A Question of Reality

[Chris Kouba]

Can anyone comment as to the feasability of building a 40 in a single-car garage. There are two parts to it, 1- is it a practical reality to build one in such confines and 2- can you get in and out of the car in the garage once it's built? Who has done it?

Any comments- minimum garage width, overhead storage of clips, etc... Fire away.

Thanks in advance,
Chris

 

both built in the same garage

 

[Ian Anderson]

CJK

I have been told that someone in Thames Ditton managed to buils a KVA in a sincle 7 foot wide garage

Faili yours looks a lot wider - I'd kill for that much space and because of this I will probably end up shipping her out to be built - a bugger as I really wanted to do the work.

My garage is 7'6" and the car is right up `against the wall on one side (0.5" or less and I cannot open the door on the other side so if I drove in I could never get out (Also I am a fat git!) Some say it is posible to carpet the wall to protect the door open it as far as it goes then stand on the seat and step out frontwards over the door hinge.

So the answer to your question is both yes it can be done but no it's not easy and I for one will probably give up and have someone make it, move house or rent a bigger garage for the build (The last 2 will probably work out more than the price to build her up!

Dicture of how tight it is in the garage
http://www.gt40s.com/ubbthreads/showflat...=true#Post49441

Hope it helps

Ian

 

[Chris Kouba]

Thanks guys.

Faili, I assume the garage you refer to is the one in the picture? How wide is it? I am thinking it's possible to do it in a single bay but will be difficult to live with as well (egress issues).

Ian, how is your build progressing? Or is it progressing?

Thanks again,
Chris

 

[Ian Anderson]

Chris

Progressing but slow!

I push it out of the garage to work on it then it starts raining so I push it back in.

That said I have been doing a lot of locating and have found a load of nits I was missing so not totally "dead" time

Regards
Ian

 

[Chris Duncan]

You could make the door hinge pin easily removable and just leave the door off when in the garage. The doors are so light they'd be easy to take on and off.

I built a cobra from scratch, had the body hung on the ceiling with cables going to a boat winch in the corner. That garage seemed fine to me at the time because previous to that I was outside.

The first thing you need to do though is paint it white and put in some lighting.

 

[Lynn Larsen]

Chris,

One thing you should consider is getting a dolly for the chassis build. First it will put the work at a comfortable standing level and will allow you to get under it with ease. Mine is about 28 inches tall and has 5" urethane tired steel caster wheels on one end and fixed wheels on the other. It is made of steel tubing (mostly 1.5"x4" with 1.5" square as the uprights in the 4 corners.)

Having this will also allow you (alone) to swap ends if need to get one end or the other into the light. It will also let you roll it outside if you need a little more elbow room. This assumes you have a driveway and that it isn't too steep. Don't want it rolling away down the street Seriously, I paid an extra $300 for it, and it was worth every penny!

If your garage floor and driveway is smooth enough, you can use the individual dollies that go under each tire, but they won't help you with the height and you'll need to be very careful of the expansion crack at the front of the slab since the wheels on these don't have a very large diameter.

I used a couple of 1.5 ton come-alongs to take it off: I pulled the car up a few inches and rolled the dolly out from under it and let it back down. To hang the come-alongs, I had a 4"x 24" lam-beam on the engine end with upright 4x4s on either side of the car to support it and two 2x10s bolted together, again with 4x4s for support, to lift the front of the car. These beams were tied into the garage structure so that they couldn't move laterally. I also used the lam-beam to install and remove the engine/trans (several times and all of this was done by only 3 people: me, myself and I.

Regards,
Lynn

PS: I can do up a dimensional drawing of the dolly if you'd like. Here's a pic of the chassis on the dolly. You can't see much of the dolly as it was completely hidden under the car.

 

Yes, it can be done. See picture below. My garage is 7'3 and a massive 7'9 at its widest point!. OK its longer than normal but the width is the major problem.

It won't be easy but the advantages are: cheap to heat in winter, makes you stay tidy (a friend has a 16' x 20' and doesn't appear to have more room!), you can get purchase by pushing of the walls (good for some jobs).

