Kerry's 250 GT Pininfarina Coupe Restoration (1643GT)

Engine Stand

I followed the same process as used by Jonathan Brent.  You can read about a factory stand and Jonathan's on Tom Yang's website.  I got two of the 1000 lb. stands from Harbor Freight.  These end up being bolted together at the bottom facing each other.  I made a new crossbar for the bottom that was cut and welded in the middle so the two rotating faces were parallel.  I'm not sure how Jonathan solved this problem with a straight bar, but maybe the older stands didn't have as much angle from vertical as the ones I bought.  Without a bent bar at the bottom, I don't think that you could rotate the engine since the two plates wouldn't be parallel.  You can see the bend in the silver bar at the bottom (I didn't have any orange paint).

I also used 3" angle iron instead of bars and tabs for the engine mounts.  By using angle iron, I was able to bolt it to the mounting plates instead of having to weld the bars on.  This will enable me to turn the stand back into the two original ones if I want.  I sized the distance between the two stands (by the length of the silver bar) so that the two rear mounts would bolt through the outside of the angle iron.  The two front mounts needed tabs welded on that stuck out far enough to reach.  I was going to cut away part of the horizontal portion in the middle of the angle iron.  However, now that everything is together, I don't think it will be in the way.

My neighbor, Mike, was quite helpful.  He's got the nice metal shop and all of the welding gear.  However, he didn't have any scrap 2" square tubing needed for the bottom bar.  I didn't want to cut up the two bars with the stands as I wouldn't be able to make them into two stands again.  In hunting around, Mike had an old workbench with some 2" tubing in it that he was going to cut up for scrap.  So I got the job of cutting it up.  The tool that Mike has is a plasma arc cutter.  This is basically an arc welder with a high pressure air jet surrounding it.  When it is going, it cuts through 1/4" steel like butter with a hot knife.  It has a capacity of cutting through 1" steel plate.  The slot it cuts is about 1/8" wide and pretty smooth.  There's some slag on the bottom, but most of it is blown away by the air jet.  It took me about 10 minutes to cut up the bench.  It would have taken an hour or so and a few blades using a SawzAll.