Automotive lift is a key piece of equipment, whether you’re a DIY enthusiast working in your garage or a professional business. You can repair anything with wheels thanks to the numerous variations of car lifts, truck lifts, and motorcycle lifts.
But you’ll need to make an informed decision upon your requirements whether the car lift has to be two post lifts. four post lift, or scissor lift,what is the optimal lifting capacity you required, and what style or designated vehicle lifting points would be.
Each design is intended for a certain kind of vehicle or work, and if you don’t keep this in mind, you might cause significant harm to the car and yourself during car lift.
What Are Vehicle Lifts?
Vehicles are lifted and supported by vehicle lifts for car maintenance or storage. They might be manually, electrically, or hydraulically operated. Most gadgets need a user to press a button.
- An external hydraulic cylinder or hydraulic motor is used to power hydraulic lifts with hydraulic hose.
- Electric lifts can employ a screw or a screw/scissor combo and feature an electric motor for auto lift.
- Manually operated elevators can be operated by foot pumping, ratcheting, a hand crank or screw drive.
When choosing car lifts, it’s crucial to take lift capacity and lifting height into account in addition to actuation mechanisms. The greatest force or load that a gadget can support is known as its lifting capacity.
How To Choose Vehicle Lifts?
Which of the various lifts you’ll need ultimately depends on the kind of repairs you’ll be doing and the kinds of automobiles you operate on. However, you should also think about the location of the equipment, the storage space, and the frequency of lift usage.
Here are a few examples of the many automobile, truck, and motorcycle lifts that are readily available:
• Two Post Lifts – Offered by top producers such as BendPak, Challenger, ATLAS, Forward, Dannmar, Ideal, LaunchTech USA, Tuxedo, and more. Select between floor plate and clear floor variants with an 18,000 lb capacity.
• Drive-on lifts, also known as four-post lifts and truck lifts. They supply the post lift power and improved safety by using a pump to compress and propel a hydraulic fluid through cylinders.
• Car parking lifts, which may be used to store one car on top of another. There are several possible parallelogram style lifts.
• Automotive Lifts for the Ground or Pit — These lifts, which are often hydraulic or electric/hydraulic driven, can either be flush placed into the floor or sit on its surface, giving you a choice that will save you time and as much floor space. They allow you to drive on and off the post lift conveniently and can support a lot of weight.
• Scissor lifts and portable auto lifts — You’ll find these portable lifts simple to carry, set up, and hassle-free if you attend auto or trade fairs. They work well for businesses that wish to maintain bays clear of debris when necessary. The home garage mechanic and hobbyist population also like them.
What Are The Features Of Various Types Of Auto Lifts?
Here are a few different automobile hoist kinds to think about:
• Two Post Lifts
Due to its widest access to the whole car for servicing needs, two post lifts are the most common model of lift for a busy auto shop.
When selecting the two post lift that best meet your needs, there are several aspects to take into account.
Do you first prefer a floorplate model or a clear floor model?
Equalizer cables and hydraulic lines cross from one column to the other on all two lifts. These wires must pass through a conduit at the top of each column (clear floor style) or beneath a plate on the floor (floor plate style) in one of two locations.
The floor plate models will be shorter than the clear floor variants. The main purpose of floor plate models is to allow for fitting beneath low ceilings. In an ideal world, most people would choose a clear floor model since they don’t want to bother with dragging a toolbox, oil drain, or transmission jack over a floor plate.
The direct-drive system seen in many of the best clear floor models depends on hydraulic cylinders to raise objects instead of often wearing out chains, cables, and floor anchors. This increases safety while saving you money and time on maintenance.
Asymmetric vs. symmetric models:
Symmetrical lifts are better for heavier trucks and larger vehicles with a large rear end because they evenly distribute the weight rating between two posts.
Automobiles with asymmetrical models are raised further back on asymmetrical lifts. When getting in or out of the car, this position makes it easier for you to open the doors wider.
