Re: alfa-digest V7 #1244 - Engine Hoist

[AlfaNeely@domain.elided]

Bruce,
    Find a house with more garage.  No one can live with only a one car 
garage.  Unless there is space in the back yard for a small 40 x 60 
building...
    In high school, I pulled engines with the manure scoop on the front of a 
farm tractor.  Mobile enough that I could drive the tractor to town and wash 
the engine at the car wash.
    Later I acquired an electric chain hoist.  I hung it from the rafters of 
my house where all the legs of the hip roof came together.  Actually, I hung 
a chain from the rafters down though a hole in the garage ceiling.  The chain 
hoist hung under the ceiling.  And yes, the car had to be wiggled and moved 
to align the engine.  Not really a problem.
    David Simmons had a large beam attached to the ceiling of his garage.  
When he wanted to pull an engine, he put 4 x 4's from the ends down to the 
floor.  His roof was not deemed strong enough to hang the hoist from the 
rafters.  David is an Architect, so he should know.
    I still have the electric chain hoist, but I bought a cherry picker a few 
years ago.  It has an A shaped frame with wheels at the corners of the A.  It 
has an adjustable arm with a hydraulic jack to move it up and down.  It cost 
about $200.  I could take it apart for storage, but I just leave it set up 
and store stuff in an under it when not in use.
    The cherry picker is quite mobile.  You can push it around with the 
engine on it.  And it is easy to attach the engine stand while the engine is 
in the air.
    It is best to push the car out of the garage and pull the engine in the 
drive.  There is simply not enough room in front of the car.  Or there is not 
in my garage.  A deeper garage might allow that.  Height is not a problem.
    Since you have to move the car around with most any type of pulling 
device, having a chain hoist that is not movable is not that big a 
disadvantage.  I still vote for a cherry picker - and for a house with more 
garage.
    You want the real deal?  Go for a bridge crane.  Two tracks on either 
side of the garage with the chain hoist mounted to a cross track.  Everything 
is on rollers and the hoist can move anywhere in the garage!

    Once the engine is out, you need to build an Alfa engine stand.  I used 
two commercial engine stands - the cheap ones.  I modified them to attach to 
both sides of the engine by bolting to the motor mount locations.  For the 
four cylinder, I welded channel to the ends of the correct diameter tubing.  
The top of the three holes for the motor mount locations is 3/4 inch below 
the bottom of the pipe.  The pipe the engine rotates on is 2 3/16 inches 
outside diameter.  In other words, the center of mass of the Alfa four 
cylinder is about an inch and a half above the top bolt of the motor mount.
    Mounts for the same stand with a Milano engine are more complicated.  I 
can describe the ones I made offline if desired.
Ciao,
Russ Neely
Oklahoma City


In a message dated 12/27/1999 7:17:55 PM Central Standard Time, 
owner-alfa-digest@domain.elided writes:

<< 
 Date: Mon, 27 Dec 1999 12:31:16 -0500
 From: "Giller,Bruce C." <bgiller@domain.elided>
 Subject: engine hoist
 
    We are looking at buying a house that has a 1-car garage.  This means
 that I won't have the floor space for equipment that I only use every
 once in a blue moon.  I need to rebuild the engines in both my Alfas,
 GTV and Spider.  I was thinking of putting a chain hoist (1 ton model)
 in the rafters of the garage to hoist out the engines but this means
 that I'd have to move the car to get the engine out instead of moving
 the hoist.  Then I thought of attaching the hoist to one of the
 old-fashioned barn door tracks with the track attached to the underside
 of the rafters;  maybe a 4 foot length of track would surf ice  But I'm
 not sure how much weight the track and the roller hardware can handle. 
 The Northern Tool & Equipment catalog sells an 'adjustable trolley' that
 runs an I-beam but this means I'd have to mount a heavier I-beam to the
 rafters and the trolley itself looks pretty massive.  Has anyone done
 this with success (and failure)?
 
    Bruce
 
    '86 Spider
    '73 GTV
 
    Takoma Park
  >>

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End of alfa-digest V7 #1245
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