Last year, my wife and I decided to remodel our house, including adding a couple of rooms at the back, gutting and rebuilding the kitchen, moving the laundry upstairs, and adding a mudroom between the garage and the house. This last addition allowed us to remove a hallway closet and shoe rack to improve our main entry hall; it also provided cubbies for each household member and space for winter clothes and boots.

But in order to build it, we had to carve out about 2/3 of our first garage space (leaving the remainder for bikes, snow-blower, etc.) Losing a garage space created another problem because we have three cars, including the Morgan Plus 8.

After kicking around lots of ideas and doing careful measurements, we solved this problem by installing a hydraulic lift in the third garage space. The Morgan lives up near the ceiling with our little Corolla parked underneath and the minivan in the middle space. With a garage ceiling height of 9’ 5”, there is about 4” to spare!

Many of you will be familiar with the commercial lifts in service garages, allowing a mechanic to easily work on the underside of a car. But such lifts are also available for domestic installations.

I spent a lot of time researching lifts. Cheaper ones are available from Chinese manufacturers but they come with limited warrantees and are not certified by the American Lift Institute (ALI). In the end, I bought a Direct-Lift PP8S (Pro-Park 8 Standard) from the Derek Weaver Company, a dealer based in TX. Direct-Lift is owned by Dover Corp., one of the largest industrial corporations in the US. These lifts are made in Madison, Indiana and are fully certified by ALI; they also carry ETL certification.

This lift is rated at 8000 lbs, vast overkill for the Morgan which weighs about 2500 lbs. But this was the cheapest, certified lift I could find. It will raise the car so that there is 5’ 7” of clearance under the runways, more than enough for a compact or medium sized car to be parked underneath. More expensive versions that will raise the car 6’ 9” high (enough to park an SUV underneath) are also available.  More importantly, the width and length dimensions worked for the Morgan and for our garage space.

The lift itself cost $1895 plus approx $240 in delivery. It comes as a self-contained 1800 lb skid, way too heavy to maneuver! More importantly, the shipping company said that they could not place it in my garage; for them to deliver it to the house, I had to provide my own forklift! Well, that was a non-starter so I had them deliver it instead to the local freight forwarding office. I then hired a flatbed tow truck. As the picture shows, the driver was able to back up to the house and slide the skid off the flatbed right into the middle garage space.

Figure 1 – Delivering the lift skid into our garage.

I had mentioned what I was planning to do to WindyCityMOG club member Ron Geibel and he kindly offered to help me install it. Ron is recently retired as a ramp maintenance engineer with United Airlines, and is thoroughly knowledgeable about mechanical and hydraulic devices. So I took a day off work and Ron came over. It took us about 6 hours to assemble and tune everything, with a little help from our building contractors to lift the heavy runways into place.

Figure 2 – Unpacking the skid. The two runways are still attached to the end pieces used for shipping. The hydraulic ram is visible inside the top runway. In the foreground can be seen two posts and the crossbeam that will join them.

This is a four-post lift. The two front and two back posts are joined by crossbeams that ride on heavy steel cables. Two runway skids run from front to back and these are what the car rests on. Inside one of these runways is a hydraulic ram. The 110V motor and hydraulic reservoir are attached to one of the posts. When a button is pushed, the motor drives oil into the ram which pulls the cables in each post, forcing the base to rise. Pushing a separate lever releases a valve which causes oil to flow back into the reservoir; gravity alone drops the base and vehicle back to the ground.

Figure 3 – After installation, with the Corolla parked under the Morgan. The motor and oil reservoir are visible on the left rear post.

There is a safety interlock every few inches so in order to lower the base, you have to hold another lever to pull back the safety pins. In the raised position, the unit rests on the safety interlock rather than hydraulic pressure so there’s no risk of the base falling if pressure is lost.

Figure 4 – Motor and reservoir assembly. The green button raises the hoist; the small lever on the right releases pressure to lower the hoist, and the larger lever on the left holds back the safety pins.

The lift comes with safety stops for the ends of each runway, ramps to bridge the height between runway and ground, and chocks to put under the rear wheels. It also came with 4 plastic sliding drip pans and one metal work tray, essential to protect the car underneath from oil drips so common with British cars. It even came with heavy-duty casters that I could use to move the whole assembly! (I thought this was an optional extra; not sure how I’ll ever use them.)

Figure 5 – Driving the Morgan off the ramps

It was very gratifying to hear from Ron how impressed he was with the lift, how well it was made and the quality of the materials and workmanship. He said if he ever needed a lift, he’d buy the same one himself, strong praise indeed.

One other problem we had to solve was the garage door opening and motor. Typical garage door motors, chains and tracks hang down about 24” below the ceiling, right in the middle of the door and right where the Morgan was going to sit in its raised position. I consulted with a number of garage door experts and they all recommended exactly the same solution: a Chamberlain Elite LiftMaster 3800. Cost about $300 plus installation.

This garage door motor is mounted on the wall to the left of the garage door, attaching directly to the torsion jackshaft. The installer then repositioned the door tracks so that the door rides up right against the ceiling and well clear of the car. This is a beautiful unit, silent and smooth, fully electronic, with a lock, safety sensor, remote keyless entry, control panel near the back door and remote controls for each car. We liked it so much that we had the installer put one on all three garage doors!

Figure 6 – LiftMaster 3800 garage door opener, with the track repositioned up against the ceiling.

When I want to drive the Morgan, it takes a couple of minutes to pull the tintop out, lower the lift, attach the ramps, drive the car out and remove the ramps so I can close the garage door. But this is a small price to pay for the extra space. And in the raised position, it’s much easier to work on the underside of the car (not that I’m any kind of mechanic; Keith at North Shore Sportscars keeps the Morgan running well.)

But all in all, a successful project. And a huge round of thanks to Ron Geibel, whose help and knowledge was invaluable in getting the unit properly installed.

Resources:  Derek Weaver Company

The PP8S Lift

Liftmaster Elite 3800 Garage Door Opener