Asymmetric lifts are favored by the majority of garage owners for regular passenger vehicles, whereas symmetric types are preferred for bigger trucks and vans.
In actuality, the majority of standard passenger cars balance out better asymmetrically, whereas the majority of longer trucks and vans balance out better symmetrically.
These days, a lot of manufacturers have versions that let you put a car on the vehicle lift in either direction, giving you the best of both worlds. With only one post car lift, this gives you total adaptability. Therefore, you don’t need to buy several lifts to complete every work.
Features to look for:
A great two post lift may be distinguished from an ordinary post car lift by a number of other characteristics.
- Triple telescoping front arms, for example, on premium models, let you operate on broader cars by making it simple to access the sliding bridge jacks with its supportive stabilization arms.
- Other features, such as screw pads, let you change the pad height by simply turning the screw up or down. While other versions merely provide stackable height adapters or sturdy posts at various heights and weight capacity.
- Instead of a two point safety release mechanism, which requires you to move over to the opposite column to deactivate the safety features, better lifts will have a single point safety release.
Equipment
A two post lift may be equipped with a wide variety of attachments. These include lawn adapter equipment packages, column extensions, truck adapters or extensions, frame cradle cushions, and jack tray.
• Four Post Lifts
Any professional auto shop, hobbyist, or do-it-yourselfer will be pleased with these truck and vehicle lifts of commercial grade.
They are appropriate for parking one automobile on top of another in private home garages as well as maintaining cars and trucks in a busy repair shop. In addition to being faster and simpler to drive on and off of, four post lifts are also safer than two post lifts.
Service or storage?
Are you keeping cars on top of each other or utilizing this lift to service vehicles? The most typical capacity vehicle lift you’ll find in a busy auto shop weighs 14,000 lbs. You are able to serve a wide range of vehicles with this capacity, servicing lighter vehicles, light service trucks, vans, passenger cars, and lighter vehicles. The home audience prefers four post lifts, which are by far the most common choice.
These have capacities ranging from 7,000 pounds to 9,000 pounds. It’s likely that you have a collection of antique or sports vehicles and insufficient garage floor space in your home garage if you’re utilizing the vehicle lift to park one vehicle on top of another.
But how can I use a four post lift to perform brake and wheel work?
The most frequent query from those who are thinking about using a four post lift for vehicle maintenance is this one. The only issue with using a four post lift to service automobiles is that the wheels are resting on the runways and cannot be removed. You’ll need a tool known as a rolling bridge jack, sliding bridge jack, or jack plate to free-wheel an automobile on a four post lift.
The commercial grade rolling jacks use air from your shop air compressor to elevate and lower the vehicle one axle at a time so you can reach the wheels for brake and tire service. They roll up and down the same length of the runways on that channel.
You would lay this simple steel plate where your car’s frame jacking points are and then attach your own bottle jacks or scissor jacks to it to correlate with those points. It just spans from one runway to the other.
Chain or cable drive?
Most four post hoists were previously chain driven, but in more recent years, a significant switchover to cable drive has occurred for a number of reasons.
The hydraulic cylinder is tucked up beneath the runway instead of crossing the top of the front column to the top of the opposite rear column as it does on chain drive types, making it a safer design overall. If you leave the car door open while lifting the lift, this cylinder arrangement on a chain drive lift might be very inconvenient.
In the past, one of the primary justifications for choosing a chain drive lift over a cable drive lift was that the cables wore out more quickly and required replacement more frequently.
However, the majority of high-end manufacturers now use bigger diameter cable pulleys on their cable drive lifts, significantly extending cable life. As a result, chain drive versions are no longer offered by many manufacturers.
Features to look for
Depending on the vehicle you are putting up on it, commercial four post lifts will often feature runways that may be moved closer together or further apart.
- The runways on the 7,000, 8,000, and 9,000 models are typically set and cannot be modified for home hobby consumers.
