Crawling under a car is no fun. Enter a mechanic's creeper, which makes rolling in and out a breeze. Even fun, a bit like riding a soap box low to the ground !
My previous creeper was a cheap plastic thing with small wheels. The plastic tray quickly sagged and the wheels bowed out, which made riding it as fun as pushing a grocery cart with uncooperating wheels...
So I built one with scrap plywood and larger caster wheels. Oh my, so much better. Rides super smoothly, even over floor joints, and the wheels change direction instantaneously. It's actually now fun to glide under the car.
Main build steps:
- Get good caster wheels. The less play in the swivel assembly, the better the riding experience (I hand picked the best 4 from 2 boxes at Home Depot)
- Select plywood thicknesses for the wheel arch pieces and bottom strips so as to leave at least 0.5" clearance between the floor and the 2 bottom reinforcement strips (in my case: 0.5" plywood for the bottom strips, 3/4" elsewhere)
- Cut the main board for your body size (42x22" in my case)
- Cut all the 2.5" large strips
- Jigsaw openings in the main board such that each wheel can rotate freely
- Glue and screw
- Add padding as needed. An add'l ~1" pad for the head greatly relieves neck tension
Sketchup model posted here: https://github.com/RaphTronic/Mechanic-Creeper
Ready for a garage derby race !
Comments
Post a Comment