New Hoist Day!

Woohoo! After years of planning, and waiting, I finally have my own hoist in my garage. The hoist is there to serve 2 purposes. Firstly, being able to store the cars vertically allows me to save precious yard space. I also have a rather large gum tree right next to the building, so going wider would have meant cutting this tree down – and the local council doesn’t like cutting down gum trees. The secondary purpose is of course to allow me to do my own servicing and repairs. Although, realistically I’m more likely to take it to a mechanic for the bigger jobs, things like oil changes are now much simpler to do at home.

I did quite a bit of research looking for the right hoist. Every mechanic I spoke 2 told me I’d be nuts to go with anything but a 2 post hoist. I looked into this option, but I just couldn’t fit it in. My garage is approximately 4 metres in width and a 2 post hoist needs 3.4 metres. Considering I need shelving on either side of the hoist for household storage (and of course car parts), I just couldn’t make it work. I could technically have squeezed it in and still fit some shelving, but there were other considerations too.

Here are the pros and cons of installing a 2 post hoist:

And so I started looking at 4 post hoists. 4 post hoists come in many different variations – Standard, Extra Tall, Extra Wide, Extra Long, Wheel Alignment Options. And so I started to look at the options.

What I needed was something that could fit in the 5.5 x 2.8m max space allocated, but that also had an extra high lift so that I could walk under it without being concerned with bashing my head into the platforms if I’m doing work in the garage or getting something off the shelves.

I found the best option for me was a 4 post, standard length and width, but extra tall.

The dimensions of this hoist really ticked all of my boxes. Firstly, it has an overall length of just under 5.3m, and a total width of 2.6m. That’s perfect for my space. The overall lifting height of 2075 to the bottom of the platform is also great to get the top car out of the way if I need to do work in the garage.

Here are some pros and cons of the 4 post lift:

I’ve also bought a secondary lift that allows lifting the front or back wheels up to allow for things like break jobs.

For those wondering, I bought the lift from an eBay seller by the name of Superior Hoists.

I didn’t want this purchase to be driven purely by price, because I hoist needs to be safe and well made. It’s not worth saving a few bucks just if it’s not of good quality, but this actually was the best priced of this size that I could find – and it’s work safe certified.

This brings me to an interesting point – there’s a dozen or so Hoist sellers online, all claiming to have the best product. But when you have a close look at their photos, they all seem to be selling exactly the same hoist. I don’t know if they’re in a buying group together or share suppliers or if there’s a bunch of factories in China all making hoists to the exact same spec, but I couldn’t tell them apart.

When I got my hoist delivered to me the first thing I did was open the packaging and start going over the installation manual. On the front page of the manual in big bold letters was “Garage Pro 8000 EXT”. A quick Google search of this led me to a site in the US – Atlas Auto Equipment. The photos they used even matched those that I found on eBay. This turned out to be a great thing for me because the installation manual that came with it was rather underwhelming. It looked like it was printed on a dot-matrix printer or possibly a fax machine and then photocopied and bound together. The few pictures that were included were unclear and the actual instructions were unnecessarily wordie. Atlas however had a very clear PDF document that I was able to reference that helped me immensely.

In the end I got it installed and I’m quite happy with it. I’m now looking forward to storing 2 cars undercover and being able to do my own servicing.