Storing / Lifting the body

Many people simply put the body in the garden and AK are fine with this, however, for me the garden gate gap was too small to get the body into the garden (I would need a crane to lift it over the wall!)

So I needed a new solution....

What I had was a reasonable high garage ceiling, so I decided to lift the body up instead.

First and foremost I talked with the surveyors who built the garage to confirm it could take the weight and when they said yes the plan was put into action.

The parts needed for this were:

4 x 4" x 4" fence posts, long enough to span 3 roof rafters

2 x 1 tonne ratchet straps
4 x 1 tonne lifting slings
4 x shackles (rated at 600kg each)
4 x Pulley wheels (rated at 250kg each)
30m of Polypropelene rope (rated to 600kg)
7 x 8ft lengths of wood (mine was softwood and came from Wickes)
A packet or two of angle brackets

The cost for this overall was around £100.

I had read on the forum that the body needed to be supported at 43" (behind the wheel arch) 86" and 135" (under the boot).

First of all I made four holes in my garage ceiling, close to the 43" and 135" markers and placed the posts into position, attaching them down with angle brackets. I wrapped the slings around the posts looping it through itself so it couldn't be pulled off the post and then through the hole at one end. For extra security I then attached a ratchet strap across the two rear and front beams to spread the load.

The shackles and pulleys simply connect onto the strap and then the ropes attach to the frame I built to lift the body.

For those that have done the research you'll notice this solution is over-engineered in terms of ability to support the weight as the body is c. 200kg (AK said they have never actually weighed it). I did this on purpose for simple piece of mind.

The "Eagle-Eyed" amongst you will also note the posts supporting the frame in the pictures elsewhere on the blog. These are not technically needed, but psychologically they make me feel safe :-)

There was one mistake in the solution. Originally I bought double pulleys for one side of the lifting rig. This was so that I could run all the ropes to one side of the garage and lift the body with just two people rather than one on each corner. It didn't work for two reasons; firstly because the weight is simply too much for two people to safely lift (unless your built the proverbial brick s**t-house) but also because the soft wood frame I had built couldn't take the strain and broke on one corner. Changing the solution to a four person lift however worked fine. The revised solution also ignored the eye bolts and tie offs in the picture of parts.

One possible improvement if money was no issue would be to change the ropes for four chain blocks so that one person could lower the car bit by bit, corner by corner.

Don't get me wrong readers - this still requires some serious effort to lift.