February 9, 2014

by Conrad Monroe

My new, to me, 9000# Four Post Lift!

Whilst in the middle of cleaning up the wiring on my 1939 Ford and changing out the billet aluminum dash panel that I have hated for going on 12 years now, I got a call from my friend Jerry Elliott who was in the process of buying several four post lifts from a gentleman who had purchased a large garage that was set up to store collector cars. To increase the storage capacity of the building the former owner had installed a number of commercial four post lifts to allow the cars to be stacked.

The owner was selling the lifts that had hardly been used for around 60% if the new retail price, not including tax and delivery. Jerry told me that there was one left if I wanted it. You betcha! I called my friend Rick Fernau up and arranged to borrow his big trailer and Michelle and I beat feet for the valley as quick as we could.

By the time we got there on the next day, Jerry had developed a system for loading the lifts onto a trailer for transport and without a lot of fuss we loaded the lift on Rick’s trailer, paid the man, said thank you to Jerry and his friends for helping us get everything loaded and we headed home with our purchase.

Of course when we got home it decided to snow, which was welcome, and really only about an 1″ so by 10:00 AM on Friday the snow had melted and we moved the trailer into the main shop to unload the lift which was a tad too big to make it through my 8′ garage doors. After we unloaded the lift we opened the roll up door between the shop and garage, pushed the 40 Ford outside and rolled the lift into position in the far garage bay.

It was then off to Home Depot to buy some Red Head anchors and to rent a rotary hammer drill to mount the lift to the floor. After a bit of measuring, pushing and shoving we got the lift in position and mounted to the floor.

Sometime ago I had purchased a 110v winch that was on sale at Harbor Freight – thanks again to Jerry Elliott for seeing the sale and picking it up for me. I had made a mounting bar for it that would drop into the pad mounts on the arms of my two post lift, which gave me an easy peasey way to pull non running cars on to the lift. As luck would have it, I easily mounted the winch to the front of the four post lift using motorcycle tie downs and used it to pull the 40 up on to the lift. The 56 Dodge wagon fits nicely underneath so I now can house all three cars in the garage.

The really nice thing about having the lift, is that it solves my what do I do with the convertible’s body while I am reworking the frame and suspension. Now when I pull the body off the frame, I can dolly it over to the lift and store it up and out of the way until I need to start on the body and paint work! When the 40 is done, I will be able to have all three cars stored without having them in my shop, which is a nice degree of flexibility.