4 post car lift

[109party]

i am looking at building one as cheaply as possible. can arc weld and have engineering knowledge what the best way to go about it. i have thought of many differnt ways needs to lift about 3ton manual or hydraulic or however u suggest whats best and cheapest not to be made of wood

 

[gavuk]

take a look at these .last time i priced up,steel was expensive and therefore 2nd hand 3phase on ebay were about same price ,i understand steel is cheaper at mo....though jacks are same price.......how high do you need to lift?4 post.........ramps................restoration ramps ...........for starters.Gav

 

[Luke]

I've seen plenty go on ebay for just a couple hundred quid - surely that's the cheapest solution, even if you replace all teh safety critical parts like cables etc?

 

[109party]

i like the first one but im not paying 1300. it looks like its some 4ft farm jacks thats what i was thinking of but i though having to go round each handle would be dodgy if not il start drawing up some plans

 

[109party]

I've seen plenty go on ebay for just a couple hundred quid - surely that's the cheapest solution, even if you replace all teh safety critical parts like cables etc?

there all 3phase

 

[Luke]

that's not a problem, an inverter isn't that expensive

 

[gavuk]

Question is still why do u need a ramp?what jobs do you want to do?invertors are quite cheap now so def don't rule out 2nd hand ,ramps are portable and store away....and are u sure you want 4post and not a 2 post?...

 

[rory1]

i don't know if i like the idea of four hi- lift jacks, they tend to come down with a bit of speed now and again, i thought it was just because the ones i was using were old but they all seem to do it.
and you would have to jack each corner independently a few notches at a time, would be pretty time consuming for day to day jobs, although wouldn't be such a problem for restoration jobs where the car may be on the ramp for a while

 

[peterd51]

Hi,

someone had a two-post lift for sale on here a few days ago...

I two poster shouldn't be that hard to make I'd say.

Something like two motors turning a long thread and the lift parts are on nuts. You just need to drive both motors forwards or backwards at the same time and it'll screw the lifts up and down.

I can't see the lift ever dropping suddenly but, just in case, once it's up to working height you could fit some locking pins.

A four poster could be done the same way but four motors would be a bit pricey.

An alternative could be posts with a 'bridge' between them, with rods and bevelled gears driving two posts off one motor. A bit trickier to set up but an interesting project.

Would it be free standing or have you a place where you can sink it into concrete?

Regards
Peter

 

[Archie]

I wouldn't try and build a two poster. I think it would be considerably more complicated to get right. The design would need to take into account the fact that you'd never get the car exactly central so there's always going to be some sort of moment on the joint. We have an old four poster at home which has worked perfectly for years. It's very simple; four pieces of large angle with long vertical threads mounted in each. The ramp itself has a chain that runs the full perimeter to nuts on all four corners and one motor to drive it. No safety lock as far as I'm aware. However, I would have thought that by the time you've got hold of all the bits required it would be considerably easier and cheaper to buy a second hand one and either fit a new motor or an inverter drive.

 

[MrFluffy]

Buy a two/four post, swap 3 phase motor for a single phase unit. This should be a semi trivial task, but might require a little furtling with the wiring. Motor frame sizes are fairly standard, but a adaption can be whizzed up fairly easily if you happen to have a single phase motor but with the wrong frame size.
You couldn't buy all the steel and cables etc for what you can pick the rest of the lift up for.
Even the two posts have one motor, and connect the left and right halves by a cable (thats whats under the little metal bumper cover between the two posts on the floor).
Theres are newer designs which use two motors and syncronise them somehow, or hydraulic with sync but these are unlikely to be the ones secondhand cheap on fleabay etc.

Ive got the space marked out for a nice big four post lift, when I get the house done thats on the shopping list, hence lots of research already...

 

[109party]

i am into restoring landys and old trucks sort of 50s and 40s era o and bikes so i would have full length ramps so a bike would go on it aswell, i was thinking about rsj's and cage that would slide up and down inside that would be rachteted up by a winch in a ideal world but i want to move the whole thing in one go so a cable sytem would be complicated,,

 

[Amit]

I have a lift virtually identicall to this in my home garage

http://www.holden.co.uk/displayprod...ds&agCode=1520&agName=Car+Lifts&pCode=097.800

And holden have helpfully given you most of the drawings/details to build your own

Cheap hydraulic cylinder from ebay and you are good to go.

Amit

 

[eddie49]

I have an "Autolift" , which is a scissor-lift similar to the Holden and others, but unique in that, after rising about a metre, it can tilt the car forward or back. With the opposite wheels off, you can get the front or back bumper of a short car about 2 metres off the ground. It is electro-hydraulic, 240v, with two rams and a cable-operated interlock. The car is supported by extendable X-arms, which tilt on a single axis at the centre of the car, so there is very little restriction of access to the underside. Best of all, you can drag it outside ( about 300 Kg ) on 2 wheels, if, like me, you don't have enough headroom in your garage. It's magic. It will only lift 2 tons, but you could scale up the basic idea to take 3 tons.

 

[109party]

yer its for my landys im sick being underneath getting nowere when u jest for once want it at head height

 

[drivewasher]

What about saftey testing of any lifting gear. Including ramps. If you employ anyone you have to have an anuall test and a cert to prove it

 

[Wedg1e]

One of my TVR cronies bought an ex-garage 4-poster to stick in his home garage. Unfortunately it was too wide for the garage, so he got someone to cut a few inches out of the centre of the frame and weld it back together.
Then he realised that two of the cables were now longer than the other two, so he cut down the opposite two posts so that all 4 cables were now the same length again!
In doing all this he found that the cables, once cleaned up, were fraying to hell (despite it having a valid test certificate whilst still at the original garage!).
By the time he'd sorted it all out and added a 3-phase inverter he must have spent over a grand, not quite the bargain he thought he'd started with...

Incidentally it works by having steel cables running up from the corners of the ramp, over pulleys at the top of the posts and back down, round another pulley and all 4 cables meet at a plate which is pulled by a hydraulic ram. Safety is taken car of by 4 long lengths of studding that run up each corner post. Attached to the ramp at each corner is a block with an egg-shaped hole, through which the studding passes as the ramp goes up and down. If any cable snaps, the ramp tilts at that corner and the studding gets jammed in the narrow part of the egg-shaped hole...!
Apparently there have been 3 deaths attributable to collapsing garage ramps in the last two years... don't hear that one shouted about too much.

 

[EddyP]

I know of a bradbury 4 post for sale, 3 phase but in good condition, think the guy wants about £200 for it and is based near Birmingham, doubt you could even buy the steel to make your own for that price.

 

[^neo^]

a mate has one that is hydraulic / cable drive. Runs off a single phase pump. Got it given to him from a council yard that were upgrading one of the ramps, so single phase are available.

 

[funstuie]

I have an "Autolift" , which is a scissor-lift similar to the Holden and others, but unique in that, after rising about a metre, it can tilt the car forward or back. With the opposite wheels off, you can get the front or back bumper of a short car about 2 metres off the ground. It is electro-hydraulic, 240v, with two rams and a cable-operated interlock. The car is supported by extendable X-arms, which tilt on a single axis at the centre of the car, so there is very little restriction of access to the underside. Best of all, you can drag it outside ( about 300 Kg ) on 2 wheels, if, like me, you don't have enough headroom in your garage. It's magic. It will only lift 2 tons, but you could scale up the basic idea to take 3 tons.

Hi,

Have you got a link to the model you have?

Cheers