What is the safe way to bolt a 1971 Maverick to a rotisserie? I was thinking of the front and rear bumper bracket bolt locations.
That's where I bolted mine to also. My only problem was that I rolled it over centered at those bolt hole points but the center of balance is a little bit higher than those bolt holes. The shell was a little top heavy when it went over. My photos are in the thread below if you want to look see. http://mmb.maverick.to/showthread.php?t=36458
Almost all aftermarket rotisseries have a way to adjust the balance. I just took some measurements on mine which has my Comet GT on it. I have approximately 10" from the center of the pivot point to the center of the mount on the front and 5" on the rear. This makes mine bottom heavy but not unmanageable by one person. If you could make yours adjustable to shorten those distances, you should be able to get it balanced. Unfortunately I would have to remake the rear mount to shorten the distance on mine.
Eventually, I'll have to come up with some sort of adjustment plates to bolt between the bumper mounting plates and the engine stand plates. I'm not going to cut all of the welded steel apart to start over. My top heavy problem was also manageable by one person but it sure was a surprise the first time it went over. Most of the inside cage is in the car now including the roof halo so the top heavy deal will just keep getting worse until I do something about it.
Dennis, if you look at the pictures of my stands you see that my pivot points are simply on the center lines of the bumper bolts. I picked a 45" pivot point, up from the garage floor, only because my garage center beam is 90" high and I wanted the car to turn over with equal clearance. Other than that, I will look at changing my pivot points more towards your measurements for now.
I checked out your pictures. One thing I'm wondering about is the 5" difference in the height of mounting points between the front and back. Since you have them on the same plane, it seems like your car would be pitched nose up and would bind or at least something would flex when you spin it around. Have you noticed anything?
In fact, it rolls over very smoothly. It doesn't kick the stands around trying to find it's own common center line either. Remember that both stands, no matter what is bolted to them will both turn over at that 45" off of the floor pivot point. The pivot points also line up perfectly front to back too. I know that a level across the door sill area is only slightly off on the bubble so, when I was putting my cage in, I was also matching that little difference on the bubble. Maybe any difference in height between the front and rear bumper bolt planes leads to some of that top heavy problem. Kind of a whip effect, maybe?
Yea, that slight off bubble could add up to 5" in 14 ft or so. As long as it works, thats all that matters. Cant argue with results. Had I a more powerful welder at the time I would have built my own too. But I didn't trust my 120v Lincoln. Mine cost $725 back in 2001. You probably have a fraction of that in yours. Very cool tool to have!!!!! On a good note I rented mine out in between my projects and made back $400.
Cost me $123.00 total plus a case of Miller Genuine Draft. The cost includes both the 1,000 pound engine stands from Ebay, the extra steel (bought in 2007 dollars - would cost a ton more now, I would guess), and the beer to get my buddy to weld everything up with his 220 powered Miller. I agree with you on the 120 volt Lincoln. Everything was thought out so I could re-convert the engine stands back to their original configuration when not needing them as roll overs anymore.
