Home made engine crane - will this work?

[Flathead_Dave]

Dont think thats what we meant, this is the kind of thing, only I cant find the guy in the uk who sells 'em, you could email these people and see if they have a uk distributor.
Beware of the ratings, you need a higher rated jack than what you are lifting, you need to multiply the rating by the lever ratio, ie if the hook on the lift moves twice the distance of the jack, and the crane is a 0.5 ton then you need 0.5 x 2 = 1 ton jack.

http://www.nextag.com/hydraulic-engine-hoist/search-html

Nextag is a comparison site but they show Northern Tool.They have a UK site but don't show the ram.

http://www.northerntooluk.com/about-northern-tool/Contact-us.html

You can get a Draper engine crane ram as a spare part for around £45 + vat.
It's for the 1 Tonne crane,rated at 3 Tonne.
Part number 54799 (YEC1000-15)

 

[Flathead_Dave]

I had a problem with my engine lift a while back, the hydraulics screwed up, and I found a link to the same lift as above, there was an article in a car mag about it.
I didnt build the lift, I just added the car jack that they used to my commercially produced lift after I'd removed the original long jack.
It worked, but a 6 ton jack struggled with a land rover disco engine, you'd need a 10 ton really, and if you do it put reinforcing plates under the mounts for the jack at both ends of it, both on the vertical and the lifting boom, and weld them on, I bolted mine on in case I went back to the old system and the bolts nearly failed.
Incidently since then I found a bloke on ebay who sells long jacks, just like a bottle jack only the lift is 1 meter, get one of these if you can.
Heres a picture of my bodge:

Just my tupence.

Think you may have had probs because the jack is more vertical than the original ram.

 

[mi3gto]

that should have been 100x75mmm duuuh!

 

[pidgeon chit welder]

I think the prob of having to use a bigger jack is that the weight of the engine over the length of the lever is in excess of the jack capabilities and the jack fulcrum is far too close to the hoist upright

Do a sum of metric length as a decimal of one metre of the lever length x weight to the flucrum point to see what it works out at.


IE 1.4 x 375 kg plus the weight of the lever and chain when parallel with the ground not forgetting to add say 10% for friction = 525 kg plus the add on's
Then work out the additional forces required to move it through the arc of travel . ( if you can be bothered. )

 

[Dr pepper]

I think a pallet truck would be a good base for an outboard lifting machine, the thing to look out for on that one is the reach, presuming your lifting a motor over a quayside, the load will be further forward than the front wheels on the lift, obviously trying to pull the whole lot over, the only way to prevent this is to have a counterweight at the rear, you can work out the required weight by the distances from the load and counterweight to the front wheels.
If you are using this on rough ground then a couple of outriggers with castors on are a good idea for stability, I work in a paper mill and some of our pump pallet trucks are like that.

The reason why the clarke jack didnt lift the disco engine on my engine lift further up is because clarke jacks are naff and way over rated, a morris jack peed all over the disco engine.