Installing a lift, every gearheads dream.

Even if the floor is not thick enough you can cut the floor and put "pockets" in to get the required thickness. Bit more work but cheaper than replacing the entire floor.

Paul

Speaking of replacing the entire floor, has anyone done this before? Rough price for a 2 car garage?

Armitage wrote: Speaking of replacing the entire floor, has anyone done this before? Rough price for a 2 car garage?

I considered this about a year ago. Price ranged between 5k (rip out and repour) - 10k (thicker and rebar reinforced, with lifetime guarantee) in southern NJ. The hardest part was getting people to come out for such a small job.

WonkoTheSane wrote: Welcome to the club, it's amazing! I use mine for everything: Staining long trim? Lift. Cutting up a 4x8 sheet of steel for workbench topping? Lift. Refinishing pool liner clamps? Lift. And, for insurance purposes:

Would this setup give you enough room if your cars were larger than Miatas?

I'm curious about the logistics of installing a 2-post lift in a 2-car garage. Is there enough room next to the lift to park a full-size car? is there enough room on the other side of the lift to be able to work on the lifted car?

TR7 wrote:

Armitage wrote: Speaking of replacing the entire floor, has anyone done this before? Rough price for a 2 car garage?

I considered this about a year ago. Price ranged between 5k (rip out and repour) - 10k (thicker and rebar reinforced, with lifetime guarantee) in southern NJ. The hardest part was getting people to come out for such a small job.

Ya what's up with that? The getting people to come out part. A few years ago I called probably a dozen companies to do a small concrete job on my garage and not one returned my call. I never actually talked to a "real" person just got voice mail when I called, left a message and that's as far as that went. Never heard another word.

Sky_Render wrote: Would this setup give you enough room if your cars were larger than Miatas? I'm curious about the logistics of installing a 2-post lift in a 2-car garage. Is there enough room next to the lift to park a full-size car? is there enough room on the other side of the lift to be able to work on the lifted car?

It looks to me like Wonko's garage is wider than is the norm around where I live.

When I investigated 2-posts lifts I decided they were all too wide for my garage. Mine is 22x22, with an 18 foot door, thus 9 foot of door on either side of centerline, plus 2 feet of space inboard of the door. Looking at Bend-Pak's site, their 2-posts lifts start at 143 inches wide, which is just under 12 feet. If I put one of the posts hard up against the side wall, the other one would stick a foot into the second parking space, leaving just 8 feet between it and the other side of the door. That was too much to be acceptable to me.

WonkoTheSane wrote: ^ that's a lot of sexy right there, codrus!

Thanks! I got the FD about a year ago, loving it so far. :-) Only three Mazdas here -- there isn't room in the garage for my wife's CX-9.

My Challenger LE10 is 11 feet wide and the Rotary AT07 is 10'3".

Gearheadotaku wrote: My Challenger LE10 is 11 feet wide and the Rotary AT07 is 10'3".

Yeah, but my HD-9ST is 8'3", plus the wide parts are at the front & back, so they don't interfere with opening the door on a car parked next to it.

IMHO the best way to approach it is to get the specs of the lift you're considering, measure out the footprint on the floor, and then outline it with tape. Stack up some boxes or whatever, then try to park your car and see how it goes. That's what I did, and it became very clear to me that there was no way a 2-post was going to fit in my garage.

With the Asymetric I was able to push it forward a bit and get clearance for a door to open behind the post. Took me a moment to got back and see the lift you were refferring to. Its a nice fit in there.

codrus wrote:

Sky_Render wrote: Would this setup give you enough room if your cars were larger than Miatas? I'm curious about the logistics of installing a 2-post lift in a 2-car garage. Is there enough room next to the lift to park a full-size car? is there enough room on the other side of the lift to be able to work on the lifted car?

It looks to me like Wonko's garage is wider than is the norm around where I live. When I investigated 2-posts lifts I decided they were all too wide for my garage. Mine is 22x22, with an 18 foot door, thus 9 foot of door on either side of centerline, plus 2 feet of space inboard of the door. Looking at Bend-Pak's site, their 2-posts lifts start at 143 inches wide, which is just under 12 feet. If I put one of the posts hard up against the side wall, the other one would stick a foot into the second parking space, leaving just 8 feet between it and the other side of the door. That was too much to be acceptable to me.

