That in-floor garage lift is kind of limited use when it covers up the whole bottom of the car, nearly. Not much space around the car to begin with.
When you consider the cost of everything, that the car is rear engined and thus does not have many things done through the middle of the car, and that most work is probably suspension/brake/tires then it's a pretty cool lift.
I guess so. Still a tight spot on the left side.
The garage is only 20x22, and the house and the garage sit on only an eighth of an acre. So finding a way to make it fit is the challenge I face every day.
There really isn't room for a lift at all in a garage as small as mine. A center pillar makes things even less practical, and I've got nine work surfaces shoehorned into the place. So even I was skeptical when I happened on a Vestil hydraulic lift table. But the thing I realized is that there is nothing at all to access on the belly pan of a pre-1989 911. So the lift can be broad and flat (it's tiled just like the floor around it) and not interfere with any work I want to do on the car. I've got complete access to the wheels, suspension, engine, transaxle and exhaust. (Just finished a rebuild on the engine this summer, as a matter of fact)
Unlike with most conventional lifts, I don't have to position anything under the car in order to operate the lift -- it's ready to use any time the car is parked there. The 48"x48" top covers all six of the car's jacking points.
The catch is: it's only really useful for this one type of car. But I've had this as my weekend/track car for almost 12 years, now. It's not going anywhere. And I found the thing second-hand for... $455 (new they're close to $3K). If I include the cost of the lift and the concrete, tool rental and tiles, my total bill for the whole deal was $670. To me, that was a no-brainer.
I'm able to get wheels and suspension components out on both sides without any problems. The wall on the left side also has two fold-down work surfaces, one for welding and one for carpentry stuff. The lift itself works as an adjustable-height bench.
You've got to get as much as you can out of a small garage. You can see the lift recessed down into the floor in this picture:
Here's the whole shop. You can see there's a decent amount of room on the left side:
And to bring things back to topic, here's my car, which was imported from West Germany in 1972:
👍
I didn't see that until you mentioned it.
