A New Tool to Save my Back

Hi Dad… I made the plunge on a 4-post lift to help me store and work on my cars. I had looked at them in the past, but they were always too big for the space. I eventually found Triumph NSS-8SQ to be 2 feet shorter than the typical lift. That was just the ticket, and with an 8000 lb lift capacity I can lift 2 or 3 little British cars (LBCs) at the same time… woohoo!

I placed the order and while shipping was free, unloading was not. The driver is paid to drive, not off load. So… since it weighs 1500 lbs all packaged up, even a double helping of wheaties won’t help me. So I had them deliver to their terminal, and my buddy John and I rented a 12 foot utility trailer to go get it. They loaded it with a forklift and we made the slow journey home, where buddy number 2, Peter, met us to help unpack and move the pieces into the garage.

Most of the bits were manageable, but one of the runways has the hydraulic ram and all of the cabling mounted, and that one was heavy! A 2 ton engine hoist and a dolly were needed to move it. In the end, none of us threw out our backs and the jig-saw puzzle that was a lift was taken out of the trailer and moved into the garage.

That evening, I started organizing and unwrapping all the pieces. Each vertical post has a cross piece that slides into the channel. John came over and we hoisted the runways onto the cross pieces and bolted them in. We used jacks and blocks to then lift the whole assembly up to the first stop, about 24 inches off the ground. This gave us the space to get under the runway, extend the ram, and figure out how the cable-ing ran to the vertical posts. We got it right the first time!

After double checking all of the mounting hardware and adding 3 gallons of hydraulic fluid, we had liftoff. One nice thing about this version of the lift is that the motor is a 20 amp version (earlier versions were 30 amp) and so I didn’t need to rewire my garage for the higher current load. Lots of adjusting of the cables for an even lift and the lock stops for a satisfying clunk every time we lifted past a stop… up and down was now a piece of cake.

Dad, I don’t know if you remember giving me a big wrench set, but the largest one, 1 1/4″ was perfect for adjusting the tension on the cable nuts. You must have given me that set 25 years ago! I’ve never needed the really big ones but I was glad to have them.

Baby Steps…

Step #2… Here you can see that there isn’t much room between the inner tires… still made for larger vehicles.

With the garage door fully open this is the highest the car will go. Richard my garage door friend says he can easily get me another 18+ inches without any trouble and that will be perfect for storing a little car under and working on the top.

So it looks like this tool will work out just fine… I wonder if I should tell Mary about it… sshhhh mums the word.