Thread: Wheel Dollies vs Jack Dollies

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I need to be able to move my heavy project car (37 Buick Roadmaster, 4200 lbs) around by my self in my garage.
I'm looking at wheel dollies and jack dollies (like uni-dolly).
Is seems like the wheel dollies would not be as useful as the jack dollies because you cannot use them while doing wheel or suspension work.
Wheel dollies are less expensive, but I hate to buy both.
1) What wheel dollies are worth buying?
2) Are jack dollies more useful, and which are best?
3) Is there another option that I'm missing?
Thanks

To get really good wheel dollys you have to spend some money. We have a bunch of the Harbor Freight ones and they suck. The casters don't turn easily to redirect the car, and sometimes you have to take a ballpeen hammer and tap them to get them in the right direction. The wheels are also so small they don't go over irregularities in the pavement easily.

We now use them to put stuff like transmissions and rear axle assemblies on, they work ok for that purpose.

Don

Question time....what is the surface like in the garage like,smooth concrete or more the course chip finish. How often will you need to move the whole vehicle around? My set of dollies are the cheap Taiwanese ones and although I am only moving my bucket on them,I plan to replace the wheels with better ones with bearings etc. when required,but they are and have been doing the job well for many years already. Cost in NZ were $100.00 but are cheaper now.

I have some of the cheaper dollies that have the well for the tire and metal wheels. they do a great job if you only want to go in circles but it's a pain to got straight. I have a buddy who got some heavy duty four wheel furniture dollies and put 3/4 plywood onto and they work like a dream.

Don is right about the HF dollies, they suck, but they do the job for a cheap price. I use them on my uneven floors in my shop and have to do some "persuading" to get them to go where I want them to but they work. And they do work well for moving engines and transmissions around as do the HF furniture dollies.

Yeah, I've got four of the HF wheel dollies that I picked up from a buddy for $50 and they handled my '33 pretty good on smooth concrete. With a 4200# load no dollies are going to be easy to manhandle alone, IMO. Unless you plan to build several cars over the years I would use the economical units, and figure out how to work with them. I've never had to take a hammer to mine, but may in the future....

Roger is right, unless you're some kind of gorilla and your floor is smoother then glass I doubt you'll move the car by yourself.. Like any tools they're an investment not an expense----buy the good stuff and avoid a lot of disappointment......

I have just wheeled dollies and when I got them I had to know which surface they were going to be used on. They made 2 different type of wheels, one for concrete, which are steel wheels and ones for painted floors which are composite wheels. I have a concrete floor so went with steel.

Wow, HF must have sold a million of those orange wheel dollies! I bought 4 of them so I could be sure that my wife's car could get back in the garage to its "rightful" spot after I finished my session for the day.

Don is right about the occasional hammer tap and green is also right about moving in circles...But they were economical and did the job. But throughout two different builds over 8 years I always had to move the car alone. Not easy, but doable!

However I do like the idea of the furniture dollies...

The HF furniture dollies are very useful. I have them all over in my shop! I have three of them with engines sitting on them. I built a mobile grinding station out of a free sink cabinet and bolted the cabinet to one. I have file cabinets with all of my vise grips and body tools sitting on one and I use them all the time for moving rearends and tires and wheels around in the shop.
You can't buy the casters alone for 20 bucks so these things are a good deal when they are on sale.
Don't mean to hi-jack...
Mark

Might be alittle out in left field with this answer.Alot more work to build.But if your restoring the project anyways,why not build a rotisserie on wheels??.That way you could have the car on it's side to make more room.Sure it is a matter of degrees of what work you are doing.

One really good use we did find for the HF dollys was when I got my 46 Tudor home a couple of years ago it has no running gear, just a frame, and we needed a way to move it around. We found a big wooden pallet, put four of the HF dollys under it, and strapped them in place with rachet straps so the dollys were tightly held to the pallet. We put the car balanced on that setup, and it moved around like butter.

I was a little leary and thought the car might tip off of it, but it's been on there for two years and we have pushed the car all over the shop with no problems. Only recently did we put jack stands under the entire car as Don was tearing stuff off and we didn't want the car to fall over.

But it was one of those temporary fixes that actually worked long term.

Don