks to the building.

Thanks.

The standard method is to use your two post lift to raise the body and roll the chassis out from under the lifted unit.

Packard used an overhead drop, but if you look at the attached picture it should help with workable fixtures that need to be fabricated to use the lift arms.

We've had engineers come in from the automakers to examine our lifting techniques and make videos of our fixtures.

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