DIY Rotisserie
Posted: Thu Jul 22, 2021 11:33 am
So getting to the point where crawling under the car to do repairs is not fun. Car is on a hoist, but I am limited by the shed roof height. Shop bought rotisserie will not fit with the hoist, so decided to have a crack at a DIY solution.
Something along the lines of Clay's van engine stand rotisserie maybe. Or maybe something built from scratch based on this http://redwingsteelworksplans.com/wp-co ... 242012.pdf
But before all that - need to confirm some basic measurements I made, and confirm where the pivot should (roughly) be relative to the bonnet bolts on the fire wall. On Clay’s Van it looks like the pivot is approx in line with the bottom bolt, so for these initial calculations I am using that as a guide.
Here is a rough sketch I made. The base line is where the body is currently sitting relative to the hoist platform. From that I get a car height from sill/rear suspension bracket to roof of 1370mm. Widest point of the body is around the top of the rear wheel arches, visually lining up from the B-pillar I have calculated this to be 1700mm. The bottom bolt for bonnet hinge is 700mm above the sill.
If I then treat the car as a box, Google pythagoras theorem calculator gives me the longest point from the centre pivot to the sill at 1092 mm.
Now adding to the mix I am going to build the rotisserie to sit in the gutter of the hoist platforms. There are two steel trays that slide/roll along between the platforms and are currently holding up the car. Figured they might get a second use as the base. The gap between is 880mm so back to the calculator and I have a minimum height from base to pivot of 1000mm to spin the widest part of the car between the platforms.
I can go higher as the hoist is a metre off the ground at the moment, and the body is 200mm off the roof, but the lower the better. I may also make the pivot point adjustable, but as this is a one trick pony, If I don’t have to, I won’t.
And all that is a very long winded way of asking - what is the approximate pivot point for a sedan relative to the bonnet hinge bolts?
Something along the lines of Clay's van engine stand rotisserie maybe. Or maybe something built from scratch based on this http://redwingsteelworksplans.com/wp-co ... 242012.pdf
But before all that - need to confirm some basic measurements I made, and confirm where the pivot should (roughly) be relative to the bonnet bolts on the fire wall. On Clay’s Van it looks like the pivot is approx in line with the bottom bolt, so for these initial calculations I am using that as a guide.
Here is a rough sketch I made. The base line is where the body is currently sitting relative to the hoist platform. From that I get a car height from sill/rear suspension bracket to roof of 1370mm. Widest point of the body is around the top of the rear wheel arches, visually lining up from the B-pillar I have calculated this to be 1700mm. The bottom bolt for bonnet hinge is 700mm above the sill.
If I then treat the car as a box, Google pythagoras theorem calculator gives me the longest point from the centre pivot to the sill at 1092 mm.
Now adding to the mix I am going to build the rotisserie to sit in the gutter of the hoist platforms. There are two steel trays that slide/roll along between the platforms and are currently holding up the car. Figured they might get a second use as the base. The gap between is 880mm so back to the calculator and I have a minimum height from base to pivot of 1000mm to spin the widest part of the car between the platforms.
I can go higher as the hoist is a metre off the ground at the moment, and the body is 200mm off the roof, but the lower the better. I may also make the pivot point adjustable, but as this is a one trick pony, If I don’t have to, I won’t.
And all that is a very long winded way of asking - what is the approximate pivot point for a sedan relative to the bonnet hinge bolts?