besides--there are too many people on the damn planet as is

I had one of these lifts in my back yard for years. It came from an old service station. Cost was FREE. I installed it about 1978 or so and used it often for years. What I liked about it is I could turn it around anywhere I wanted it. It was outside. If the sun was in my eye or I wanted to be on the sunny side or the shade side, no problem. It had a safety pole for when it was fully up but nothing if only partially up. It was really useless for under car work like transmissions but was great for most other work. The concrete pad it was in started cracking up and I wanted to get rid it which meant the lift had to go also. I tried my best to give it away but at the time, no one wanted it. Scrap was not that much at the time. When I pulled it out of the hole with a back hoe, I dug a big hole out back and put the lift, the concrete from the pad, and some other junk in it and covered it up. If anyone wants it, come and get it. Bring your own back hoe or track hoe, and truck and it is yours. Just make sure you fill the hole back up.
I never felt unsafe using it, and now wish I had it back, but.......

Paul

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84 500 SEL (307,xxx miles)

just as food for thought, here is mine (setup in shop where i bought it)-




This lift was approximately 700 bucks used, and I had to disassemble it and reassemble it in my location. (I disassembled and moved it myself, but had it reassembled by a hydraulics company for about 500 bucks)

its an early 90s design, with a 10k capacity, and uses twin redundant but independent of each other hydraulic rams (one can move the load, in case the other fails), safety cables for leveling both sides, safety locks on both sides, and a height shutoff cable. I can retrofit air pistons to control the locks, but ive been fine with manually disengaging them by walking around to each post. This adds a bothersome step that ensures that I am totally aware that its free and can drop at any time.

I ironically bought it and installed it in a shop that also has an in ground single post of unknown vintage, specifically because I wanted to at all times be able to inspect all parts of the apparatus, and after replacing some hydraulic line and filling up the hydraulic motor, the thing has been maintenance free for the last couple years apart from periodic oilings and greasings.

You havent said what your target use is, but my feeling is if you are using this for personal work as a hobbyist, then keep the globe lift and continue to use it since its only you ever operating it, and any quirks it may have due to age or design are perfectly understood and compensated for, but if you are using it to make money in the service station, and you may have guys working for you, id get a newer one and leave the old one in the ground. I probably wouldn't remove it and destroy the floor incurring additional cost, id just leave it there. my 2 cents

I bought mine initially because I had/have a 3 person partnership we were going to use the lift for, but since then, ive sort of made it my personal property for projects of personal maintenance and moved it to a new unit. I was sharing a space with a couple guys, and its amazing how fast someone unfamiliar with something can hurt themselves or someone else. The idea was to use it to maintain delivery vehicles, but there have been several times Ive arrived to find someone using it for something weird, riding up and down like an elevator, running a cable around one of the arms and through a pulley to lift a table 30 feet across the space, you name it.

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Paul, I hoped you marked the location with a radiator tombstone! That must have been the sweetest shade tree setup around. Thanks for the story. There was another lift like this that my brother pulled out of a shop years ago. Another old gas station was turned into a restaurant. They raised the lift to table height and put a big piece of plexiglass on it to make a 16' table. Another buddy has a Globe Hoist in his art gallery former garage. He collects 356s and uses it now and then.

JB3, I'll use it for my own hobby work: Ghia, Jeep, F100, Benz. I'll keep the F550 off of it! Most of the garage is used for my construction business. Here's a photo of the front of the service station. The walls are adobe bricks.

Attached Thumbnails

 

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83 300TD, 260,000 miles, aka "Dusty"
6 vehicles, 2 cup holders (both in the dump truck)

JB3, a couple of things in the lift. Do the arms have locks to prevent them from swinging? This is to prevent an arm from swinging out from under the car if a pad slips.

The automatic ones have 2 half gears, one on the arm near the pivot and the other is attached to the carriage. The carriage one is spring loaded in the meshed position and a rod protrudes through the carriage. When the carriage is lowered to the ground, this rod, pushes the gear out of mesh so you can move the arm.

The cross over bar needs a overheight switch to prevent a roof from being crushed. This pretty consists of 1 " conduit supported with a chain on each end, each chain is attached to a switch. When the conduit hits the roof, weight comes off the chain and the switches open. Pipe insulation on the conduit prevents roof scratches.

there is an overheight switch, you can just see the wire in the one pic. That has been pretty useful for my delivery van.

The arms do not lock into position though, which has been mildly irritating a couple times. There are no provisions for it in the design, it is over 20 years old I guess. I like that feature, though it is prone to severe rust based functional problems depending on climate, at least on ones I've used.

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Take a functional thing and discard it, and then spend money to replace it.... Maybe I'm just an anachronism, but keeping these old things working can be enjoyable and educational, as well as functional.

Great score getting a place like that, and one of those old lifts. Use it, but always use mechanical safeties.
I wouldn't recommend it as the main lift for a service station, but for your own work, it should be great.

Wish you were closer, my brother has adjustable arms for that kind of lift... He switched over to above ground two post lifts because he has employees....

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On some nights I still believe that a car with the fuel gauge on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio. - HST

1983 300SD - 305000
1984 Toyota Landcruiser - 190000
1994 GMC Jimmy - 203000

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