Oh thank you for the info!

That's what I was thinking. If you have a 2-car garage with a double-wide door, you're going to use pretty much the entire thing with a lift, making it no longer a 2-car garage. Although I suppose if your ceiling was high enough, you could park one car "on" the lift and the other underneath it.

In reply to Sky_Render:

A modern 2 car garage is usually around 400 sq ft. That gets pretty tight with modern vehicles, and can make just opening the doors difficult. I'd wager that most of them end up being 1 car garages anyway for convenience, and mower/kid stuff storage.

Gearheadotaku wrote: Is that a Mohawk lift?

It's actually the old versions of what you're installing. It's a 1988 VBM (what Challenger used to be called) floor plate lift. I bought it a few years ago from a shop for $700.

SkyRenderer wrote: Would this setup give you enough room if your cars were larger than Miatas? I'm curious about the logistics of installing a 2-post lift in a 2-car garage. Is there enough room next to the lift to park a full-size car? is there enough room on the other side of the lift to be able to work on the lifted car? It looks to me like Wonko's garage is wider than is the norm around where I live.

I've got two things going for me: The first is that my garage is a touch wider than normal (I forget the exact dimensions off the top of my head, but it's something like 2-3 feet wider) and the second is that these older lifts were often a bit smaller than the newer ones. It can make getting in and out of the Town and Country a bit of a challenge when I have it up on the lift, but it's workable. I can get the dimensions to both the lift and the garage if you want it.

I can fit a full sized T&C (sorry, this is my "reference vehicle" for big) on the other side next to it and still have enough room to walk around it, but on that side I'm more limited by depth because of the stairs to the loft area.

It is a bit tight to work on the passenger side of things like the van, because I have some shelving there. It's never been too in the way, epecially once I get the tires off, but if I had a huge project that I had to do on the lift, I'd probably move the shelves out of the way first. I've done full bearing & brake jobs without doing anything special, though.

Smaller vehicles are rarely a problem except we had to empty a few shelves when we pulled an axle out of an explorer on there.

It definitely wouldn't work with a single double-width door, though..

codrus wrote: Thanks! I got the FD about a year ago, loving it so far. :-) Only three Mazdas here -- there isn't room in the garage for my wife's CX-9.

They're on the bucket list for sure :) Not looking good any time soon, though. Since I've picked up the Spec Miata recently, I've come to terms with the fact that I will never get to build my Rx-7 into the track car that I want it to be, so I'll be thinning the fleet a bit. We'll probably be down to 3 Mazdas soon, as my wife is going to need something bigger than the 5.

Oh, one more thought for those who have the luxury and while I'm post whoring. My last house had a little barn that I was "going to put a lift into after I fix it up!" for 5 years before we moved.

This house I made sure had a wide enough garage & 10.5' ceilings as a minimum when I bought the house. It made it WAY easier to justify this project.

We bought our house at the end of last year and it came with a small "2" car garage at 16.5x19.5 (or thereabouts). It makes for nice width for working on one car, if not very deep. Oh, and the ceiling is gypsum @ ~ 7'-8" (for now). First thing was to address the floor and the ugly colored cheap concrete paint the contractors used who were flipping the property.

Finally finished that early last week and had my first real wrench session in there last Thursday/friday. After how long it took me getting the car up in the air (full spring swap on an e30), and hearing about how life changing a lift is, I knew what I had to do. I've been saving my pennies for a situation like this and a Maxjax is on order as of yesterday. We've also got a concrete pad next to the garage big enough for 3 cars so I can mount it outside for powerwashing after rallyx, or if I need to lift taller vehicles higher.

I haven't decided if it's going smack in the center or slightly offset to the right of these pics to leave more room for worktable and fabrication on the left side. Kind of stupid excited about it right now

First pic courtesy of our own irish44j:

Also fairly happy with the armorpoxy SPGX. This is after a water based blue dye onto ground concrete, and two coats of the SPGX:

ok, enough threadjack, sorry!

