I spoke to another mechanic at a private shop today and the points he made on
his two different lifts were:
Width - one lift is 9' wide and the other 10 1/2' wide. The narrow one
causes a real fight to open the car door and get out after driving into
position. Normally he does not center the car on the lift for this reason,
but puts 2/3rds of the car toward the rear position. This causes and unstable
situation. He says he gets a little nervous sometimes working under it.
Don't laugh, he's an old country boy:-)
"Flip up pads" on ends of arms: You have to see these to know what they are,
but he says he uses them often when the 8" square pad won't fit in a good
jacking spot. Also, some vehicles do not have jacking spots that are the
same distance from the floor in the front and rear, so he might use the flip
up pad on one end and not the other rather than wooden blocks to keep the car
level.
Cross piece between two posts (provides a channel for either chain, cable or
hydraulic hoses: one mechanic told me he prefers the cross piece at the top
because it seems to stabilize the two towers. Another place told me they
preferred the cross piece at the top because they had had water collect under
their cross piece on the floor and rust out the cable. Another mechanic told
me he hated the cross piece on the floor because if a vehicle wasn''t
running, it took at least two people to push it over the cross piece to get
it into position. So, in 4 different shops, no one has told me they prefer
the cross piece on the floor. Three of them had it on the floor and said
their next lift would have it on the top.
Mark L.
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