A Quick Word About..........Building an Engine Trolley

I'd done just about as much as I could with my engine on its stand. 

With the time approaching when I would need to re-join the engine and gearbox, I needed to decide what to do. Many people simply stand the engine on it's sump and block it with pieces of wood to stop it falling over.

My engine: split and grounded - 1998

I wasn't keen on that - partly in case it damaged the plate covering the oil filter, partly because I wanted to keep it off the dusty floor, partly because i wanted it at a height i could still work on it and partly because I needed to be able to manoeuvre the engine around a little and from workshop to garage.

A proper Citroen stand ("stand 3083-T") is shown on several photos in the Manuals.......

Citroen engine stand

.........and you can also make a sledge on wheels to mate the gearbox to the engine (tool MR.630-42/13).

I made enquiries through the DS Yahoo group to see if anyone had tried to make anything similar for engine and gearbox and got lucky: someone replied to say his brother had built a stand. I pressed them for details and he provided a couple of photos. It looked great! Just what I had in mind! They dug around a little more and even came up with a build plan for it - including all the crucial measurements!  

I'm not a welder and so adapted the plans to enable me to build something from wood - 75cm x 75cm fence posts to be exact. I'd already built a basic trolley using a small pallet and some castor wheels. I used that as my base. I used the sturdy fence posts to make the supports under the engine mounts and screwed them to two long 'rails'. It came out looking like this.....

One foot pad has an overhang to leave room for the exhaust downpipes

As ever with these things - copy at your own risk, and put safety first.

I was conscious that the two upright arms may fold in (or out!) under the weight of the engine - so needed to brace them. As well as the main, long, hex headed screws going up through the rails and into the arms, I added some short straps to the outer joins, and used some metal tubing (metal channelling used to protect electrical cabling) to join the two rails - with the bonus that the stand's width could then be adjusted.

Wood was convenient to work with, but a lot chunkier than the steel used in the original design I was shown. I knew at some point I would want to fit the exhaust downpipe, so topped my upright arms with some offcuts of sturdy angle to create a short overhang - just enough to leave me some space on the exhaust side.

Strapping the engine onto the crane to take the weight, I gingerly released it from the stand....

Freed from the engine stand

.....and slowly lowered it onto its new home. And here's what the stand looks like with the engine perched on it.....

Now where did I put that gearbox?