- A better laddered safety system with wireless communication features every 4 inches or so is offered by the majority of high-end 4 post lift types.
- Since you can adjust each column’s locking position if necessary, the ladder safety system is especially useful if you’re working on an uneven floor.
Equipment
Rolling jacks, sliding jacks, and jack plates were previously described. The most well-liked accessory would be these. Extra long approach ramps for low profile sports cars, oil drains that roll up and down the length of the runways, and drip trays to protect the car parked below the home/hobby lifts are additional choices.
For the home and hobby models, they even provide a caster and wheel kit so you can move them from one space to the next within your garage or, if the car lift fits through your doors, even outside.
• Scissor Lifts
In the majority of circumstances, a scissor lift’s principal advantage is that it requires less floor space than a two-post lift or four-post lift. Many scissor lifts allow you plenty of space to work below regardless of the type of cars or repairs, even if they are not designed for long-term storage.
Some variants are appropriate for the majority of low profile cars and have a maximum lift capacity of more than 69″. This category includes a variety of possibilities, including low rise, mid rise lifts, and even full rise versions. Additionally, scissor car lift is a portable car lift that can help in an easier car lift installed at a specific ceiling height.
Should It Be A Full, Mid, or Low Rise?
What height would you like to be able to lift the car to? Would you like to be able to stand on it? If so, a complete rising model is required. These usually rise to a height of around 70 inches.
The majority of full rise versions have an open center that gives you full access to the vehicle’s underneath. Therefore, you may execute all tasks that you might undertake with a two post lift without using up as much space in your work bay.
By far, mid rise scissor lifts are the most common. Mid rise scissor lifts tend to extend to a height of roughly 48 inches. Furthermore, they don’t take up much room. When it’s not in use, just park a car over it to conceal its presence.
What To Look For In The Automotive Lift?
The main deciding criterion in your choice should be portable car lift or mounted lifitng, aside from lifting height. Although portable car lift is a highly valued and useful quality, it also prevents a post car lift from functioning as an open center car lift. As a result, you won’t have access to the entire car’s underneath. So there won’t be any transmission or catalytic converter work, etc.
Equipment
Some scissor car lifts come with an SUV adapter kit that enables you to reach some potentially challenging-to-reach frame jacking locations on specific cars.
Alignment Lifts
A subset of 4 post lifts and scissor lifts are alignment lifts. For your auto business, providing 4 wheel alignment services might be a highly profitable investment. These automotive lifts have all you need built into the rack’s runways to carry out precise and expert wheel alignments, including radius turn-plates on the front and complete floating slip plates in the back.
Offering alignments will definitely boost your profit line if you want to establish yourself as a serious garage and add a highly lucrative income stream.
Considerations for selection
Four post alignment lifts or a scissor alignment rack?
Each has its own advantages. As you go back and forth between the runways, the scissor alignment rack will take up less room in your garage and won’t have any cross-members to get in the way. This is a very desirable productivity improvement. Yet there is a price to pay. The cost of scissor alignment lifts is often much more than that of a comparable 4 post alignment rack.
In comparison to scissor car lifts, four post alignment car lifts are often far less expensive, and there are many more versions available in a variety of lengths, widths, and lifting capacities.
What To Look For?
In addition to an open front variant and a typical closed-front 4 post alignment car lift, several manufacturers additionally offer these models.
Once more, open front variants are often far more costly than closed front car lifts. Depending on the length of the vehicle being serviced, several of the higher grade versions will offer multiple compartments for the positioning of the turn plate.
Cost Benefit
As previously said, alignment services may bring a fantastic new revenue stream to your company as it will be supporting a specific weight group as well, but they demand a large upfront investment. This machinery is pricey.
Equipment
The front turnplates, rear slip plates, rolling jacks, and air line kit are all included in certain manufacturers’ package packages. Others market each product separately.
Some might have front turnplates but not the rear slip plate. To ensure what is included and what is optional, make sure to verify each model.