With the MaxJax you can also just pop the hydraulics off, cap the connectors and roll the power unit inside in about 30 seconds if you don't have the 15 minutes to move the towers. I would say the towers are portable in the "drag it around the garage" sense. Quite easy to move even with the arms on, but actually lifting them into a truck to take somewhere would be a heck of a party trick. Not impossible, but I'd only want to do it for the kind of friend I enjoy being pantsless with.
RedGT wrote:curtis73 wrote: I could imagine maybe a buddy saying "hey can I borrow your lift" at which point I would put it in the back of the truck, but that would be rare.It wouldn't just be rare, it would be impossible unless he just happens to have 8 properly spec'd studs in concrete wherever he wants to 'borrow' it off to. I would like a MaxJax, but for me the quickjack works really well because I can not only put it away, but also use it anywhere without having to plan in advance, including on gravel, or in a new location when I have a car stuck in non-running condition wherever I just had the lift. Lower dead car onto jack stands, take lift away and use it elsewhere without having to install more studs in concrete. Easy. The limiting factor in the quickjack product is the ~24" lift height. You can get transmissions out from under the car with it, but you'll still be laying on a creeper to work down there. For me, well, my garage has 6.5 ft ceilings and I wouldn't be able to take advantage of the maxjax lift range anyway. At least this way I can get the car up in the air in 2 minutes, I can work on suspension and hub stuff while sitting on a rolling stool, I can get diffs/exhaust/trans/fuel tanks out from under the car easy, and I can adjust height up/down in seconds to best suit my back while leaning in the engine bay.
Right... as far as the borrowing thing, I was thinking generally... if I had a lift like this one, it could be portable to a buddy's house, but as someone else mentioned "take it to the track," that isn't an issue.
So, portable, yes - so I can tuck it away in the corner of the garage, but it doesn't need to be super-portable like taking it to the track.
I don't mind having to anchor it in the driveway from a setup/teardown standpoint, but I can't imagine the anchor points would be viable long-term outside in the elements. Either I use studs and curse you all every time I blow a tire or trip on them, or I bury female threaded anchors and have trouble with debris constantly getting in them. I don't really want to trust the lift's ability to not kill me on anchors that live outside.
mazdeuce wrote: I'd only want to do it for the kind of friend I enjoy being pantsless with.
I thought we established that you were pants-less on a semi-regular basis, so I am not sure how limiting your recommendation is.
How possible is it to extend the hoses on the power unit of a regular lift so that the lift itself could semipermanantly live outside or under a carport and the hydraulics could live inside?
Finding something to plug the holes should be easy enough.
In reply to oldopelguy:
They're just regular hydraulic hoses, it should be trivial to have someone make you longer ones. I've seen a very clean install on garage journal where someone poured PVC in the slab to run the hoses through. It was pretty slick.
Toyman01 wrote: In reply to Ian F: I never read the "lift" threads because I don't have space in my shop for one. This one caught my eye because of the "portable" part. Being able to store them inside, out of the weather, means I can mount them outside in front of the shop.
I take the arms off the MaxJax when I'm not using it and stick them in the corner.
mazdeuce wrote: I would say the towers are portable in the "drag it around the garage" sense. Quite easy to move even with the arms on, but actually lifting them into a truck to take somewhere would be a heck of a party trick.
I disagree. I unloaded the whole thing off the back of a Dodge Ram by myself, one piece at a time. I don't think that it would be all that hard to wheel one of the columns over to a truck, lean the top over and slide it in.
So it seems like QuickJack and Max Jack are the ones you all lean toward.
Quick Jack is out for me. Not nearly high enough and no side access.
Max Jack looks great. Still not quite as high as I wanted but its all the other benefits of a 2-post lift except height.
No other experience with some of the scissor type? like the one I linked to like this?
In reply to Woody:
You carry people out of burning buildings. I carry babies around the grocery store. I relied heavily on gravity when unloading my lift from the back of my truck. Gravity really only works one direction.
