Originally Posted by oilman_15106
My thoughts also. It might be worth it. Or you could make your own spreader with threaded rod, washers and nuts. Just takes longer to set than Sheldons method. Done it on 3 frames with no real problems.
This is recommended against for a good reason. There's absolutely no guarantee that both stays will bend equal amounts. It is in fact far MORE likely that one stay (usually the right stay) will bend quite a bit more than the other. At this point, you have an alignment problem. Correcting this will require using Sheldon's method, so why not just start off with that, and do the job right?
And yes, I've spread a frame using a 2x4. Not actually all that hard (the hard part was fixing the terrible alignment).