Paint the walls white to maximise space feeling and make brighter. If you have the height add shelving above and leave room to hoist body sections. The one big advantge of the 40 over, say a typical cobra, is that the front & rear clips and doors can be removed, and the rear bulkhead panel - giving you excellent access to everything.

In essence a single garage is not your main obstacle, only determination.

 

[Chris Kouba]

Dave- Good God that looks tight! Can you get in and out of the car or do you push/winch it into the garage after climbing out? It looks impossible to get a door open wide enough to get out.

Lynn- The dolly idea is an excellent one and I had pretty much decided on doing that already. Glad to hear it was as helpful as anticipated.

On the positive side, I got the tape measure out today and took it to the garage. The interior space is 10'x 18' so it seems it'd be possible. Like Dave said, it'll just make me stay more organized instead. Also, building a new garage would SERIOUSLY postpone the ability to purchase a car... But it's good going forward knowing what I want already.

Chris

 

Chris, If you can afford it, think about getting an Auto lift. It is one of best investments I made. Autolifters (The one in the photo) are no longer in business, But there are lots of others you can go with.

Dave, after looking at your garage, it is clear to me now that my garage is huge /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

Hi Chris
I built and painted my Mark 2 in a single garage. One of the main problems I found was trying not to damage the car in the latter stages of the build. You tend to get more fatigued when stretching over or under the vehicle – tiredness can then lead to mistakes. Still all that stretching beats yoga. The dolly idea is by far the best for manoeuvring the car.
I also developed a keen sense of garage management i.e. ensuring all tools had their place and kept the working area as tidy as possible. Extra power points are useful and I improved the lighting considerably so as to avoid shadows as much as possible. (Opening the garage door was reminiscent of Close Encounter). Don’t want to mother hen you too much Chris, but be careful with your back, i.e. tendency to overreach with heavy stuff when confined is tempting. ‘nuff said.
Getting in the car is done by opening the door 45 degrees then slithering through the available opening in the top. I placed high density foam on the walls where the door edges would touch. Great thing about the GT is the superb access to the engine. On a final note about painting, rub down and lay on primer by all means but I don’t advise the final coat (as I tried) since there is likely to be too much dust and contaminants around. I went to a Pro paint shop for the final coats.

 

[Anthony]

I have a tornado chassis in a single garage, works fine with a little planning. Protect the garage walls with carpet, make yourself a trolly (4 decent wheels and an old length of kitchen) place 2 or 3 equal width tyres on the trolley and place chassis on the top. tyres provide the grip, trolly the movement. My garage at thineset point (doorway) is about 85", maybe 93" at widest. i can work on one side at a time or either end. Plu i can wheel it out and back in as a one man job, athough spinning the chassis over to fit floorpan was a 2 man job and spare tyres for a half way rest).

After posting this i will be starting a build thread on the builders forum, check out some pictures

 

Chris, it looks impossibly narrow to me but doesn't seem too bad in reality. Now 10' x 18' that's pure luxury, I'd have sold the wife to slave traders for less than that /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

I can open the door onto the carpet tile stuck to the wall (and often remove it as it only takes 2 minutes) but as Paul says damaging paintwork is always a danger in a small space.

I bought a winch as I thought I would be powering the car in each time (unfortunately the garage floor also slopes and its too steep for one man to push the car in) but I found I could climb over the hinge, stand on the sill and wriggle in through the roof.

Picture with door removed (taken this morning).

 

[Howard Jones]

Best tool I own.

 

[Howard Jones]

The height is 7 inchs. 4" wheels, 1 inch wheel mount, and 2 inchs of wood. This takes the cars far enought off the ground to slide underneath. I can drain oil, remove seat mounting bolts, Etc. without putting on jack stands and if I don't finish I just roll it back to it's spot.

I had my car on these for the better part of 5 years during my build. It is just at the right height for just about everything. I even take the motor/gearbox out from on top of these. Just lift up the motor and roll the car out from underneath.

 

[Rick]

Dave, you've just solved my egress problem with my single garage, just take the door off!

To all, I'm in the same situation, building the car in a single garage, however, it has twin doors so I can drive into the back onto a carpad...

Rick