Bill's Bike Lift
I am sure that all of us that have been in the work shop at Street's or Max's have looked at their lifts with a bit of envy and said " I sure wish I had one of those". Well, I sure have and as I get into the senior years I have a little more trouble getting down on the garage floor, but even more getting up. The idea of building a home made lift has been with me for some time and I have even built a wooden " Rube Goldberg " lift some time ago. This lift worked but was a little inconvenient to operate and I still yearned for one that you could push a button or step on a pedal and have the bike rise off the floor to a convenient working height. I looked at several lifts and decided that 30 inches would be a good height off the ground and that 25 inches would be a reasonable width for the platform. I would also like to have the lift as close to the ground as possible when in the down position. All the lifts that I observed used either hydraulic or compressed air as an energy source. Not wanting to get into either of those areas I decided that I would try to come up with some method of using an electric winch for the power source. The problem with this approach is getting a winch of sufficient lifting capacity while not knowing what that capacity was. I designed and fabricated a lift that incorporated the above measurements and added several other features that I thought would improve the overall design. The winch that I obtained was only a 220 pound pull, with a three part pulley set up, the pull was increased to 660 pounds, which was not adequate. This is the prototype and I wanted to test the principle of operation. I put it all together and it operated properly but was not able to lift and significant weight. I have a 2,000 pound pull winch on order and will test it with the new winch as soon as it gets here. The lift is only 4 inches off the ground while in the down position which makes it easier to get the bike in position. There is a "Tire Vice", that I fabricated from scrap wood in my shop , that is removable. There is a rear section , where the rear tire rests, that is removable so the rear tire can easily be lowered. The winch will be on a removable platform and when removed the lift will be 4"x25"x84". There will be provisions for installing two wheels at the forward end so the lift can be moved and stored against a wall when not in use. I have not yet tried out this feature. The photos are from Bob Griffin and when the first one actually lifts a bike I will post some more photos. I will be happy to provide any information regarding the lift that you may want. Bill Parker. wparker@gwi.net