Complete Celette bench jig & bespoke early 911 bracket set

[amallagh]

I am very sad to say that none of my trio of R, RS and RSR projects has exactly gone to plan. In fact far from it. I've not given up, but have to be realistic about what I'm going to get finished and when.

The chartreuse green RS is very nearly finished for Rally Costa Brava in a month time but big bills have mounted up and the car sets me back a lot more than I ever expected.
Although it was a fully MOT'd driver when I bought it in Feb 2015, the bodywork turned into an underside restoration setting me back close to £13k including stripping and re-assembly. After running the car for a while it was clear that the loom was well past it's sell by date, and was going to let me down when I least needed it, so a complete re-loom was order of the day for another £2k. That is on top of all the stuff I planned to spend on all new brakes, suspension, seats, harnesses, rally lights/trip/timers/etc., heated screen, extinguishers, h/e's, cut outs, new clutch, etc.

So on the bright side it is nearly finished and with a bit of luck will be rallying in Costa Brava in a month or so.

The next in line is the RSR. This has turned into a proverbial nightmare on the bodywork front. It had been having metal work done and redone for all of 2015 and eventually went for paint in Q4 2015 over 6-9 months behind schedule. This unearthed a heap more bodywork to do and several key bits that would have to be redone from scratch. Major nightmare and I won't even say how much it has cost me as it makes my eyes water
I'm still trying to figure out exactly what to do about it, this has all come to light in the last couple of weeks only. But I'm hopefully this will still happen. Finishing it for this summer though, probably isn't realistic so and more likely to be 2017 before it is on the road and the budget has just got a heap bigger.

That brings me onto the project that actually started off the dream trio, the '67/'68 swb R project.
I bought this ex rally car shell back in April 2014 knowing it was going to need a lot of work. I don't normally like dipping a car because of stripping off all the paint in all those impossible to get to places, but this car was so bad if we hadn't, then we would have been chasing our tale for months trying to get back to anything solid. So after stripping it down and ripping off the sills it was off to get dipped in late 2014. It came back a lot lighter than it went and Enviro-strip said it was one of the worst they'd seen. One of the only panels worth saving was the top of the rear 1/4s and they managed to bash that in getting it in and out of the tanks.
I have >60 panels bought and ready to fit to the car but it was clear that without a jig it couldn't be done.
9 months of looking myself and waiting for my body guy to get a jig I eventually got one.
The job on the R shell is massive and without the roll cage in it, it would have already fallen apart. Frustratingly it has sat for a year now post dipping just gathering surface rust while the jig was found and the RSR bodywork was completed. The job is still massive.

To top everything off Mr Cameron has decided he needs a LOT more money to pay for local services. Makes any of the numbers above seem small. This has wiped me out so work has had to be suspended indefinitely on the R.

The long and the short of this is that I need to sell a load of stuff to be able to finish the RS and to even have a prayer of finishing the RSR this year. One of those things that might go is the Celette jig as it was only got for the R and that is on hold till I don't know when.

Below are pictures of the jig and bespoke 911 brackets. They have only been used once and the jig is in good condition. The brackets are like new. It is currently holding up the remains of my R shell but that can be removed.
Send me a PM if you are interested in the jig. If it is going to go at all then it needs to go now.
With the full mobile jig bed and the full set of bespoke Porsche 911 brackets, there are also 22 blue towers
080-6 off
140-4 off
200-4 off
260-4 off
601-1 off
602-1 off
141-1 off
142-1 off
2 off extension plates
5 off cross beams
4 off cill clamps
1 off puller with new air foot pedal and hose
box of celette stamped bolts





Sales picture of the Porsche 911 brackets set


One above is not my jig but shows the bespoke Porsche bracket set in place on a smaller Celette jig

[sladey]

Where's the price?

[redrobin911]

HI Andy

Depending on price i'd be interested? I have PM to you.

[Steve Warson]

Are you selling a set like the blue (Forged) Celette ones or the (Gray) welded up replicas?

Very interested in a blue (real) set!

[johnM]

Are you selling a set like the blue (Forged) Celette ones or the (Gray) welded up replicas?

Very interested in a blue (real) set!

Pictures here if it helps.

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=55834

[MT]

Are you selling a set like the blue (Forged) Celette ones or the (Gray) welded up replicas?

Very interested in a blue (real) set!

You need both sets. The blue set are the generic units that the grey (911 specific) set fit into. The original version of the grey aftermarket set was red.

Got that at the back ......