In reply to bluej:

Since we're already thread jacking, I've been looking at the SPGX for 2 days straight. How long have you had it down? What kind of prep did you do? Yours was just clear on top of the blue stain?

prep was diamond cup wheel grinding the whole floor (that sucked. hard.), but didn't polish. I knew I was going to use the SPGX at that point and figured the extra texture would help with slipping.

I used a 2 gallon garden sprayer and a water based dye. I had planned on using alcohol as a base for the dye, but I tested the whole process on that test block (other side of what's in pic), and wasn't happy with how vulnerable to visible damage the SPGX seemed when struck with a tool (drop test). After research and checking with armorpoxy, you basically shouldn't use a solvent based dye or prep coat before the SPGX. I re-did the test w/ just water for the dye and also just clear SPGX on the test block, which you can see, and was happier with the result.

Dye was sprayed on in 1-2 coats, depending on how well it absorbed in areas. I used a squeegee sponge to wet and pull up any loose dye/dirt after, then dry for +24hrs before putting down the SPGX. SPGX went down in one thick coat first, and a thin top coat w/ a non-slip additive mixed in. I left 24-48 hrs between coats, I can't remember exactly.

Drop test w/ a metal tool will still leave a mark. It's not quite as hard as I expected. Hoping it continues to get better with more time to cure. the front roller of my jack pulled some of the SPGX coat up (pushed it really) when I first used it. Basically, it's not indestructable, but it's re-coatable and seems more durable than a lot of the other coatings I researched. I'm happy with it.

Cool looking floor! Being shiny like that really helps light up the place.

Got some help to stand up the towers the other day. Placement is dialed in but its been too hot in the garage to get much done lately. (yes, I'm a wuss.) Got after it today and found my plans for lifting the extentions and cross beam into place won't work. Need to wrangle another body or 2 to get this done.

Lesson learned. Its about impossible to assemble a lift without extra people or a forklift.

Who wants beer and pizza?

I had help standing up the 12' posts of my Rotary Revolution - my pops and a friend.

The rest of the assembly and everything I did myself.

Do you have a pic of the pieces of your lift??

Get some RockLock or equivalent epoxy for the anchors in the floor. Extra insurance of "please don't drop a car on me."

Gearheadotaku wrote: Got some help to stand up the towers the other day. Placement is dialed in but its been too hot in the garage to get much done lately. (yes, I'm a wuss.) Got after it today and found my plans for lifting the extentions and cross beam into place won't work. Need to wrangle another body or 2 to get this done. Lesson learned. Its about impossible to assemble a lift without extra people or a forklift. Who wants beer and pizza?

Do you have an engine hoist? That helped tremendously when we were assembling my 4-post Bend-pak.

SkinnyG wrote: I had help standing up the 12' posts of my Rotary Revolution - my pops and a friend. The rest of the assembly and everything I did myself. Do you have a pic of the pieces of your lift?? Get some RockLock or equivalent epoxy for the anchors in the floor. Extra insurance of "please don't drop a car on me."

Tell me more about epoxy. I would like to double up on my mounting. Where to buy, how to use etc.

Yes, engine cranes are awesome help!

I got to this point, and THEN discovered the cylinder in the crane I borrowed from work was shot.

The epoxy I used was ~something~ like this:

It comes in a tube, which is separated in half internally. The two parts mix together are they go through the nozzle (spiral mixing passagework in there). You need to drill the holes the right size. I drilled them with the hoist columns up and in place. I think I filled the bottom half of the hole, tapped the anchor/stud in, and then cinched it up. WORK FAST. My first tube was DONE by the time I got the anchors done on the first column. I was glad I bought two tubes. Pricey stuff.

All I did was stop at my local Fastener store (BC Fasteners) and told them what I was doing, and I bought the stuff they handed me. The guys at my local store know their stuff and treat me well.

So you added epoxy to a wedge type anchor? Sounds good to me...

The epoxy I got with my anchors was VERY fast setting. I bought some Simpson Strongtie stuff from Home Depot that was much more forgiving. Still took two tubes.

BTW, there's no way to use those tubes without the special gun. A caulk gun won't work.