The split...

The next step was to split the body and frame from one another. The acutal time to separate them really didn't take as long as I expected. The effort that went into the rotisserie was time well spent and I was able to use one of the stands to connect to the rear section of the car. However, I had to attach the stand to the trunk floor due to the fact the body mounts were rusted as well as the structure in that area. I left the front of the car on the 4x4 so that I could finish the work on the floor and toe boards.

Here's the view from the rear of the car sitting on the stand

Here you can see the frame and entire suspension.  Notice they took the original frame and moved the rear rails inward to compensate for the larger tires, ladder bars and coil overs?  The one good thing they did was they didn't cut up the original rearend.  They took the ralley wheels and had extensions welded in so the offset was inward instead of outward.

Next step is to start working on the removal of the rocker panels and quarter panels.

The rotisserie project

I took a short detour while working on the car to help make things easier.  I spent the better part of the month of August and September 2008 building my first rotisserie for the body.   I found the design online and proceed to cut and weld the parts together.  This is the first major welding I've done in 15+ years so I was a bit rusty but most of it came back.  At some point in the future a large mig/tig welder is going to be on the wish list to help with the larger projects.  

Here's an update to the rotisserie stand from July 2010.  I had to modify the stands to enable the body to rotate completely.  As you can see I've added a hydraulic jack to the stand.  This gives me a very flexible height adjustment to make it easier to load and unload the body as well as the ability to extend the height to rotate the body 90 degrees with plenty of height to spare.  As it turns out the design worked out quite well to help support the weight and allow the rotisserie to work correctly.