I’ve always loaded the heavy side of the car on my asymmetrical lift towards the short arms. Ie. The front of a 944 towards the short arms, and a 911 “backwards” with the engine towards the short arms (a PITA getting in and out of the car because the door can not open very far)

I’d prefer to lift our ‘23 CGTS 4.0 normally, but it feels like most of the weight is still behind the driver’s seat. Thoughts?

Thanks!!

 

~44% front and ~55% rear is the weight distribution when its sitting on 4 wheels. Curious how that changes when its on a lift. Likely due to the rake, the weight shifts towards the rear of the car more while its on a lift.

following...

 

The lift points are almost the same height, so I don’t expect the weight distribution to change off the ground.

My concern is about center of gravity, which you want as close to the posts of the lift as possible. Too much one way or the other and the floor mounting could be over stressed and fail.

Knowing 45% front, 55% rear, a rough guess might be 55% of the distance between the front and rear axles, back from the front axle is close the center of gravity.

I suspect that means it loads like a 911, back end first. Which makes it difficult to get in and out.

More googling today….

 

FYI, found this on Rennlist for the 911:
https://rennlist.com/forums/991/1235...tribution.html

 

This guy on planet 9 did it both ways. 🙄

https://www.planet-9.com/threads/981....83864/page-18

 

With how light these are, I wouldn’t worry either way. I have engines/trans out with worse weight distribution and as long as it’s put on the lift correctly (4 corners), you should be fine.

 

Thanks Don. I was thinking something similar. It’s a 3,200lbs car on a 9,000lbs lift. Should have some extra capacity for CG not being perfectly centered.

 

So I went through the exercise of marking the approximate CG fore/aft with painters tape on the window. Amazingly it is even with the middle of the drives seat. Got to love Porsche engineers.

I then laid out on the floor with painters tape where I thought the 2X12s I needed to get clearance for the lift arms, left pads, and the hockey pucks to protect the underside of the car. I made the mistake of putting the front and rear 2X12s is the same relative place compared to the tires. The front 2X12s need to be as far forward as possible and the real need to be as far back as possible to provide clearance for the lift arms.

I positioned the car's CG within the lift post's front and back sides. This would work, but the front lift arms had to "reach" forward to the car's lift points, and were in the typical perpendicular to the center line of the car. This barely worked as the rear lift arms barely fit inside the rear tires while fully retracted.

That's when the light went on and I realized that the lift pads the are anchored to the floor are about 8" wider than the posts on both sides. As long as the CG was within the pad dimensions the in-balance on the lift should be minimal. So I moved the car back to where the CG was even with the back edge of the lift pads. The front arms lined up with the jacking points perfectly and the rear arms had plenty of clearance.

So the moral of the story is I didn't need to over analyze the weight distribution and follow Don's guidance and everything will be OK. Just load the car in the same way you would lift a front engine car, and the CG will be close enough to not cause a problem.

I did learn that the front of the car is quite long as my front clearance is similar to the clearance I have when working on my Nissan Armada. That I would have never guessed.

 

Glad that you feel good about it now. Feel like that’s how it has to go for people like us!

I use to worry and then I lifted my 2500 diesel and realized how under stressed they are on these lifts. Usually pop a car on and then lift it so the wheels are off the ground and bounce the front and back just to make sure.

 

Thanks Don,

I’m an electrical engineer (retired), so my detail obsessive side comes out from time to time. On the other hand I didn’t want to be “that guy” whose new CGTS fell off the lift, and became a legend on RL. Especially with me under it!