1949 Olds -- Frame for engine pull - Aug 17, 2006

I'm not really close to pulling the engine, but I had to have a break
from sanding. I also wanted to see if my cobbled-up frame for
hoisting would actually fit in the garage and straddle the car. It
fit on paper, but reality sometimes doesn't read plans.

I came up with this thing before the heat wave of the
summer hit, but only tested it outside with a junk Ford V8 swinging
from it. It hadn't been assembled inside nor over a car before.

The idea was to make a frame capable of handling the load of an
engine, but able to be assembled or disassembled without tools. It
needed to be free-standing on flat or rough ground. Since I don't
pull engines every day, I wanted a more general purpose tool than a
typical engine hoist. I also wanted to be able to use those expensive
pipes in other ways.

Photo 1 -- The thing depends on the fact that the black, 2" schedule
80 pipe fits well inside the unpainted, rusty-looking pipe, which is
also schedule 80. That 90-degree connector piece on the left has a 1
ft length of the 2" pipe that slips inside the larger pipe on the
right.

Photo 2 -- These are all the parts of the frame. The 4 black 2"
(nominal) diameter pipes are the legs. They're each 10 ft. long. The
larger diameter pipe is about 7-1/2 ft long and is the horizontal
member. I should weld bracing gussets to those short pieces of pipe
on the 7-1/2 ft pipe. The two connectors are at each end. All welds
were made after grinding, using 7018 rods.

Photo 3 -- It fits! With the legs spread a little under 12 ft apart,
the horizontal pipe is about 8 ft. off the ground. The legs just
clear the sides of the car. The frame extends about 2 to 3 ft beyond
the front of the car. Since I don't yet have a concrete floor in this
bay of the garage, there is no worry about the legs spreading under
load, nor of the legs gouging the floor.

Now when I take the hood off to strip the underside, I'll be ready to
pull the engine. I may be able to turn the frame 90 degrees and use
it to lift the body off the frame, much later. Unless I find a better
donor, I'll use the frame to pull a 350 from an old truck near my
barn. It has been sitting, unused for many years, but isn't locked
up. Should be rebuildable.