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I know a standard two post hoist would be great but height restricted as well. I do not get why these portable units have to cost more. Quickjack would be good but $3K for the spec I would want is crazy.
There are lots of them on eBay starting at $1.3 to $1.5 US, new. If you are patient and set up an alert you might grab a good used one for considerably less.
Good description on how you lift the car. Garage height is the issue for me and two post hoist otherwise easy deal for me here in Australia. Its the smaller things like Quickjacks that come at a premium even more than a standard hoist. If I could get Porken lift bars I think I would be happy. If anyone in Australia has any and no longer required let me know. Thanks again for the reply.
Greg
Do what I did- make some from 2 inch square section galvanised beam. I made two sets for the princely sum of a bit less than $20. I measured the centres of the jacking points on the car and drilled holes to take a bolt and some stacked washers to provide a shear stop.
The is system is so stable that one axle stand can collapse and nothing serous will happen. The load in such circumstance is taken by the remaining diagonal and the car will rock slightly across the diminished axis such that with one hand you can easily paddle the car up and down a bit- tested it in each position. The attached photo gives you the idea.
Ken is a very clever chappie and he gave me quite a lot of help on a number of issues so I sent him a large drink!
Sat on 3 tonne axle stands- also have a set of 6 tonne units for additional height for when needed.
Do you happen to remember the gauge or wall thickness of the tubing you used? Saves me from doing the calcs...
Bob,
As I best I could fathom out it is a 65x65x6 square section beam. When measuring the thickness it seemed to vary between 6mm down to 5mm in places and by chance it is also galvanised.
Generally speaking I engage it using my now defunct trolley jack [it took a dump when the car was up in the air] and during the lift operation I typically use two jacks. I can lift it with one jack but interestingly it works better placing the single jack about 1/3rd of the way along the beam rather than in the centre as it deflects more. Even so that is not an issue as in the worst case it will top out on the underside of the car and the load is minimal- still I prefer to avoid that.
When lifting or lowering the car I lift it on one side to the lowest position of the 3 tonne axle stands. I then go to the other side and lift it directly to the base position plus three notches. I then go to the other side and lift it to plus 6 notches [full height] and then back to the other side for the remaining 3 notches.
I am a bit buggered at the moment in that the jack I used to use I sold with the car it came from. Then as above my trolley jack took a dump. I was a bit stuck as to how I could lower the car so the other day when doing my food shopping at the hyper market I purchased a $10 4 tonne Ying Tong bottle jack to help me get the thing back on the deck- those things are truly disgraceful crap but it did its job today.
Thanks Fred -- I'm down to one roller jack these days, and it has a slight dribble. Not serious enough to fix. More like Jaguar 'seepage' that one monitors. Finding 2x2x.250 or greater wall thickness isn't too tough. When I initially looked at the loading and deflection I was trying to find room for a rib on the top to help with the deflection, but by the time I added the extra pad height to allow for a 1" spine, the overturning/rollover looked pretty ugly, especially if one decided to use bigger that a couple-inch-at-a-time steps going up and down. Might be better to just find some 3" tubing, or go to .325"/10mm wall thickness or add some other stiffener inside the .250"/6mm wall tubing you are using. Ken did some interesting stuff on his bars that considers these concerns. I need to spend more time under the car with a tape-measure and a straight-edge.
Thanks Fred -- I'm down to one roller jack these days, and it has a slight dribble. Not serious enough to fix. More like Jaguar 'seepage' that one monitors. Finding 2x2x.250 or greater wall thickness isn't too tough. When I initially looked at the loading and deflection I was trying to find room for a rib on the top to help with the deflection, but by the time I added the extra pad height to allow for a 1" spine, the overturning/rollover looked pretty ugly, especially if one decided to use bigger that a couple-inch-at-a-time steps going up and down. Might be better to just find some 3" tubing, or go to .325"/10mm wall thickness or add some other stiffener inside the .250"/6mm wall tubing you are using. Ken did some interesting stuff on his bars that considers these concerns. I need to spend more time under the car with a tape-measure and a straight-edge.
