Rotisserie Build. Will it hold together?

The kit is US car tool and it is not necessary at all. If you have access to a steel shop or yard and can get some pipe and rectangle tubing cut to length and you have a welder and a grinder, you are set.

I had a steel yard guy cut me a number of triangle gussets and a number of rectangle plates with a shear. Then I had them cut some well casing pipe, square tubing, rectangle tubing, and I bought some scrap 1" x 1/4" x 15" metal strips.

I used a few parts of the kit which I could have really been better off with out and saved me 275.00

I used a 20 dollar harbor freight grinder which I would grind and use big cut off wheels on the grinder to chop off stuff to length.

I just formulated a basic plan with the base of pipe and gussets, upright of one square tube slide over the other, some scrap metal for brace struts and to make the upright disassemble off the base so I can store it compactly.


The US car tool kit is a complete waste of money and time in my opinion, after building this unit.

If you have any questions let me know. Since you live in antioch, you have multiple choices around you for custom length cut steel tubes, pipes and having triangle gussets sheared. Moose Metal in concord is a bit expensive but they have it all and can cut or make anything for you. I am sure you can find others that are more basic. Moose is a high tech operation with a number of employees making all kinds of fancy stuff so their fabrication labor is pricey.

The main two details are the vertical slide which is a square tube about 1.5 or 2" with a thick wall. Then a thick wall square tube that slip fits over it with out too much slack (1/16" or 1/8" total clearance). Then you need the horizontal rotary pivot which is just a pipe with another pipe outside it with minimal clearance too like 1/8" or so.

I would say my car on its side and rotating is less than 8' tall and you see I have my base made of large pipe with casters on the bottom. I could have done differently to make the machine lower to the ground by having the casters off the side of the pipe.

I want to drag this around outside my shop with my truck albeit like a dolly or something, so I wanted it to have a little more clearance.

I suggest you download some plans off the internet and look at several images (online) from different angles of built versions to get build ideas.

You probably already have it covered so this is probably redundant info but I threw it out there anyway...

Good luck!