Hello gang, I built a fairly nice 4,000 sq ft shop on my house property 4 yrs ago so I could have room for cars, bikes & related projects. It looks like our house architecturally and has a "high bay" of 3 stalls, the center of which I installed an Autolifter 2-post lift. I've been quite happy with the lift. At the last minute I changed the order to a unit that's a foot wider. Good thing...it's still narrow enough that it's inconvenient to squeeze out of the door, so I'll often push the car into its final position. Any wider would've interferred with the adjacent stalls. The lift is plenty strong enough to handle our Suburban with spare capacity for an even heavier vehicle and it has safety dogs that hook up if there's a loss of hydraulic pressure. I haven't needed to park another vehicle under, but wouldn't hesitate to do so. It has "lift blocks" that allow the arms to reach under the rocker panel of a vehicle and then extend up to meet the frame, and I use these on our Suburban and our '53 International pickup Jag-powered low ridin' air suspended resto-rod. Guys, if you can install a lift, do it...it's always been a dream of mine and I'm sure you would love it. I use this lift often for all kinds of maintenance & restoration jobs on our little fleet of a half-dozen cars. I installed it with the help of our regular carpenter guy, and it certainly helped to have our manlift which I borrowed from our business to use while building and finishing the shop, and we would've had to rent something otherwise. We had to jackhammer a couple of holes to lay in some thicker concrete & rebar, due to my lack of better planning for the original slab, but it sure is solid now. The 3-car high bay, the 3-car low bay, and the wood shop & storage area each have their own motel-style (we own a motel on the coast of WA here) thru-the-wall heat pump. It's never hot enough here to run the cooling feature. I run one of the 3 at the lowest position all winter long to keep the edge off from the cooler temps, but I primarily do this to make sure that the moisture is "outbound" from the building instead of staying inside. Nothing has ever shown the slightest sign of rust. These being electric units, I probably pay about $500/yr for the power, which is only about 5 cents/kilowatt-hour here. OK. Here's the "high bay." The lift, in action. This Suburban was lots heavier than our new one. The little screw-type jack on the right came from Autolifter, along with the oil drain device under the engine there. In the left corner on this last pic, you can see a portion of the heat pump. Yes, we like Gorilla Racks from Costco. These pics were taken a few years ago and the shop continues to become better equipped all the time, for more fun...er, utility. One of these years I'd like to do a painted or tiled checkerboard floor. Roger =================== It's from Roger and Jane!
