2 Post Car Lift Bay Layout in West Des Moines: Real Dimensions for Restoration and Metal Work

A service manager at a West Des Moines dealership called us last spring because his restoration and metal-work bay had turned into a bottleneck, and he was convinced the fix was a bigger 2 post car lift. It wasn’t. His capacity was fine. His bay layout was the problem — the columns sat 22 inches off the back wall, the welding cart lived where the passenger-side arms swung, and every panel job meant rolling three carts out to the aisle before anyone could touch the rockers. We spent an afternoon with a tape measure and a piece of chalk and moved almost nothing but the anchor locations. Bay throughput went up noticeably within a month. This article is the technical version of that afternoon: real dimensions, real clearances, and the workflow reasoning behind them.

Start With the Bay Envelope, Not the Lift Spec Sheet

Every layout conversation we have starts with four numbers: clear width wall to wall, clear depth door to back wall, lowest overhead obstruction, and concrete thickness. Not the door height — the lowest thing in the ceiling, which is almost always a light fixture, a heater flue, a sprinkler drop, or a garage door track. In that West Des Moines shop the stated ceiling was 14 feet, but the sectional door track ran at 11 feet 4 inches for the first eight feet of the bay. That single number decided the whole project, because a clear-floor overhead model needs roughly 12 feet of true height for a 10,000 lb unit, and taller for anything bigger.

For a general-purpose restoration bay, we want a minimum of 12 feet of clear width and prefer 14. A 10,000 lb symmetric two-post is about 11 feet 6 inches across the outside of the columns, and you still need room to walk past the columns with a fender or a quarter panel in your hands. Depth matters less than people expect — 24 feet is plenty for cars and half-tons — but you need three to four feet behind the vehicle for the welder, the plasma cart, and the guy running the grinder. Get those four numbers on paper first. Then, and only then, start comparing models.

Symmetric vs. Asymmetric on a Metal-Work Bay

The symmetric-versus-asymmetric decision gets treated as a preference. On a restoration bay it’s a workflow decision with real consequences. A symmetric configuration puts the columns at the vehicle’s midpoint and the arms even front to rear, which centers the load and gives you the cleanest access to rockers, floor pans, and jack points. That’s exactly what you want when you’re cutting and welding along the sill. The trade-off is that the driver’s door lands more or less on the column, so getting in and out of the car is awkward.

Asymmetric rotates the columns roughly 30 degrees and sets the vehicle back so the doors clear. Great for a quick-lube bay where techs are in and out of the cabin all day. Less great when the whole job is bodywork, because the rear arms reach further back and can crowd the rear wheel arch — one of the areas you’re most likely to be working on. A lot of the current Rotary and Challenger clear-floor models are versymmetric, meaning you can set them up either way with the same equipment. For the West Des Moines bay we set the columns symmetric and accepted the door situation, because nobody was sitting in the cars anyway. If your bay does mixed work, versymmetric is the honest answer.

Concrete: The Number That Kills More Projects Than Ceiling Height

We get calls every week that end with “the concrete is about five inches, maybe less.” Maybe less is the problem. Most 10,000 lb two-post lifts require a minimum of four inches of 3,000 PSI concrete measured at the anchor, plus adequate cure time and adequate distance from any expansion joint, saw cut, or slab edge. Heavier units and taller columns want more. And it isn’t just thickness — a four-inch slab poured on soft fill in 1974 is not the same as a four-inch slab on compacted base.

We core-drill or hammer-test when there’s any doubt, and if the slab comes up short we pour a footing pad. In an existing bay that usually means cutting two rectangles roughly four feet by four feet by twelve to sixteen inches deep under each column, tying in rebar, and pouring. It adds a couple days and a couple hundred dollars in materials, and it means the 2 post car lift will still be holding a Suburban in the air in twenty years instead of pulling anchors. Skipping it is the single most expensive shortcut in this business. If you’re pouring a new floor, tell your concrete contractor where the columns go and have him thicken those areas while the truck is still on site — it costs almost nothing at that stage.

Overhead vs. Baseplate When You’re Dragging Panels Around

An overhead clear-floor model puts the hydraulic lines and equalizer cables in a top beam, leaving the floor between the columns completely open. For a metal-work bay that’s a real advantage: you can roll a transmission jack, an engine stand, or a bare rolling shell straight through without lifting a wheel over anything. The cost is height. You need the true clearance we talked about, and you lose the top of the bay to the beam and the safety shutoff bar.

