With all these projects comes the need for more tools: one big one in particular.
One Sunday morning a few years back, a Speedster-owning buddy of mine put a post up on ImpactBumpers.com. A friend of his was moving to the ‘States and clearing out his garage. He had an old scissor lift that had been sitting (seized) in his garage for years and he needed it gone. £300 was the price mentioned. It wasn’t far from me so I went over and had a look that day. I agreed a deal on the spot.
Talking later on to best mate Rob at Raceresto, the ideal plan was going to be to trailer it to his place and free it up by soaking it in diesel, whereupon it could go into his workshop for a good service. We arranged a date to move it and I went over early to get it ready for loading. Rob and I are known for our tendency to slightly diverge from plans, so he eventually arrived hours late and at about the time I was supposed to be doing some dutiful family thing – cannot remember what it was, but anyway…
The lift (a Hauger Autolift) is a proper bit of kit and weighs a silly amount – must be getting on for 400 kilos – but I had managed to raise it up to trailer deck height using wood blocks and a scaffold tube. When the trailer eventually arrived on the back of Rob’s truck, another problem was revealed: his trailer bed was not solid – there was a great expanse of nothingness between the wheel decks, and the lift was narrower than the gap between the two. Some headscratching ensued, but eventually we strapped it to two planks of wood and winched it up the trailer. Rob took the lift home and dropped it at his mum and dad’s place, where it has stayed there under a woodpile until now. This pic is pretty much as it came to us:
R Gruppe buddy Rich Lambert recently installed a scissor lift at his home in the Pacific North West, which inspired me to revisit my lift idea. Then fellow 911 buddy Ian Highfield advertised his Chinese-made Clarke lift on eBay, so I had a bid on it. A few days after that, I went to remind myself what mine looked like and I had second thoughts. Mine is a pro lift that can tilt the car through a range of angles once up in the air, plus it has wheels and can be moved about easily, and it is absolutely top notch quality, so it needs to be saved rather than sold on again. I have been outbid on Ian’s now so have vowed to go sort mine out this weekend.
The plan* is to stick it on a chassis trolley, put it on the trailer and bring it home for dieseling. While that is happening, I’ll clean out the pump and sort any leaky seals out etc. If I can get it limber again, then it is off to my in-laws garage, where it will receive a certain incoming blue 911T to sit on top of it.
*We’ll see how this works out!