Oh snap.
Just had an idea if I had something like above. I could pour the concrete with 4" deep recessed holes, set the lifts down inside, and the lift part could stay outside.
Getting closer, but not portable. But I might be OK with the not portable part. The only real reason I wanted portable was because of being able to get it out of my driveway. This one could stay in place since its not in the way. If I move out of this house, pull them out of their pits and fill the holes.
The 12 gauge garage has a recessed scissor lift. Do a search for the thread on garage journal. Prepare to hate me.
curtis73 wrote: I don't mind having to anchor it in the driveway from a setup/teardown standpoint, but I can't imagine the anchor points would be viable long-term outside in the elements. Either I use studs and curse you all every time I blow a tire or trip on them, or I bury female threaded anchors and have trouble with debris constantly getting in them. I don't really want to trust the lift's ability to not kill me on anchors that live outside.
Pick up a set of low-profile head bolts that match the threads of the studs, use them to fill the female threaded anchors when the lift isn't using them with rubber washers to keep the moisture out?
mazdeuce wrote: In reply to Woody: You carry people out of burning buildings. I carry babies around the grocery store. I relied heavily on gravity when unloading my lift from the back of my truck. Gravity really only works one direction.
Actually at this point, there are a few guys that I work with who are exactly half my age. I tell them to carry the people out of the burning buildings!
In reply to curtis73:
I would be afraid of water pooling in the recesses and corroding the lift. Actually even without the pooling I think leaving a lift outside 24/7 would rapidly result in a lift I would be uncomfortable using.
In my (admittedly limited) experience, lifts are built a lot like heavy equipment. Plenty of shops down here have lifts mounted outside for decades and they seem to do fine.
The Alibaba scissors lift seems downright cheap and almost perfect for everything but trans. Like, im debating one now. Whats the catch with Alibaba?
Alibaba is a commercial import linkup site. Kinda like Eharmony, but for industry and wholesale.
When Harbor Freight needs to find a supplier for their floor jacks they might go to Alibaba and use it to find chinese manufacturers and set up relations that way. Its not for you or me to buy things. Its for Home Depot to buy 6 million things.
So until you find a retailer who sells that particular lift, it has gone through a ton of things. Let's say that you want to buy one and you find it being retailed by Rotary Lift. What has happened is that Rotary contacted Lihueng (the manufacturer of that lift on Alibaba), asked them if they could negotiate a price for 50,000 of those lifts, but they want a 3 year warranty instead of 1, want them painted blue and yellow (their company's colors), and want them rated for 9000 lb instead of 8000 lb. Rotary then pays for shipping, takes samples to an independent lab, gets the taxes paid, gets them OSHA certified (or whatever), distributes them to their wholesale network who then lists them on their retail websites. By the time you or I click on the link to put it in our shopping cart, its $5500.
Even if you could convince Lihueng to ship you one lift, chances are it would cost $10,000 to ship it and you would still owe import taxes and have to get it OSHA certified before it leaves the dock... yadda yadda.
mazdeuce wrote: In my (admittedly limited) experience, lifts are built a lot like heavy equipment. Plenty of shops down here have lifts mounted outside for decades and they seem to do fine.
I, too, have seen and used many outdoor lifts. I'm not concerned about the outdoor part, but dculberson has a good point... pooled water is a lot different than occasional rainfall. I could engineer drains in the recessed parts but it would only take one autumn for those to get clogged.
Ive got one at work that needs an electric motor for the pump that I can give to someone on there if they pick it up. Pm me if you're near mass.
How about aliexpress.
In reply to curtis73:
dculberson wrote: In reply to JBasham: Are you sure it'll never be in the budget? I mean, what if you saw an $1800 Miata you really wanted - I bet you could figure out a way to buy it. Just skip one junky project car and you have a lift that will last you decades. ;-) (I'm really bad at enabling...)
There is a future in which I'm not putting children through college, but it's far enough off that I still can't imagine it. Until then, no $1800 convertibles for me.
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