A baseplate model runs everything through a low channel across the floor. It works in bays with 11 to 12 feet of height where an overhead won’t fit, and we install a lot of them in older Des Moines-area buildings and converted farm shops. The trade-off is that the channel is a trip hazard and a nuisance for anything with small casters. We’ve had shops solve it with a ramped cover, which helps. For the West Des Moines dealership we went overhead because the height was there once the door track was accounted for and because they were constantly wheeling a rotisserie in and out. If your ceiling is tight, don’t force it — a baseplate 2 post car lift that fits beats an overhead that doesn’t. For a broader look at how these two families compare, see our overview of two-post lift configurations.

Column Placement, Anchor Layout, and the 30-Inch Rule

Here’s where most DIY installs go sideways. Column spacing comes off the manufacturer’s drawing and is not negotiable — get it wrong by an inch and the arms won’t reach the lift points or the carriages won’t sit plumb. But where that whole assembly lands in the bay is yours to decide, and it’s the highest-leverage choice you’ll make.

Our rule of thumb: 30 inches minimum from the back of the column to any wall, bench, or fixed obstruction. That’s the space a tech needs to squeeze behind a column with a tool in hand. Forty-two inches is better if a bench or parts cart lives on that wall. Keep the columns at least three feet clear of any saw cut, expansion joint, or slab edge — anchors near a joint have nothing to grab. Center the assembly on the vehicle path from the door, not on the bay walls, because those two are often not the same thing in older buildings. And decide which side the power unit goes on before you drill, because that’s the side you’ll be walking to fifty times a day. In the West Des Moines bay the fix was moving the whole footprint 14 inches forward and eight inches toward the door side. Same equipment, same capacity, and suddenly two people could work the car at once. We have more on prep sequencing in our guide to lift installation requirements.

Capacity, Vehicle Mix, and Not Overbuying

Capacity questions come up constantly, and the honest answer is that most shops need less than they think and a few need much more. A 10,000 lb unit covers passenger cars, crossovers, half-ton pickups, and the vast majority of restoration projects with margin to spare. A 6,000 lb vehicle on a 10,000 lb rating is comfortable. Where you need to step up to 12,000 or 14,000 lb is heavy three-quarter and one-ton trucks, dually service bodies, cutaway vans, and anything with a plow or a utility box on it.

The other side of capacity is rise and arm reach. A restoration bay wants maximum rise so a tech can stand upright under the floor pan for hours — that’s the difference between a productive day and a sore back. And you want short, low-profile arm pads or drop-end arms if you’re working on lowered cars, older unibodies with soft pinch welds, or anything on a rotisserie. We’ve seen shops buy a 14,000 lb unit for a bay that never sees anything over 7,000 lb, then discover the arms won’t get low enough for the ’69 Camaro that pays the bills. Match the equipment to the actual vehicle mix in front of you, not to the heaviest thing that might theoretically show up someday.

Workflow, Air, Power, and What We’d Do Differently

The layout doesn’t end at the columns. Once the footprint is set, we mark where the air drop, the 220V feed, the light placement, and the exhaust extraction go — because all four are easier to run before the equipment is standing and nearly impossible to do cleanly after. Put the air drop on the power-unit column so hose and cord aren’t crossing the bay at ankle height. Keep the electrical disconnect within sight of the operator. Move ceiling lights out from directly over the vehicle centerline, since the raised roof will shadow everything you actually need to see.

The thing we’d tell that West Des Moines manager to do differently is simple: measure the workflow before buying the equipment. Walk the job the way a tech walks it — car in, doors open, lift up, cart in, weld, grind, cart out, lift down, car out — and note every place someone has to stop and move something. Those stopping points are where the money goes. A well-placed 2 post car lift in a mediocre bay outperforms a great lift dropped in the wrong spot every single time. If you want a second set of eyes, send us a rough sketch with those four envelope numbers and we’ll mark it up and send it back. We do it several times a week for shops across central Iowa, and it costs you nothing but the time to hold the tape. See also our notes on choosing lift capacity.