Anyone have a Body Jig

[dave_r]

I have a ton of early 911s and am looking for a body jig. I'm sick of trying to weld these cars up while trying to keep the door gaps right with a floor jack, especially with targas.

Now, I am moving on to my early "S" cars, so I really want to get it right.

Does anyone have a body jig or know where to get one?

thanks,

David

[RSTarga]

I think you are looking for a Celette. I saw one for sale for under 10,000 once. There must be some body shop out there who has an old one for sale. Maybe if you contact Celette theymight know of one for sale.

[dave_r]

Thanks, I will definitely look into that.

I was hoping to spend in the $1,000-2,000 range. I saw one on ebay once for $800, it was specially made for early 911s and it was a rotisserie, I should have gotten it.

What do most of you do when welding in floors and rockers and longitudinals and the car (targas) wants to split in two? Are there any tricks? I usually keep a couple jacks in the middle of the floor and align the door gaps.

[MrJTP]

You can build (or buy if you can find it) a brace for both doors that, when the doors are removed, attach at the door hinge post location and at the striker plate location to stiffen up the body.

[commdiver]

Thats deifinately going to be a specialty auto body shop question. I have seen to here in the San Fran bay area one at Jerry Woods racing and another at a high end body shop that I cant re-call the name off. They were both made of very proffesional looking heavy, heavy duty beams and steel w/ wheels and large perfectly flat mounting points, with badges and number plates with markings for measuring lengths of body. With very precise mounting for the unibody to sit on, they can be used for mounting unibody too and working on car while rolling it around the shop or they have tools that mount to it to straighten the unibody to factory specs. This tool is very expensive as they cannot be reproduced very easily and would take at least 2K in material to make your own and you would have to have some sort of precise jig made to the body specs out of the Porsche book just to build the tool.

I would cll Jerry Woods and ask them if anybody knows about one on the west coast it would be them.

[304065]

Dave, the fixtures alone from Celette are in the five figure range. Not kidding.

They come up for sale from time to time but I wouldn't think there are more than about a half dozen Celette benches for the 911 in the USA.

[dave_r]

I found that Flat Six inc. has a really nice jig. The owner said that he has $25K in it.

I think that maybe just a rotisserie with some added support might be the way to go.

[RSTarga]

Celette makes a basic bench and then sell or rents you the attachments for the different cars. I suppose that if you only worked on 911's you could adapt a cheaper jig. You would need a perfect 911 to setup the jig. Jigs really do make life a lot simpler when repairing unibody cars. Unfortunately it seems insurance companies seldom want to pay for stripping the suspension to be able to mount the car so many of these jigs sit idle in many dealer body shops. A lot of write offs could be saved if jigs had broader use.

[T77911S]

your location might help.

[kycarguy 935]

I have a Blackhawk System that I bought a year ago. It was used by Porsche Cars North America when they were in Reno, NV.

It took me many years to find that one and I can't imagine finding one again with all of the tooling for under $20k.

I started machining my own at the machine shop. That is another option. I think if you researched the user name Flank, you can find his very educational post on how to make your own jig. He used some heavy duty I beams.

Good luck.

[kycarguy 935]

David,

Wayne got the search function working so I looked up Flanks thread. Here it is...

Flank's 71 Targa restro - Home made chasis jig - pictures

Good luck.

[HarryD]

Look around. Some outfits will let you rent theirs. Where are you located?

[Will 1967]

Originally Posted by john_cramer

Dave, the fixtures alone from Celette are in the five figure range. Not kidding.

They come up for sale from time to time but I wouldn't think there are more than about a half dozen Celette benches for the 911 in the USA.

I can't comment how its in US but here in Europe I bought both SWB and LWB jigs 6 months ago and they were app. 5000$ from Celette. You can still definately get them from Celette as special order, took about 2 months to get them made.

But then you need to get bench and MZ towers as well. So it won't be cheap but its very nice to have car in jig.

[abisel]

Once I get the body welded up, my Celette bench and fixtures will be up for sale. The fixtures are for 70 - 89 911, although the kit did not include adapters for the front bumper attachment points for the 70 - 73. Maybe by next spring, the setup will be for sale.

[dave_r]

please let me know about the celette jig. very nice setup you have.

-dave drunge1@gmail.com

[hdbmw]

Hi Dave, It's Mark, I saw the post and wondered if Dave R (sure sounded like it when you mentioned all the "cars") was you, until I got to the end and saw your e-mail address and that confirmed it! I let my friend Damon up in New Hampshire borrow my rotisserie awhile ago and he should be done with it by now, for what your looking to do the additional supports the other guys are recommending would have to be added. You know, one of Chris's (the speaker the other night) trailers doubles as a chassis plate (when he removes the wheels, levels it and adds the jig fixtures) and I was thinking of adding the same features to mine. Maybe we could do it together and start a thread on here!....I just started reading the forums and these guys are having entirely too much fun on here...LOL
Don't forget Farnbacher Loles on the 13th!