Automotive Two Post Lifts: A Cedar Falls Collector’s Symmetric vs Asymmetric Year

A Cedar Falls collector who bought automotive two post lifts from us fifteen months ago called last week to tell us his arm choice had cost him a Saturday afternoon. He’d picked asymmetric arms because he mostly works on cars. That was correct — until he backed his F-150 onto the lift for an exhaust job and realized the front-arm reach was two inches short of the truck’s front pickup point. This piece is his first year, told through the arms he chose and the arms he wishes he’d chosen.

Why the Cedar Falls owner picked asymmetric arms

Asymmetric arms are the default recommendation for automotive two post lifts used mostly on passenger cars. The columns rotate thirty degrees, the front arms are shorter than the rear, and the vehicle sits back further in the bay so the driver door opens fully without hitting the column. For a collector working on ’60s and ’70s American cars, that door-clearance is not optional — those cars have doors that open wider than modern vehicles and swing sixty-five degrees, not fifty-five. When he called us fifteen months ago and told us his shop was ninety percent Chevelle, Camaro, and Mustang work, we recommended asymmetric without hesitation. That was the right call for the primary use case. The problem was that his primary use case is not his only use case. Every buyer’s real vehicle mix is broader than the “main” cars they think about when specifying. The lesson: spec the arms for the widest range of vehicles you might actually put on the lift, not just the ones you own today. If a truck lives in your driveway, that truck is in your mix.

First exhaust job: what the arm choice cost him

The exhaust job that started this whole conversation. His F-150 needed a full cat-back replacement. On his asymmetric automotive two post lifts the front arms are short — that’s the point, so the car sits back. When he backed the F-150 in, the rear arms landed on the frame pickups fine, but the front arms couldn’t reach the front factory pickup points without stretching to the maximum. He got them there, technically, but the pad angle was off and he was uncomfortable running the truck up to full height. He wound up doing the exhaust with the truck at knee height, on jack stands, because he didn’t trust the arm engagement. If he’d bought a symmetric configuration, the front arms would have had four more inches of reach and it would have been a non-issue. That is what the asymmetric-versus-symmetric choice actually costs you when your vehicle mix widens over time. His verdict: worth it, because ninety percent of his work is still cars — but he’d have paid the small premium for adjustable arms if we’d offered them explicitly.

The 30-degree column rotation that made everything work

Here is the thing about asymmetric automotive two post lifts that most buyers don’t understand: the “asymmetric” part is not the arm length alone — it’s the column rotation. The columns turn thirty degrees so the vehicle can pull straight in but sit at an angle relative to the columns. That angle is what lets the driver door swing clear of the front column at full open. Without the column rotation, asymmetric arms alone would give you a car that sat back but hit its own door on the column at forty-five degrees of swing. When he opened a Chevelle door on his lift the first time and had inches to spare where his old jack-stand routine would have had none, he understood what the thirty-degree number was really doing. This is why the “just get symmetric, it’s more flexible” advice you’ll read online is not quite right for classic-car collectors. Symmetric gives you more arm reach; asymmetric gives you door clearance. Pick the one whose limitation is easier to live with for the vehicles you love. Our Rotary vs Challenger reference has the exact column-rotation numbers by model.

Driveline access: symmetric arms he wishes he had for the truck

Driveline access is where asymmetric bites you a second time. On his F-150 the driveshaft carrier bearing sits about eleven inches ahead of the rear axle centerline. The front arms of his asymmetric automotive two post lifts, at the truck’s pickup points, put the arm-body itself within eight inches of the carrier bearing. Room to work, but tight. On a symmetric build with longer front arms, the arm body would have been further back and the driveshaft access clean. He got the job done, but he lost thirty minutes navigating tools around an arm that a symmetric lift would have put out of the way. If truck driveline work is twenty percent or more of your service mix, we now recommend symmetric arms and eating the door-clearance compromise on classic cars. If truck driveline work is under ten percent, stay asymmetric and jack the truck the old way when it comes in. There is no single right answer. There is only the right answer for the actual work you do.

Loading position: rear-heavy vehicles and the asymmetric compromise

The other asymmetric trap: rear-heavy vehicles. Mid-engine cars, some rear-engine builds, and any pickup with a heavily loaded bed load the rear axle more than the front. Asymmetric automotive two post lifts are designed to keep the vehicle balanced with the front arms carrying about forty percent and rear arms sixty percent — because a passenger car has a fifty-five/forty-five or sixty/forty weight distribution front-to-rear. Load a rear-heavy vehicle on an asymmetric lift and you can push into seventy/thirty or worse, which pushes the rear arms toward their capacity limit. His Cedar Falls collection is all front-engine cars so this never bit him. But when he considered adding a used C4 Corvette to the collection this fall, we told him to pull his F-150 off the lift and think hard about the weight distribution before he raised it. Weight distribution matters as much as gross weight. Read the arm capacity spec, not just the lift capacity spec.

Six months in: the arm restraint pin that saved a hood

Six months into ownership, a windy day, garage door open, and his shop cat brushed against an arm restraint release. The arm swung inward on the automotive two post lifts a few inches before he caught it. The car that was over the arm at the time was his freshly restored ’68 Chevelle. The arm restraint pin — the actual mechanical stop that holds the arm in position when locked — was what kept the arm from swinging into the fender. That pin is a cheap part. It’s also the single most important safety component on the lift after the cable system. Every automotive two post lifts owner should check their arm restraint pins every service. Look for wear grooves, look for missing lock washers, look for anything that doesn’t click positively into place. Replace at the first sign of wear. We stock every major brand’s arm restraint pins and can ship next-day. The collector replaced both his front pins as a precaution. Peace of mind was worth ten times the cost.

Which arm configuration we recommend for a collector today

When a collector calls us today asking about automotive two post lifts, we ask two questions before recommending an arm configuration. First: is any truck or SUV in your regular use? If yes, we lean symmetric. Second: are your primary cars pre-1980 American iron with wide doors? If yes, we lean asymmetric. If the answer is “both,” we recommend a lift with adjustable columns — a build where you can set the column rotation on install and change it later if your mix shifts. Not every brand offers this, but Rotary and Challenger do on some models. It costs a small premium over a fixed-configuration lift and it removes the whole regret category from your decision. The Cedar Falls collector, given the choice again, would buy the adjustable-column build. So would we. If your budget allows it, that is the right answer for a private collection where the vehicle mix is going to change over ten to twenty years. Call us at 800-674-9302 and we’ll walk through your specific mix before you commit.