The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area General Truck Talk Weight of a cab

What does the cab of a 1946 chevy truck weigh? Is it movable by hand or does it aleays take a crane and lift?

3good fat bodies can liftit off :p :p :p

My 16 year old son and I took the cab off my 53 by lifting and walking it back off the frame a foot at a time. They say they weigh about 600 lbs. But with the interior and doors removed 2 or three strong lads can do it.

Rich

packhorse32,


I have seen your various posts and can no longer contain myself...are you actually working on a bolt in Korea...your in Korea, the truck is in Korea and you are working on it in Korea? Is this Korea a small town in Kansas or the "real" one! :confused:

Stuart

Hey atomarc-

I am in korea-the country, but not forever. My truck(which is posted in the gallery) is in OHIO which is where I am from. The reason I am here is because I retired from the Army a year ago and the Government pays me to do work here now. i took the job to get setup and then try to change it to the states, but my wife is still in the army and has about 6 years to retire and now i follow her around. The truck will be restored in OHIO or North Carolina as i expect us to be staioned at fort Bragg next. ( any of you guys that used the craft shop at Fort bragg could let me know how nice a place it is-I heard Fort Bragg has a nice auto Craft shop where you can paint and wrench on things at about a buck an hour cost while using their lifts and tools!)I couldnt wait to retire just so i could build a truck, and now I have the funding as well as a small amount of spare time. But here is another question-do you guys get the family involved in your projects? I want my 6 year old daughter and 3 year old son to enjoy this Chevy too so i am waiting to see which one hangs around the project.

Packhorse,

Being independent...I have torn my whole truck down..by myself. I work nights and not many people are home during the day to come over and help me wrench.

If you have a pair of hands to help, it comes in handy, but being a little bit of a loner at times, I like to figure out how to do stuff alone.

To remove my cab, I used the rafters in my garage. I got as close to the wall as I could for strength and then put 4-2X6's across 4 rafters to spread the weight over a very large area. I ran a tow strap through the door openings of the cab (doors removed). I then used a come-along to raise the cab up high enough and then rolled my chassis out from underneath. Then..I built a little dollie, like a carpet roll mover to set the cab on so I can roll it around my garage.

I took everything out of the cab including glass, dashboard, seat etc. Once everything was removed, it was not too bad as far as weight went.

If you can get your truck to a shop with any kind of hoist, I recommend doing it that way instead.

My disclaimer...yes..I know, wooden rafters are not the prefered method for lifting.

I would not use your wooden garage rafters for much more than a couple hundred pounds...if that. I am careful to make sure they are not overloaded causing them to break. Breaking the rafters would put me in the doghouse for quite a while while putting me in extreme danger of wrecking the truck and myself.

I have it from a very reliable source that you can pull a 216 using a single wide garage door header made from 2x8's or 2X10's. It was an older house made back in the day....now that is one thing I would NEVER try again...but hey..I was 16 and it was not my garage...Besides..It worked.

But it was very unsafe!

my buddy and i lifted my 42 cab off the frame and put it thru a 2x 12 then lifted the cab off the floor and screwed the 2x12 to the garage walls to work on the cab floor

Hello:
About 10 years ago I lifted a 1965 Jeep Wagoneer (HEAVY!) body off it's frame. I used 3 older car jacks... bumber style... from the '60's . These are like a "jack all" but had a square column. I inserted a chain in each column and attached two to the header over the garage door opening, and one on the reinforced rafters that I lift engines with. A bolt through the chain at the bottom of the column kept the jacks in the air at any height I needed. Then a 4 by 4 through the front door windows and another 4 by 4 conected to the middle of first 4 by 4 and out the back window. The jacks were bolted to the ends of the three 4 by 4's. I lifted by jacking a bit on each jack. To reinstall the body it was very easy to "fine tune" the height as I let it down. This is hard to describe but if anyone is interested I could try and send a sketch. I felt very secure with this setup and it worked well. I intend to use the same system for a 1951 GMC Panel body (also HEAVY!!)

When I pulled the cab off my '54 3100 my son and I did it ourselves using a cherry picker type engine hoist. I used a strap that came up through the transmission opening. Worked good.

I plan to move that same cab tomorrow using the 4-guys method.