Solutions for sliding car ramps

I had this problem with ramps sliding. My solution was to drill a couple of holes in my garage floor, screw in some lead anchor bolts, leaving bolt heads about a half inch above the floor. I put the ramps up against the bolts and they slid no more.

Looks like aligning everything would be a royal pain.

;-]

Outside of being spam, I still think my solution is the best as I explained last year.

http://www.bendpak.com/car-lifts/specialty-lifts/md-6xp.aspx

Thought about something like that? If I didnā€™t need to park a car under it, that would be the lift Iā€™d be getting when I start shopping for one this summer.

Someone logs on an old thread with spam. Shortly after that it gets a like from a new poster. Doesnā€™t make sense.

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Yup. But how do I raise my rafters? :smile:
Itā€™s a 1940 single stall garage, not wide or high enough inside for any form of lift. I do like the suggestion, however. I wish I had the room for it.

Iā€™ve thought about a lift like that too, but my 2-car garage is also vertically challenged. I imagine any attached garage and most detached garages donā€™t have enough overhead to install a lift, even a portable like @shadowfax showed. Itā€™s a great idea if you have the room.

Yeah, I used to think it would be nice to have a lift but now I just say, nah, Iā€™d rather not unless it is a restoration project. Iā€™ve got ten foot clearance or 9 1/2 at least but the thing is the overhead garage door. Even if the door is closed, you still have the track and opener in the way. So you really need to have a long garage too.

My BIL in Kansas actually has two. He built a nice big shop for his retirement projects and started with just one lift. Then added a second one that you can also park under. Would be nice but still then you have to do some work too.

I have a ceiling thatā€™s just over 10 foot. I can have a garage door contractor come out and put in new door tracks that put the door right up at the ceiling. Then I get a side-mount opener rather than a standard one - it attaches to the wall and turns a pulley that sits at the top of the door frame.

That does it for overhead clearance for me, because Iā€™ll be parking a CRX and an MR2 in that stall, and theyā€™re both short cars so the lift wonā€™t have to go overly high.

If I didnā€™t need the park-under capability that scissor lift would be great, because itā€™s got several safety stops on the way up, so you donā€™t have to lift it all the way to the top of the travel, so it would work even in a low-ceiling garage.

Thatā€™s exactly what my neighbor did.
He built a garage-mahal as I call it. One bay is the disassembly area, second bay has the 4 poster with car up and down and third bay is for painting. Second floor is the man cave. This is in addition to the 3 stall attached garageā€¦
The doors are done as you described.

Iā€™m jealous. I live in one of those newer houses where they decided to make each garage stall narrower than old houses used to have. Itā€™s a tight squeeze in there, so itā€™ll never be a garage-mahal, and itā€™s a suburban lot so thereā€™s no room to build a second garage.

I have a friend who tore down his 1-stall detached garage and replaced it with an 8 stall garage that is larger than his house. Iā€™m very jealous of all the wonderful room he has in there. Heā€™s got 3 cars and then tons of shop equipment everywhere. Itā€™s beautiful.

I have a friend who used to teach automotive technology who built a custom house with a huge garage complex that included a hydraulic center-post lift, a welding area, and an engine/tranny rebuild area. That made be jealous.

Sometimes I dream about having a setup like that. And then I realize that if I were that rich Iā€™d be paying someone else to do all that work while I just played with my cars. :wink:

Itā€™s the playing that Iā€™d like to have it for! :grin:
If I had the facilities and the discretionary income Iā€™d love to try building a hot rod of my own design from the ground up. Or perhaps restoring an old '30s-vintage phaetonā€¦ with a more modern brake system and powertrain so itā€™d be safely drivable.

This is not the place to promote your business

In fact, Iā€™m pretty sure itā€™s against the rules

Itā€™s been removed.

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I do what ā€œwaterbuffā€ described: sit down and kick the tall front of the ramps into the wheels so they are underneath the car with the angled ramp actually touching the tires. They donā€™t move this way. But itā€™s left some red paint smudge marks underneath, too, from the ramps.

Another thing Iā€™ve always done - and Iā€™m sure some wonā€™t like this, is I use the ramps on the grass. This way, they bite into the ground and never move. But I do lose 1/2 to 1 inch of clearance this way.

My ramps are 30 years old now. I prefer them over jackstands (if I donā€™t need the added clearance), but the one thing I dislike is the narrowness. My Colt (13") and Taurus (15") wheels fit fine, but my Impala (16") works, but is tight and almost appears to be too big for the rampā€™s width. I wonā€™t even try my Equinox (18"). For that one, I just lay down one brake disk in front of each wheel with the ā€œhatā€ side down, then drive into the center hole, engage E-brake, and chock a wheel with two spare donut tires! All I need is that extra 2" to get underneath to drain the oil, but Iā€™ll need jackstands for anything else. First time I used the brake discs I was a little leery because I can barely slip by the low air dam, but Iā€™ve done 30 or so oil changes this way now and Iā€™m OK with it.

As for that ā€œBendpakā€ lift: I had a scissor jack completely fail on me once when the threaded rod wore out the threads in the female block it turned through. Of course, I wasnā€™t underneath as the jackstands hadnā€™t been put in place yet. But watching that happen right before my eyes has turned me off to any kind of ā€œscissorā€ lifting design. I know that ā€œBendpakā€ has safety stops, but I just couldnā€™t get underneath it.

I also recently made a set of those wooden ā€œstepā€-style ramps, using 4 (or 5?) pieces of 2x10ā€™s plus a stop at the top. Was up in MA with my ramps 900 miles away. Considered another set of metal ramps from Harbor Fake, but decided on the wood option for something different and a bit more flexibility. Painted them black and left them for my son. As someone mentioned, yeah - theyā€™re a bit on the heavy side!

All these work arounds seem like a distraction from hauling out the floor jack and lifting up the vehicle so you can put jack stands underneath. To me ramps are a poor replacement for just doing the job right the first time. And they take up a lot of space in my garage.

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