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October 23, 2024

Garage Tetris

Come November here on the prairie, we have to prepare to hunker down for the winter, and this includes the garage.

I'm blessed to have a residential three-car garage, but garage space is a lot like closet space--no matter how much you have, it's not quite enough.  Our daily drivers take two of the spaces, so my three LBCs and one LBM (motorcycle) have to share the third space.  This is tight, but normally works OK until one of the LBCs comes apart.  A frame off restoration balloons the floor space needed, and it's more than just double.

While working on the body, I was able to store it at the front of the garage with the rotisserie tipped up sideways, but now that I'm finished with it for the season, it really needs to be more out of the way..




Just to the left of the body is where I've kept the chassis.




It was time for some rearranging to make more space.  First, I moved the body and chassis outside.




To get some maneuvering room, the green Triumph went outside, too.




This left a clean palette.




As an aside, among the debris I moved out of the space was all of the sheet metal that got replaced on the tub and wings.  Out of curiosity, I weighed it, and it came to about 25 pounds.  The patches I re-used from my previous stalled restoration would add maybe another ten pounds.  I estimate the tub to weigh just north of 200 pounds, and the four wings total to something under 100 pounds.  This means that a little over 10% of the sheet metal on this car is new.




I swept the floor, then brought the rotisserie back in and placed it where the chassis had been.




It should be obvious by now what's happening here.  The only way I'm going to create more space is to go up.  The crane is attached to the rotisserie platform.  This was a lift test--all of the rotisserie wheels are off the floor.




At that point, I removed the rotisserie standards, and up she went.




A quick and dirty frame was built under her, and down she went on the top bunk.




The frame was sized so the chassis would roll underneath, and be easy to get to for winter work.




There's even room for the green Triumph.




The body can now take a break while her other half goes under the wrench.


The bunkbed technique for garage storage is of course not my idea and not new.  It's even routinely done for complete cars.  It took most  of a day to do this, and the only cost was for the lumber, which I actually had on hand.

Comments to Ed at elhollin1@yahoo.com

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