i would suggest to make sure the body is..level and square...before these repaires are made. with a weak cowl, floorpans and torque boxes there could be some sag in the body... putting it on a rotisserie before they are fixed could also cause... twist ... ...JMO...Frank
Torque boxes and floor pans are a huge part of the uni-body, like Frank says must be level. I would fix those first, then weld in some support braces before you put it on the rotisserie.
+1... don't do anything to the car till you get the unibody tightened up, you put it on a rotisserie without dong them first and you could end up with a crease in the top
I'm going to put mine on a rotisserie for the undercar stuff but now I'm rebuilding the torque box and frame rail extensions while the car is level and on a body cart - nice and high enough to work under but still not postioned so it's putting any 'undue' amount of stress on the bare shell. Quarters and rockers are solid and cowl is decent so it's been staying right where it's supposed to - I also welded bars across the door openings and from pillar to pillar across the inside to keep everything straight. Just my 2.
The way these cars are built, unless your windshield pillars are rotted and rocker panels have issues, there is no reason to brace the door openings. These are unibody cars, not full framed cars. I don't think I would do torque box work on a rotisserie, especially with rotted floor pans. With the body turned on it's side, that area will directly be under stress.
Well, to each his own but I did it on the advice of a guy who runs a body shop and has done a number of Mustang rotisseries. For the time it took to do it I'd rather not find out when I was trying to hang doors a year down the road that I should have braced it...better safe than sorry when it comes to something so easy to do.
I'd also be very concerned about removing the cowl-to-apron braces with a car suspended at the extreme front and back on a rotisserie, even on a car with solid torque boxes and floor. When I did my cowl vent repair I was careful to position jack stands under the front sub frame so that the cowl-to-apron braces still lined up with the drilled out spot welds. I gotta believe that area would flex with a rusty car on a rotisserie.
I'd be interested to know what his reasoning was. I don't know anything about old Mustangs, but I've cut a couple of Mavericks completely apart and know them through and through, I can promise you it's not needed. The body shell IS the structure of the car. It's under a whole hell of a lot less stress when it's totally stripped down then it would be as a full car rolling down the road.
Well his reasoning was simply that when you start working with rusty and rotted torque boxes, frame rails and rockers, you want to do what you can to preserve the integrity of the structure. The strength of the unibody comes from all the assorted structural pieces welded together and the shell structure itself so when you start taking out parts of the whole you want to make sure you compensate for that temporarily missing structure. The way the cars sit on rotisseries (usually on both extreme ends of the car) is also completely different from how torsion and stress travels through the car when it's fully planted on tires. Again you may not need to brace everythig but what does it hurt? Cheap insurance that's all.
Thats the plan. I'm working on getting the floor pans and torque box that I need. I am going to hold off on pulling the windshield till the torque box and front floor is fixed. just need to figure out how to get it up high enough to work on it.
Didn't mean to get your thread waylaid with my reinforcement experience. Anyway as far as getting it high enough to work on once I braced everything I made a body cart out of 4X4s and a set of heavy duty casters. It's about 3.5 ft off the ground (from rockers to shop floor) which allows me to work on it inside and underneath with relative ease. It also allows me to keep it level and to check for any shifts that might have taken place over time (it'll be up there for a while) given I had the torque box totally removed and the rail extension sectioned. The hard part was getting it high enough to slide the cart under. The cross pieces of the cart run across the rear rails above where the rear end sits and under the rail extensions near the front. For what it's worth it was only about $40 in wood and the casters I had lying around. The casters are also great for moving it around the garage to get at stuff or to clean up all the scrap metal bits that end up everywhere.
