DIY floor slip for body repair

On our forum, and on the forums of our friends, auto repairmen, questions about the manufacture of a slip for body repair in our garage constantly pop up. Many people try to do it with their own hands, but sometimes new knowledge is required, solutions to possible mistakes, and you have to look for help from your colleagues.

Usually, two versions of homemade slipways are considered: mobile and stationary (concrete floor).

In this article, I tried to compile useful information, from our forum, including: tips, drawings, photos for making a slipway and give an impetus to those who are not yet fully confident in their abilities and are afraid to start making it on their own.

Here is such a slipway made by our member of the forum Yevsey.

The design of the light and mobile Finnish slipway Autorobot micro A was taken as a basis.

The main materials used in the manufacture of steel are channel # 10 and # 12.

Below in the photo are the main nodes of the slipway.

An important detail of the slipway is the grips of the rapids, a kind of vise. For their manufacture, sheet steel with a thickness of 16 mm was used. The width of the sill grips is 150 mm, the tightening bolts are 12 mm, and the bushings are 14 mm. The springs were used from the classic Vase valves. The jaws of the grippers are made of a metal rasp.

To work with this slipway, hydraulics from a set designed for 10 tons are used.
Here is such a chain retainer located on the pulling tower (boom) of the slipway, and also how the sill grippers work.

And here is the actual scheme itself with the dimensions of the slipway.

To simplify the work, special stands were welded with the car entering them in front or back, and it became easier, as well as much faster, to bring the slipway under the belly of the car.

Video (click to play).

This construction of the slipway has the ability to put an adaptation to pull it down. To do this, you need to modernize it a little by placing a slide roller under the chain links.

Cons and pros of this do-it-yourself slipway design. It may be worth considering them if you repeat this or a similar design.

• There are only two sill grips and there is no height adjustment.
• The lock for turning the boom horizontally: there was iron 5 mm, you need at least 10-15 mm.
• During operation, weaknesses began to emerge, which were strengthened.
• The length of the telescopic boom is in principle excessive, so it can be made shorter.
• How to hook the car to the thresholds from below with these grippers if they do not have a flange, for example, a BMW type car? To do this, you will need special adapters that cost quite a lot of money (there are homemade options).

• Both a plus and a minus can be considered the mobility of the slipway and the ability to turn it in different directions, but in a small garage, there will be a problem with movement.
  On the other hand, not every car repair requires the use of a slipway, and in this case, it can simply be rolled out of the garage. And for a small garage, it will be more practical to make a stationary slipway (we will talk about it below).

General impressions of Evsey (the author of the project) from working with his slipway:

In general, beauty, the car is dead on the slipway, the hydraulics pulls extremely easily, as if you were not pulling iron, but cardboard or paper. Before that I used an ordinary winch, so I can compare and say that this is heaven and earth. The slipway has established itself as a real hard worker, rated 5 plus, very mobile and reliable.

You can read the details and discussion of this design on our forum here.

As one of the options for a small homemade slipway for use in a garage, below in a video from Boris AvtoDok, where he talks in detail about his design.

In the second video, the mistakes that were already revealed during the work, how he fixed them and what alterations he made.