Since moneys going to be tight for a few months, and my next project is the engine swap, I figured I might start making a dolly for when I pull the cradle, I'm looking to make one I can roll under the car then lower the car onto, remove cradle bolts and jack the car off the cradle. I recall seeing plans for one somewhere (but can't find it via search) anyone have a link/plans for one.

Yeah, I know what your talking about. I've seen someone with a really nice contraption on wheels, that held the cradle up about 4' in the air, so everythings at a nice height, and you could work on the bottom side too. I use a plain old 3'x4' dolly. makes the cradle rolly, but cant do anything on the bottom. but fortunatly, there isnt much to do on the bottom. except the damn rod bearing i'm changing right now....

quote Originally posted by Pyrthian: Yeah, I know what your talking about. I've seen someone with a really nice contraption on wheels, that held the cradle up about 4' in the air, so everythings at a nice height, and you could work on the bottom side too. I use a plain old 3'x4' dolly. makes the cradle rolly, but cant do anything on the bottom. but fortunatly, there isnt much to do on the bottom. except the damn rod bearing i'm changing right now....

I'd just rather work standing up than stooping.

I use a dolly from Home Depot (20.00CDN), works just fine for under car removal.

It's a pita working low down though, a work table/dolly to hoist it onto would be nice. There are some pics of nice ones at the yahoo groups for 3800 s/c.

Check out this thread.
https://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum1/HTML/029840.html

It was posted by Rick Kaufman who built a cradle stand similar to mine, but that could be disassembled when not in use. The one in the photo section in the 3800SCV6Conversions YahooGroup is the one that I built for my 3800SC conversion. It is great to be able to work standing up, get under the cradle and work freely from all sides. I assembled the entire conversion including exhaust before putting the finished product in the car. It was well worth the effort to build the stand-up cradle dolly.

If you want a dolly to put under the cradle when pulling the cradle from the car, a furniture dolly works great for the occasional engine removal. If you want a dolly that you can use over and over again, a steel frame with steel wheels works great. The wheels on the furniture dollys may not be hard enough to make it easy to roll the cradle or may go flat if the motor/trans/cradle is left on the dolly for a period of time.

I hope this helps.

Bill Levin

Get a good pallet and put some wheels from Harbor Freight on the corners. Works great. You also need 2 floor jacks and about 4 feet of 4x4. 1 floor jack with 4x4, fits under the body in front of the rear wheels. The second is used to drop the cradle onto the pallet. You use the 2nd jack to lift the body above the engine. You can then roll the cradle/pallet from under the body,lower the body down onto jack stands. If you seperated the axles from the wheels and left them on, then the chassis is rollable.

4 8foot long 2x4's $4.00
4 750lb casters $10.00
10 4" deck screws $0.00
left over from earlier project)

use of tools $0.00
(saw/tape measure/drill-driver)

Completed "custom dolly" <$15.00

Of course the yellow steel one is "Fantastic"!!

[This message has been edited by Tryxalon (edited 10-13-2003).]

I mounted casters directly to the cradle its self...... Just a couple of small self taping screws in each one. Doesn't take that much. At times I had the hole weight of the car on them and they held up. I used the all metal ones. Unless you plan on doing future swaps I would just build a stand out of wood put together with screws, and put the casters on the bottom of that. When you are done just take it apart and discard

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