When I bought my 62 thirty three years ago,the frame was rusting out. Patch work here and patch work there allowed me to still drive it. About five years ago I bought another frame from a guy in Pennsylvania. It was rock solid without a hint of rust or abuse. I paid $3,500.

The time has finally arrived to complete the job. The usual advice is to find 4 or 6 strong friends to lift the body off. Well, that just wasn't going to happen in my case so I gave a lot of thought to lifting the body off myself. The car is in a 150 year old barn so I couldn''t use any beams to hang a hoist. I have a four post lift with ramps so what I did was to first make a craddle where the supports are outside of the ramps. I cut a 4" x 4" x 8'piece of wood to two 36" long in pieces and placed them just underneath the inside of the rocker panels. I used four bottle jacks and worked each one a little at a time until the body was off the frame enough to slide two 2"x6"x8' boards (each doubled up) through each side so that they would come to rest on the supports of the craddle. As I lowered the lift the supports held up the body as the frame and all was lowered to the ground. Once all the way down, I pulled the rolling chassis out. I then raised the lift so the body was fully up in the air and then moved the craddle out of the way. I can now work on taking the parts off the old frame while the body is up on the lift.

I was intitially concered about the weight distribution from front to back and also about jacking the body with the bottle jacks (which were underneath the 4 x4 boards). It all worked out fine as the balance at that point was about 50 - 50 with no pitching from front or back. There was also no stress from jacking at that point with no strange sounds while it was being lifted. Now that it is safely down on the boards on the lift there is no additional worry. Now the real work begins!

 

Yup, it is sure possible! I had everything set up to pull mine by myself with just an overhead chain hoist, but had a couple of guys stop by just in case.

Turns out I really didn't need them to lift the body...But I'm sure glad they were there when I had to push the chassis out of the garage and DOWN the driveway, then back UP the driveway to get it into the next garage bay.

 

These old C1 bodies are so stiff that it is almost imposssibe to hurt them. Here is a pic of how I picked lifted my 59 body on and off the chassis at least 10 times during the build. This the final lift after painting. I never have any buddies arround when I need them, and I usually prefer to work alone anyhow.
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-...3/P0001144.JPG

I have had oldtimers tell me stories about how they just rolled C1 bodies upside down on some old tires to clean the underside of the body!

Regards, John McGraw

 

WIth a 4post lift you could also just hang down 4 chains at each wheel and grab it in the wheel wells. It's strong enough as long as EVERYTHING is unhooked.

I did it myself with a 2 post lift picking my 63 up at the wheel wells. Did this several times.

 

I never would have believed that if I hadn't seen it!
Who'da figured that you could lift the nose by the wheel wells???

That just scares the bejeebers out of me!

 

Looks pretty much like just the shell, no doors, no seats, etc. On my 62 I didn't take out much, left the seats in, the radiator support, the gas tank (empty), the Covertable top, all other interiors stuff. About the only thing I took out was the spare and jack. I did a pretty good guess on the front to back weight distribution. It is almost exactly at the mid point.

 

That's exactly what I did 20 years ago. If I remember correctly, the idea came from an old issue of the NCRS Corvette Restorer. It worked perfectly and had no problems. These old C1 body's are tough as nails. Hey, does his make me one of those "old timers" you were talkin' about? I'm only 50.

 

Ok then, here's how I did my "one-man frame-off" with a four post lift:

 

I gave some thought to doing it that way too, but I didn't want to have to strip the body down too much. Also, because it is resting on boards up on the lift I can work underneath the body. Did you leave your body suspended by the straps for a long period of time, or did you lower it and let it rest on the floor?

 

I had it on a dolly within an hour. I still need to work on the underside of the car so I am trying to decide whether to lift it again or weld some outriggers to my dolly and just roll the car over. I'll probably go with the four post lift again. It'll give me some practice for the upcoming 1 or 2 mate-demates I'll have to do to ensure the new Ramjet fits.

Frapps