--Intermission--
Boring story, skip it to stick with the car stuff.
A friend sold his GT rotisserie to a gentleman who will end up not needing it until the summer, so, he offered to let me be borrow it short-term on a kind of "get my ass in gear" basis until then.
This, naturally, after I'd just completed all the cramped upsidedown welding from underneath the car. ("all, mhm", sneers future me I'm sure).
The rotisserie takes up 2' behind and 2' in front of the car, and I thought it'd be a bit tight, plus it requires welding up support inside the vehicle. So I opted to borrow just his body dolly instead.
Philosophy tangent:
When I was a kid, sometimes I'd watch TV shows with my dad or see magazines with "simple" little projects. Simple projects that required thousands of dollars of woodworking equipment or whatnot. I was too young to realize that, like how modern music videos are only funded by cell phone product placement the pop star is waving around while they dance, that the focus of these shows weren't really to show you how easy it was to make things, they were there to make you feel like even easy projects required expensive sponsored tools.
I didn't want to spend a lot of money on my vehicle. I started a business in a local recession a few years ago, and while I could, it's not smart for me to spend on anything that's not paying off debt. I don't work hard, but I work long hours, 7 days a week. I know that cars aren't cheap like bikes and other small projects and I wanted something to work on... but it was mostly a "have something to look forward to" project than a "spend money on a luxury" purchase. And if it's something actually fun to drive but pays for itself by saving me on gas, it doesn't seem like I'm treating myself before I've earned it.
In that spirit, I'm building a car functionally from garbage, somewhat to complete my trilogy of electric bicycle and electric motorbike from garbage projects/tutorials. And because I don't have a garage, there's extra pressure to actually complete a car project. The cars were sold to me for maybe double the value of scrap metal. The batteries I got by intercepting the waste stream from a tool company. The motor I got by intercepting the waste stream from a forklift repair shop. The controller from a junk car. The biggest expense is likely the ~$1000 in gas it cost me to bring them back from Arizona (excuse for a vacation anyway, got to see the Grand Canyon alone with no tourists for a whole day).
Anyway, what I'm getting around to is that, the body dolly feels like cheating. Even more so does a rotisserie. It should really be the first thing anyone spends money on during a restoration. If I'm giving advice, it's to start with that, first step.
And, I'm well aware that my crappy $40 flux-core welder is the worst possible choice for welding thin sheet metal and I should've just bought (or built) a MIG. I even have a bottle.
But... one of the things that I like about my project is that I've basically been able to do it all with about $100 of shitty tools (I dunno, maybe $200). I'm cheap but I'm not that cheap, I'd blow $1000 on tools if I felt like adding some. But I remember what it was like to be the kid that thought that building stuff was for "other people" because none of it seemed possible with tools we already had in the garage. I do like demonstrating that there do not have to be high barriers to entry for a hobby.
And, sometimes, you learn the most when being determined to make the less-optimum tool for the job have to do the job. I wouldn't do it again, but I'm okay with having done it once.
When I finish a project people often ask, almost defeatestly, about what kinds of tools I had to have to make it. They're saying without saying "I'd love to do that but I don't have the space/budget/whatever, you're spoiled."
And you always get more experienced people who act like the bare minimum to get into a hobby is all the gear they've accumulated after 20 years at it on a professional level as if everyone curious wants to commit to that, and that anything less will "never work".
You need a $2000 welder to build a gokart.
You need a $250 multimeter and a $1000 oscilloscope to start with electronics.
Etc.
Anyway, no point in being pedantic. The body dolly is amazing.
For weeks, I couldn't even use the creeper under the car because with the jack stacks maxed out: Creeper, Me, Welding Helmet, pick 2 of those 3 there's room for. So every weld I'd be laying on the cold (Canadian) concrete floor, bucking and shimmying 2" at a time, all the way under all the way back. Welding upside down with my unsupported head back and arms stretched horizontally. Every time I forgot a tool, needed to adjust a lamp, needed to piss, wanted to take a picture, cramped up, or even just wanted to turn and face a different direction (my shoulders are wider than the car was off the ground), was an excuse to just quit for the night rather than crawl all the way out and all the way back under. And there's never room to get out from beside the car either.
Lit my beard on fire thrice from rebounding sparks. Lit my hair on fire when the bandana slipped off. Ugh.
For anyone who doesn't own a body dolly or rotisserie, especially for body work, I can't emphasize enough how huge of a difference it makes:
- The night it was installed, I yanked out the rear assembly and sat cross legged where the diff used to be.
- When I want to work beside the car, I can shove it sideways.
- Any time I'm under the car, I'm comfortably on the creeper. And I can roll and switch which direction I'm facing.
- Any time I need to move under the car, the dolly's framework is like monkey bars, one hand can spin or move you anywhere you want to be. You can brace your arm, or tools, or rig clamps off of it.
- Whatever the perfect height to work is, up or down it goes.
- Any time I'm leaning over or crawling into the engine bay? The car has a scaffolding around it that fits my steeltoes.
- Want to film what you're doing? There's distance between ground and car to frame the shot properly.
- Want to see what you're doing? There's room for a lamp to cast light rather than just a spot.
... And yeah, it feels like cheating.
But, right when I was burning out from being there every night for a month, crawling underneath, fixing the same pinholes for the fifth time, going home sore, it's let me not even think about it and had me going another month of nightly work.
I'm not absolute about anything. I proved my point that it can be done without, it's just less comfortable, and I don't know that I'd have spent the money to build one myself. But it sure has helped more than anything to keep up my momentum. Frustration and futility are the two common silver bullets for my projects, so, it's made a huge difference.
Anyone doing a restoration is crazy to not build a body dolly, if not a rotisserie too. And with 8 bolts it flatpacks back into half a broom closet. Just my two cents.