Through all of 2011 and into 2012 I had no plans to remove the body from the frame. At some point however I recall an email conversation with Stuart where I realized there was nothing securing the tub to the chassis. I was thinking that I could perhaps just lift the tub a few feet to work on the chassis etc and Stuart pointed out that a car that was all the same color underneath was worth 10% more than a car that wasn't. So the decision was made to take this project to the next level and do a full body off restoration.

A friend of a friend had just finished a Healey 3000 restoration. The guy with the Healey was an electrical contractor and was used to building infrastructure to support large heavy electrical equipment using channel strut. Channel strut is a great system that uses corner brackets and it is all held together using spring nuts that lock into the channel.

The channel strut looks like a great way to build a dolly so we ordered some at the wholesaler and designed a dolly that could support the tub and straddle the rolling chassis. I recall that all of the bits to build this cost less than $100 and I used it for two and a half years.

I only have one side of a two car garage to work in so this would solve my storage problem. The garage is long enough that I can push the dolly to one end and work on the frame etc at the other end. You can see how that works in the header image for this post.