I wrote a Hack Mechanic column
for Roundel about buying and using a mid-rise lift, and received quite a
number of e-mails asking if one could be used to pull a trani. Yes, but
it’s a total pain in the ass. Long story short, if you want a lift, and you
have the ceiling space to install a two-post lift, buy one. The mid-rise
lift is a compromise that you don’t have to make if you have ceiling height
and are able to drive straight onto the lift. In my case, my garage has a
flat roof, and a single door that makes me have to move around several cars
if I want to drive the one deepest in, so a post-lift fails in terms of both
height and blocking access inside the space. The mid-rise design lies
fairly flat when its not in use, allowing you to drive over it. Low cars
do, however, catch it, and by “low” I don’t mean only my 911SC – part of
the lift just catches the catalytic converter on my 318ti. The wooden ramps shown on either side of
the lift are there to give the car a little extra clearance when you drive
up and onto the lift. They are a must if you have a low car.
I bought a BendPak MD6XP,
which is of the same basic design as every other mid-rise lift I’ve seen.
Every damned one of these has a nice big cutout (below, left) intended to
allow access to the transmission, but the cutout is at the same end of the
lift as the two big hydraulic cylinders (below, right). If you had the
upper body strength of Barry Bonds, perhaps you could just reach in there,
but it makes it damned near impossible to do what us 98 lb weaklings need
to do – position the trani on a floor jack.
But if you turn the the car
around on the lift – position it with the engine over the end without the
cutout – those big hydraulic cylinders are no longer in the way. There’s a
cross-brace that’s in the way, but you can take two steel wheels and put a
big aluminum plate or wooden board over them, allowing a floor jack to be
placed there and to reach up and lower (or install) the transmission.
