Body Back On

Months of waiting for this day

The covers are off

With the engine seemingly out of the way, even though I have an number of things to iron out on the chassis, especially with the brakes, I have begun to look at the body and contemplate my path forward into the world of sheet metal.

In a way, it's what I have looked forward to since I bought the car, but it's also the area about which I know the least, so it's at least a little daunting.

Ready to roll back

All the musclemen are in place

One thing that has been troubling me of late has been the condition of the wooden dolly that the body's been resting on for over two years.  It wasn't really made to last, and by this time it was getting pretty darn rickety.  So, I decided that the next step would be to take the body off the dolly and put it back on the frame.  For one thing, doing this would allow me to see if it would actually fit.  For another, it would give me a place to put the body while I rebuilt the frame.

Ready, set, lift!

It's on and it fits!

So, just over two years after we lifted it off for the first time, we put it back on.  I enlisted the help of some strong-armed friends--Dan, Tom, Steve and our neighbor Derek--to help me with the deed.  I actually had six guys here to help with the lift off, but this time I figured we could do the job with just four.  Plus we had Maddie and Valery there to help move the dolly and I was there to supervise and make sure it lined up as we set it down.

It looks like a real car

But looks can be deceiving

First I rolled the body forward to take off all the tarps and covers.  Then we moved the body back over the chassis with two guys on each side.  Then it was a pretty easy lift and lower.  Although I had made plans in case it didn't fit, we never needed 'Plan B'.  It fit the first time and nothing was out of place.

Someday soon it will run!

Hello Dolly

One of the hardest things to pull off in this little project has little to do with metal and nothing to do with the car itself, but considering my available space and the time frame (however unrealistic) I figured that building this little dolly would be worth the time, effort and expense.  Whether or not that proves to be true remains to be seen, but now at least one month after making the decision, the dolly is built and ready to go.

I have no idea if it will actually work, since I built it by looking at a couple of pictures that I found on the internet, but if those pictures are true--and what, on the internet is not?--it ought to do the trick.  The trick is to to separate the body from the frame but store the two halves in the same space.

At first, I had planned to simply pull the body off and set it down on a plywood platform in the side yard, but besides seeming unnecessarily crude and predictably South Austin, it just didn't seem like a good idea, leaving it over there to rot, essentially.  Now, to be fair, having it on the dolly doesn't make it more likely that I will restore that body or even that it will be done in a timely manner, but it does ensure that the neighbors will not be offended by much more than the sight to which they are already comfortably--based on their reactions (none so far)--accustomed, or resigned, as the case may be.  It also means that I can look at the body as I work on the frame, which may or may not be an asset.

Now, it would be just delightful if I could call a few friends and make the move, but nothing is ever that easy, is it?  No, of course not.  I have all the body bolts out, as both Readers know, and the body is ready to move, but I have at long last resolved that other burning question: remove the doors and weld in supports?  The answer to this question is, of course,yes,but the obviousness of the answer didn't occur to me till I had built the dolly.

I was considering moving the body to the dolly without removing the doors, reasoning that leaving them in would not only be simpler and quicker (toward the goal of removing the body) than taking the time and trouble to remove them and weld in steel supports between the rear and front halves of the body.  Simpler and quicker, of course, but not better.  Looking at the dolly I realized that if I don't do that support welding first, when I do remove the doors, the body will fold up like a fortune cookie.  Not something I want.  This is a German car, not an Asian one, after all.


So, after all, even with the dolly built, I am another month away from liftoff.  Now the question becomes whether or not it's time to buy the welder.  A new toy?