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Old 01-29-2016, 04:04 PM
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Default Trying to put a two post lift + standard suburban garage

I've said for years that I wasn't going to put a lift in my current house. My house is your standard, generic DC suburb single family house with attached two stall garage. No fancy detached garage with with super high ceilings. No three bay garage. Not enough room, no big deal I just deal with my low rise lift until I move (3-4 years) and buy my dream shop with attached house.

Well, I now have:
- 5 cars, none with less than 70k miles.
- 3 of the 5 are needy German luxury cars.
- 2 teenage drivers
- 1 back with almost 42 years on it

I suddenly find myself reassessing the "wait a few years for the lift" idea, and am now actively lift shopping. I'm sick of laying on my back trying to pull various large parts out of cars. I find myself doing a good bit of BMW maintenance and the frame of my low rise lift makes access to drive shaft, exhaust, and certain parts of the rear axle difficult. Oh - and welding. I have an E46 with bad subframe bushings, so there's a chance I'll have to weld up the rear sheet metal. Welding overhead while laying on my back? F**k that.

So we're now in stage 1 - what's out there and will it fit? So far the leading candidate is the BendPak XPR-9-LP. Retails for $3000 with "free" shipping - to the commercial loading dock of your choice. The one reseller I talked to can have an installer take delivery, bring the lift to my house and install for $650. No bad IMO, esp if you consider I either have to pay $200 or so for lift gate/forklift delivery or ask a friend to take delivery on his commercial loading dock and pay his guys to load into a borrowed truck for me.

Questions now:
  • Ceiling height: XPR-9 needs 113", I have 128". So far so good.
  • Width: Garage is 22' wide, so really a question of how to optimize the placement
  • Depth: My biggest concern right now. Once the lift is in, I think it will take up enough of the width of the garage that there will not be any room on the "non-lift" side to park a car. So all car work has to be done on the lift side. My worry is about working inside of the car with the doors wide open. To do this I'll have to set the lift far enough forward that I can roll the car back a bit and have the doors clear the lift posts. Do I have the depth for this? No clue - today is measurement day. An asymetric lift would help a lot here, but I haven't seen one that's less than 12'. Rotary makes a lot of nice ones, but none that will fit in my garage.
  • Slab thickness: second biggest concern. I should have at least a 4" slab (as required by pretty much all lifts), but this is your typical DC suburb tract housing. The idea that the builder could pour a 3.5" slab and save $50 in concrete would not surprise me.
  • Grade: According to the BendPak guy, the floor can slope no more than 3°. So, we'll measure that.
  • Garage door: I just had my door replaced and had a side mount opener installed. So there's no obstructions in the middle of the garage - that's good. I didn't have them install high lift tracks at the time because of the "no lift" reasons in the first paragraph. C'est la vie. Currently waiting on an estimate to see how much a high lift conversion will be. I asked when the door was installed in November and was told "it should be no big deal to do this later". Hahahaha. We'll see on Monday when the installer calls me back.
  • Power: Surprisingly the least concern at this point. I installed a 100A subpanel near my garage recently so running a 20A 220V feed for the lift should be trivial.
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Old 01-29-2016, 04:25 PM
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Subscribed. Since I pretty much follow what every Chris does and do it too, I will learn from his efforts on this as well.


My understanding is that they can install additional track pieces to get the door up closer to the ceiling and it really isn't a big deal.

I specifically bought the model of my house that I did so I could put in a lift. The more popular model has a beam that runs across the front wall of the garage (didn't think I could roll it up) Now I find you can have slanted upper sections.
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Old 01-29-2016, 04:50 PM
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Been a while since I've been over. Do you living space over garage. How much clearance on side yard?
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Old 01-29-2016, 04:57 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Trak Ratt View Post
Been a while since I've been over. Do you living space over garage. How much clearance on side yard?
Why? Do you need a place to stay for awhile? Or do you want to store some of your cars?
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Old 01-29-2016, 05:51 PM
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Former Potomac prez Bob Williams has a lot of knowledge about buying and installing lifts in his garage. He wrote article for dV some years ago (avail online). One lift was a normal two-post IIRC, the other was a side-mounted lift. Good source of experience? I will look up the specific dV issue when I get back home. Also, Eddy Davis has installed a two-post in his garage with limited height.
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Old 01-29-2016, 05:59 PM
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While no denying the obvious advantage of being able to stand under the car, and the greater capacity a full size two pole lift provides, I still am favorably impressed with my MaxJax. Though it's lift limit is about 48", i'm able to sit upright under the car, though it can be a pain if you don't have all your tools and parts at hand, getting up and down to fetch things. The attribute that most apealed to me was the ability to easily unbolt it from the floor and stow it away when not in use. By the way, are you thinking of selling your scissor lift? If so, my son in law would be very interested.
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Old 01-29-2016, 07:03 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nerfbar View Post
Why? Do you need a place to stay for awhile? Or do you want to store some of your cars?
No, L and I still get along fine. Besides I built a 24 x 24 garage for my moms and sister in the late '90s. Mom's gone and sister is happy with carport so just offered me the garage! Already keep the trailer and L's 964 track car over there. Looking into insulation, upgrading electrical, and maybe a 2nd lift. Just need to talk sister into footing the bill

Garage has only 8.5' clearance so plans include changing trusses some for lift. was thinking that might work for Jazz too.
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Old 01-29-2016, 07:34 PM
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OK, first round of dimensions!

This is my garage to scale and the BendPack XPR-9 set up in "wide" mode. In this configuration the lift is 145" wide post to post with 106" of drive through clearance. In wide mode I could possibly put the 911 on the non-lift side if necessary (i.e. overnight storage), but that's it - none of the other cars will fit.

In the wide config I can put the lift 124" from the front wall, and that should give me enough room to work on the interior with doors wide open. It also gives me a good amount of space in the front of the car, in between the car and my workbench. Also, with the wide config, I get more space along the left side wall, so I'd probably keep my large tool chest there.

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Old 01-29-2016, 07:37 PM
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And now the narrow configuration. The advantage here is that I can get a 3 series in on the other side of the garage if need be. Disadvantages are: (1) less room to work on the left side of the car; (2) To allow for interior work, the lift needs to be 6" further forward, which reduces work space in front of the workbench with a car on the lift; and (3) harder to get out of the car - with the E90 in lift position I'm not sure how you'd get out without banging up the doors.

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Old 01-29-2016, 08:30 PM
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Looks like you have nice one stall working shop boy-o! I'm glad you posted these. Some of the places we've looking at for retirement have this size garages. Now I know they won't work. How about the side lifts?
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I hope to arrive to my death, late, in love, and a little drunk!

Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand... Homer Simpson

"That's what's keeping me out of F1.... Too much mental maturity...." N0tt0n

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

CHAOS, PANIC, AND DISORDER my work here is done...

Live without pretending, Love without depending, Listen without defending, Speak without offending
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