Bob
Bob,
My trolley jack is in pieces at the moment as I try to find out why it has failed- it is a chunky thing- very heavy [3 tonne rating] with low load capability so no problem getting started. It also helps to have a separate jack on a rear lift point and pump it up to increase the ground clearance on the other side.
I would not go with anything smaller than the square section I use - I consider it OK but marginal- thus why I prefer to lift with two jacks. Ken designed his liftbars for a single point lift at the centre point. Anything bigger would be uncomfortably heavy for single man operation. Takes me about 30 minutes tops to complete the lift taking my time. I reckon I could do it in 15 minutes if I had additional jacks.
Regards square tubing. The concern I had with building lifts for my R129 and the 928 is the stability of a square tube while lifting. Does it want to stay square to the jack pad or the car. If the jack pad is the dominant factor, would the lift pads not want to roll out of the car? Therefore, I used round pipe , figuring it would roll nicely as the car arcs through its lift.
The mid-rise scissor's are intresting - aussie @G.P. has one, but I haven't been round to see it.
Alternatively, there are low-rise 2-posts available locally.. HAPP90 is similar to maxjax but has lockout points every 10cm on the way up, so good height flexibility.
I'm height compromised too in the garage.. if I get a hoist I'm still stuck with i-beams in the way at 2.2m, so I keep flipping between "would really like a hoist" to "can live with homemade liftbars until my next house".
Pipe would be fine. My thinking is that the tendency to roll is not limited by using round vs. square tubing. The bolts that Fred used on the tubing go from casual guide to shear loading as the angle increases, hence his guidance on just a few stand-clicks of offset at any time in the process. If the bolt head stuck up higher the situation might be slightly better, but only slightly. Without getting out the calculator, the basic guidance is that you want the shortest distance vertically as possible between the contact from the jack and the contact with the lift pad on the car. Fred used 65mm box tubing, a little less than 2.5" US sized tubing. The max angle you'd want to see is about 20º from horizontal, and even that puts some interesting side loads on the lift pads on the tub. More than about 20º is where you start risking the liftbar rolling. That doesn't include allowance for the bar sliding off the jack, risk that varies with the size and configuration of the jack pad itself. That's where the round pipe might be better, affecting both the sliding on the jack and improving the max angle of the lift pad on the car by keeping the lift pressure closer to under the center of those lift pads.
All that said, I lift the car with a block of 4x8 lumber between the jack pad and the lift pad on the car. The first lift is probably 16" or so, which gets close to that 20º limit. My jack has a big pad so I don't worry about slipping there, and so far no issues with it slipping at the lift pads under the tub. The solution might be a pair of square sections tacked side-by-side, with indexing bolts as Fred's picture shows. A wedge of something is needed where the jack lifts so the box tubes roll with the car as it's lifted, offering a similar effect to what you get with Ken's pipe. 2" square .25" wall or so, side by side, wouldn't be that light to lift but not really a big deal. A similar wedge at each end would keep everything centered on the stands once lifted. I think I'd still grab the calculator and do a few load examples just to be sure.
I'll still use the MaxJax for everything except placing the car in storage position. Unless I can figure a way to have the against-the-wall liftbar self-elevate, I'm stuck with lifting directly with the jack and a block for the storage situation here.
There are lots of them on eBay starting at $1.3 to $1.5 US, new. If you are patient and set up an alert you might grab a good used one for considerably less.
Problem with my model is the lift bar needs to have a clearance bend in it. Any straight option wont work I believe. This makes a home made job a little more complex. Pics of kens below for the early model 928.
I am starting to like the idea of these as well. May lend well to dropping a trans or something later if need be. Not sure if Quickjack would get high enough. I went looking for MAXJax in Australia and couldnt really find a supplier.
04-01-2020, 05:22 AM
