NitroPress
Well-known member
Hi, new to the forum but old around many similar places... 
I've skimmed the lift threads, especially the BP ones, and plan to do a lot more reading as there's clearly a lot of hard-won knowledge in here. I hope no one minds if I start yet another thread with some general comments and questions.
We just moved into a house in central CT that qualified for four-vehicle parking only because it has 11-foot ceilings - two big bays and doors, 131 inches to the ceiling drywall. So a pair of lifts were factored in to the whole purchase, moving, adapting process. I'm now ready to pull the trigger on this and could use some check-pilot time on my decisions.
The lifts are mostly for parking, to store two summer cars and let us park our drivers indoors. I do plan to use the lifts for winter tire swaps and basic to moderate service. One summer car is an ERA Cobra that needs the usual amount of tinkering and basic maint, the other is a 68 Mustang coupe project that's in the assembly stage and obviously needs more time in the air being tooled on. (The drivers are a Volvo XC90 and a Honda Odyssey, pretty big drivers to stuff under lifts, but they'll fit.)
Obviously I need high-lift lifts so the 70-inch models won't work. That means HD-9 X models or the HD-7P. The problem is that I have to have the high lift and really would like a wider drive-through than 90 inches (for marital harmony reasons - wife has mild depth perception issues and is nervous parking in tight situations). I can't get the wider straddle, though, without going to the extra-long lifts, and I don't want to give up that two feet of my garage (nor do I intend to park any limos or crew cab trucks up there!)
So I've got a kind of frustrating compromise to make. I've spent months trying to get an answer out of BP, both directly and via ASEdeals here in CT, about a hybrid HD-9 that combines the short runways with the wide, high-lift trusses. It would SEEM that this is an off-the shelf assembly with perhaps a custom-length lift cable, but BP never answered me and ASEdeals was unable to get them to reply, either.
What BP offered is an HD-7P with wider trusses, which is a head-scratcher since that obviously involves custom fabrication. It would be a good solution and cost-effective (a whopping $45 each for the custom work)... but now, at this very late date with winter approaching, they want 90 days to deliver (meaning, likely, 120-150 days until I can park on them). I can't wait that long. The summer cars COULD go in the garage out of the weather, but the wife would then be parking outside in increasingly bad weather, meaning I would be increasingly sleeping on the couch with the Great Dane.
So... I am about to go with standard HD-7Ps and cross my fingers that I am right she will learn to park in the 90 inch straddle without too much trouble. My only other options are to cram in HD-9XWs and lose nearly all storage and workbench space, or to go with PL-6000X's.
The single-posters attract me because they'd leave so much open space in between, but the added cost (about 50% more overall), some unresolved questions about my garage slab quality, and the need to tilt a monstrous 130-inch column in with only about 1 inch of free ceiling space are big downchecks. So reasonably-sized four-posters remain the viable option.
No questions, really, but I'd appreciate any feedback, thoughts, or pointers to Must-Read threads I might have missed.
And if there's anyone around Manchester-Tolland, Connecticut with a 90-inch spread lift I could look at and perhaps let my wife drive in and out of... it would be great. Trade ya a Cobra ride...
I've skimmed the lift threads, especially the BP ones, and plan to do a lot more reading as there's clearly a lot of hard-won knowledge in here. I hope no one minds if I start yet another thread with some general comments and questions.
We just moved into a house in central CT that qualified for four-vehicle parking only because it has 11-foot ceilings - two big bays and doors, 131 inches to the ceiling drywall. So a pair of lifts were factored in to the whole purchase, moving, adapting process. I'm now ready to pull the trigger on this and could use some check-pilot time on my decisions.
The lifts are mostly for parking, to store two summer cars and let us park our drivers indoors. I do plan to use the lifts for winter tire swaps and basic to moderate service. One summer car is an ERA Cobra that needs the usual amount of tinkering and basic maint, the other is a 68 Mustang coupe project that's in the assembly stage and obviously needs more time in the air being tooled on. (The drivers are a Volvo XC90 and a Honda Odyssey, pretty big drivers to stuff under lifts, but they'll fit.)
Obviously I need high-lift lifts so the 70-inch models won't work. That means HD-9 X models or the HD-7P. The problem is that I have to have the high lift and really would like a wider drive-through than 90 inches (for marital harmony reasons - wife has mild depth perception issues and is nervous parking in tight situations). I can't get the wider straddle, though, without going to the extra-long lifts, and I don't want to give up that two feet of my garage (nor do I intend to park any limos or crew cab trucks up there!)
So I've got a kind of frustrating compromise to make. I've spent months trying to get an answer out of BP, both directly and via ASEdeals here in CT, about a hybrid HD-9 that combines the short runways with the wide, high-lift trusses. It would SEEM that this is an off-the shelf assembly with perhaps a custom-length lift cable, but BP never answered me and ASEdeals was unable to get them to reply, either.
What BP offered is an HD-7P with wider trusses, which is a head-scratcher since that obviously involves custom fabrication. It would be a good solution and cost-effective (a whopping $45 each for the custom work)... but now, at this very late date with winter approaching, they want 90 days to deliver (meaning, likely, 120-150 days until I can park on them). I can't wait that long. The summer cars COULD go in the garage out of the weather, but the wife would then be parking outside in increasingly bad weather, meaning I would be increasingly sleeping on the couch with the Great Dane.
So... I am about to go with standard HD-7Ps and cross my fingers that I am right she will learn to park in the 90 inch straddle without too much trouble. My only other options are to cram in HD-9XWs and lose nearly all storage and workbench space, or to go with PL-6000X's.
The single-posters attract me because they'd leave so much open space in between, but the added cost (about 50% more overall), some unresolved questions about my garage slab quality, and the need to tilt a monstrous 130-inch column in with only about 1 inch of free ceiling space are big downchecks. So reasonably-sized four-posters remain the viable option.
No questions, really, but I'd appreciate any feedback, thoughts, or pointers to Must-Read threads I might have missed.
And if there's anyone around Manchester-Tolland, Connecticut with a 90-inch spread lift I could look at and perhaps let my wife drive in and out of... it would be great. Trade ya a Cobra ride...
