Hoist Installed

This was not going to be listed as a milestone until it became a major problem to get done. Basically, I have a hoist rated up to 1500 lbs capacity installed across one of the steel joists. To put it mildly, easier said than done.

My first attempt involved a square steel pipe bolted to the over head joist. This was doable by myself. In order words I could wrestle the hoist up a ladder, get the hoist brackets slid over the pipe and get the pipe bolted to the joist. Not simple, not light work, but something I managed to accomplish on my own.

Of course, before I started lifting engines and body shells and the like, I wanted to make sure everything worked. This is where things went south rapidly. I strapped a 200 lbs safe to the hoist and pressed the UP button. It turned out the hoist was not stable on the pipe and it wanted to slip and slide. Okay, I'm not going to take an $8000 engine, attach headers, manifolds, fuel rails and so forth to it, hoist it over a project car like this and not be confident the hoist can handle the weight.

Time for Plan B. Thus was born the Godzilla bracket.

The Godzilla bracket which is as heavy as it is substantial.

Basically, the top bracket fits over the joist and the bottom plate bolts to the hoist, then everything is bolted together. From an engineering perspective, fantastic! From a getting it to where it needs to go perspective - no so fast. The bracket weights about 40 lbs. The hoist weighs about 40 lbs. Do the math and yes I attempted to wrestle this monster up the ladder to the joist and almost got it there before it landed abruptly on the ground, wrecked the ladder and left a divot in the concrete.

The guiding principle for this project: Failure is not an option. So I thought about this near disaster, got roundly lectured by my bride about doing stupid things and thought about that safe. You see the safe was something dad purchased 50 years ago and he got it up and down the basement steps in two houses. I certainly wasn't much help on either of those occasions. I figured he used a block and tackle of some kind, but I never came across those items in his tool chest. So I rigged my own system.

The idea here is to use the pulley to lift the hoist to the bracket and then bolt in place. It almost worked that way.

In the end, it took two of us to get this thing in place. My pulley idea did work, but we had to tie it off around the safe. Then Bill Sandburg rolled a bench over under the hoist and we wrestled it so I could slide the bolts into place. After that it was real easy.