Mick

[Project 911]

Are you selling a set like the blue (Forged) Celette ones or the (Gray) welded up replicas?

Very interested in a blue (real) set!

You need both sets. The blue set are the generic units that the grey (911 specific) set fit into. The original version of the grey aftermarket set was red.

Got that at the back ......

Mick

Sorry to jump in but I have to correct this a bit; blue ones are MZ towers that original fixtures fits (I have those), grey ones looks to be completely separate "aftermarket" ones and not adjustable like originals and NO MZ (blue) towers are needed with those.
So with just blue towers (they are generic) you still need car specific (red) fixtures that are very expensive. Believe me as I ordered those many years ago from Celette...

[Barry]

Just to add to this if I may.

As Ville says, the blue towers are part of the later Celette system that was as modular as possible, so are a complete set that cover all cars. In the same way, the beams can be put into multiple positions. Into the tops of the blue towers go the model-specific red brackets (not offered here). These often have two positions, one for 'mechanics in' and a second, higher one, for 'mechanics out'.

In order of strength: pattern grey towers (as shown), are for checking and holding locations, but not really for pulling. If you wanted to do pulling using these, you'd lock off the sills with the yellow / black clamps (be aware that as standard on the 911 you can only use one per side, and you need to do any pulling before the sill area comes apart). To be safe, you'd remove all brackets near the pull site to protect them, do the pulling, then pop the brackets back in to see how you're doing.

Blue / Red MZ system, can be used for moderate pulling and alignment, and full pulling with sill clamps.

You can boost pulling strength by bolting plates to either the jig bed or beams, and then welding angle / bar or whatever upto the car. I do this a lot, as you can counteract the pull in any weird direction without risking distortion of the precious towers. Afterwards, just cut the bar off the car / plate and unbolt the plate from the jig.

Finally, there is an early Celette bracket system that doesn't use the MZ towers, but complete brackets from beam to car. These are the heaviest of all, and can used for pulling without sill clamps. Terrible if you were a jig hire company, or general repair shop as they were very heavy and took tons of space. Perfect for restoration of one model time after time though. I'd love a set of these ....

With Andy's set-up here, you have a really good range of options, including using the info from the grey towers to reverse engineer some pattern Celette style red brackets, or you could hire in the same for any light pulling before returning to the grey towers for the build.

Additionally of course, you can hire in red bracket sets for other makes / models. When you do, you get a diagram to show you the appropriate positions of the beams and towers. Set up, and off you go. Some cars can take all four sill clamps without the use of towers / brackets at all, so if you need to pull out, say, the rear end of a random car that's been tapped, you can.

It took me a long time to reach the same set-up that Andy is offering here, and they don't come up in nice condition very often. Frankly, there's no repair on a 911 shell that can't be done with this collection.

Good luck with the sale Andy, and I hope the projects have a happy outcome .

[Barry]

I forgot to mention as a bit of general Celette purchasing advice. With the MUF7 bench as I have, and I believe some earlier ones (MUF5 ?), the bed is constructed of the main I-beams (RSJ) with a 10-12mm layer of plate welded on the top.

Many jigs used to get chucked outside when they weren't being used to save space. Sometimes they were covered, sometimes not. You have to check very carefully that the top plate and the RSJ materials have not started to blow apart because of rust. If the jig shows signs of being painted, or if it's got rust pits anywhere, be very wary. An error of 1mm at the base can send the taller towers out by 6mm or more at the top, which would be completely useless.

The people I got mine from used to scrap quite a few beds as they came in as p.ex against more modern quick-pull benches for this reason.

Pragmatically, you should be able to check it with a good long (very long ideally), straight edge, but if it's blown I can't see it would be very practical to re-surface it. Also, happily, the bed is the bit with the least value, so if you find a really comprehensive set-up with a poor bed, it still might pay to grab it (with discount), then find a good bench.

The only other thing to do is check the blue towers carefully for being bent (usually comparing them with another one of the same in your 'pack', and by placing a long bar / bracket in the socket is enough). The beams seem to be amazingly tough, but again, worth just running an eye and straight edge over them to be sure. With all of this stuff, once you've checked it, most people will never need to worry again as it'll be them using their own kit. Even so, if I'd had to do some very heavy pulling, I do double check the towers afterwards. As a guide, you can often take any pulling chains up so that your whole body weight can barely deflect the chain at all. Easily ten tons or more.

[Steve Warson]

Thank you for sharing a bit your vast knowledge Mr. Barry! Humbled here...

[amallagh]

Jig now gone