How To: Build a scale Engine Stand

[ian ashton]

Inspired by the scale Jack Stands thread, I decided to try my hand at building an engine stand, and I must say I think it came out great! I just winged all of the measurements from memory of my real engine stand in the garage.

Materials:

1/8" Square Tube Stock

Round Tree/Sprue (the stuff you throw away from every model kit you've ever owned!)

.0015 Solder or any other kind of small flexible wire

1 small push pin

4 blade radiator fan, or something similar (or flat sheet plastic)

CA Glue

Tools:

Xacto Knife

Small Drill Bit & Pin Vice

Side Cutters/Clippers

First I cut the 4 pieces of Square tube stock, here are the lengths:

3x - 1"

.5"

Make a "T" with 2 of the 1" pieces and glue. On the opposite end of the T glue your .5" piece, making a sort of upside down "I". From there, glue your other 1" piece at a 90* angle from the middle of the "T".

If you did it right, it should look like this:

Next, take cut a piece of round sprue at .25" long and sand it so it looks nice and round. Glue that at the top of the 90* piece. When it dries use your drill bit to drill a hole all the way through, length wise. It should look like this:

Now we need to make some wheels, this is where I got creative. Cut really small pieces of the same sprue, and sand them up - I just laid a piece of sand paper flat on my work surface, dropped the little round circle on the sandpaper, and gave it a few swipes on each side. When they seem "clean" drill a hole in the center and feed your wire through, making a "U" around the wheel. It should look like this:

Make 4 of those, 1 for each corner.

Now you need to drill the base of the engine stand so we can attach the wheels. I drilled 2 small holes on each end, really close togather. Once your holes are drilled, trim the wire for each wheel so that the wheels fit nicely into the stand and glue them in. ***Note, you might want to paint your wheels and engine stand before glue, I wanted to see what it looked like first, so I didn't paint this one.***

Bottom drilled, and attaching wheels:

Last step is an easy one - find a 'parts box' 4 blade radiator fan, and trim/sand it down (this is a Revell Hemi fan), drill a hole in the center, and put a pin through it. Slide the fan/pin assembly through the hole in the long round sprue at the top of the stand and bend the end down. Trim the end, and you are done!

Next to my Hemi Dart:

All in all, this cost me $3 for the square tube (which I wanted anyway to build a trailer hitch for another project), and took about 15 minutes, including time for pictures, not a bad little project. Next I'm going to try my version of jack stands.

[Foxer]

Very nice and creative. The end result looks great!

[highway]

I agree, very nice job. That looks just as good as the one in my Fujimi Garage and Tools kit.

[Jamez]

Looks great!!!

I guess now I'll have something to go with my jackstands.

Who's going to offer up a jack?

[charlie8575]

I echo what's already been said- very nice work with fantastic end results. I might give this one a try myself.

Charlie Larkin