A Quad Cities Collector’s First Year With a New Auto Lift

When a car collector in the Quad Cities called us in the fall of 2024 about a new auto lift for his private garage, he already knew what he wanted — a 10,000-pound two-post that could stack two cars in a 30×40 building. What he did not know was how twelve months of ownership would actually play out from install day to the first CV axle job. Auto Lift Services financed and installed the machine, and this article is his year told in his own words, translated into the plain sequence we walk every collector through. If you are thinking about a lift for a private collection and wondering what the first year really looks like, this is that story.

Why this Quad Cities collector picked a two-post over a four-post

The most common question we hear from collectors is two-post versus four-post. For a collector who plans to store cars and only occasionally work on them, a four-post makes sense — drive on, drop the pins, walk away, use it as a parking shelf. For a collector who plans to actually do brake, suspension, exhaust, and CV work on his own cars, a two-post wins every time. The wheels hang free, the whole underside is open, and the arms swing out of the way for hood-open work. This particular collector wanted to do his own CV axles and half-shafts on the two Porsches he was driving daily.

He looked at four-posts first, added rolling jacks in the quote, and realized that a four-post with jacks costs more than a two-post and still does not give him the free-hanging suspension geometry a CV pull requires. We steered him to a 10,000-pound asymmetric Rotary SPOA10 with wide arms and low-profile pads. The asymmetric geometry means his 911 door clears the column when open, which was a hard requirement — he was not going to nick the door on his weekend car every time he drove it in. He confirmed the model in October and we scheduled a December install so the slab could hit its full cure.

The auto lift financing terms he actually took

We offer collectors two financing paths. First is a straight 0 percent APR twelve-month term through First Business Bank, with a ninety-day payment deferral. That is the option most collectors take because it splits a five-figure equipment purchase across a full year of paychecks without adding interest. Second is a six- to nine-year extended term through the same bank that trades a longer runway for a modest interest rate. This collector took the 0 percent twelve-month with the ninety-day defer, which meant he took delivery in December, did not make his first payment until March, and had the whole balance retired by the following March.

The banker asks for standard personal financials and typically approves collectors within a business day. Down payment on the 0 percent option is zero. Down payment on the extended term is roughly ten percent. We do not touch the credit application ourselves — the bank handles it directly with the buyer — but we can email a warm intro and she moves fast. The collector’s total out-of-pocket on install day was the delivery fee and the sales tax, both under a thousand dollars combined. Everything else was on the twelve-month plan and paid off well before the first annual ALI inspection came due.

Delivery week and install-day timeline

We ship every two-post from our Iowa warehouse on a lift-gate truck. Delivery to a Quad Cities garage is typically a two-day transit from the day we release the crate. The collector took delivery on a Wednesday, we scheduled install for the following Monday, and we brought two techs and a trailer with anchor tools, a torque wrench, and the site survey drawing. The install itself took one full day for a single machine in a garage with the slab already poured, the ceiling framed clean, and the 220-volt drop already run to the intended column base location.

Day-of, we uncrated the columns, laid out the anchor pattern per the install manual, drilled sixteen anchor holes with a stop-collared rotary hammer, vacuumed each hole three times, set anchors, torqued to spec, stood the columns, ran the equalizer cable, hooked up the hydraulic power unit, and cycled the equipment three times empty. Then we ran a half-load test with the collector’s daily driver, walked him through the safety controls, handed him the ALI operator manual, and had him sign the install sheet. Total on-site time was about seven hours. We were back on the road to Iowa by five in the afternoon.

The first CV axle and half-shaft job on the new lift

The collector’s first real job on the new setup was a passenger-side CV axle replacement on his 2004 911. He called us on a Saturday morning about six weeks after install to walk through the sequence, because a two-post CV pull is nothing like doing one on jack stands. We told him to raise the car to about chest height, engage the arm locks, verify the audible click on all four arms, and use a rolling floor jack to support the wheel-side of the control arm before pulling the outer nut. That last step is the one collectors forget the first time out.

With the wheel hanging free and the control arm supported, the axle comes out the way the shop manual says it should. Without the rolling jack support, the axle can bind at the transmission side because the suspension is at full droop. He got the job done in about ninety minutes total, sent us a text with a picture of the old axle on his workbench, and asked us what he should tackle next. The value proposition of a home lift is exactly this — a job that would have cost him three hundred dollars at a shop cost him a fifty-dollar axle from a parts counter and his Saturday morning at home.

Month six, cables, and the first cylinder check

Six months in, we call every install customer for a check-in. The collector had done four more jobs — a set of brake pads, a rear shock swap, an oil change, and a summer tire mount — and he reported that the equipment was running smooth. We walked him through the six-month checks on the phone. Eyeball the equalizer cable for fraying, listen for the arm lock click on every arm, check hydraulic fluid level at the power unit, and pull the slack safety cable to verify the arm-lock engagement. Fluid was on the mark. Cables looked good. Arm locks all clicked crisp on the pull test.

We also asked him to visually inspect the hydraulic cylinder rod for scoring or wet spots. A cylinder that is going to leak usually announces itself early with a wet ring at the rod seal. His was dry. Six months is also the interval where we sometimes see a fresh installation settle — an anchor that torqued fine on day one occasionally loses a quarter turn as the concrete under the base plate compresses. We told him to re-torque all sixteen anchors with a click-set torque wrench borrowed from a friend at a local shop. Two anchors needed a partial turn to hit spec. That is normal and part of the routine.

Month twelve, ALI inspection, and what he found

Twelve months after install, the equipment is due for a professional ALI-certified inspection. We drove out to the Quad Cities on a Tuesday, brought the inspection kit, and ran the full ALI-ALIS checklist — cables, arms, restraints, controls, structural, electrical, hydraulic. Everything on his machine passed. The cables showed normal wear at the sheave contact points but no broken strands. The arm locks were still crisp. The hydraulic cylinder was dry. Anchors were still holding torque. We signed his inspection sticker, dated it, and stuck it to the driver-side column at eye level for the next inspection cycle.

What he found in his own use over the year matched what we predicted. He did about a dozen jobs on the equipment, saved himself close to two thousand dollars in shop labor over jobs he would have farmed out, and finished paying off the balance three months before the twelve-month term ended. The only thing that surprised him was how much he used the machine for storage — his convertible sat on the deck for the winter, which cleared his garage floor for a third car. He is now looking at a second unit on the opposite side of the building. Browse our current 4-post storage lifts for that scenario.

What he would do differently the second time

We asked him if he would change anything about the sequence. Two things. First, he would have poured a thicker slab. His original slab was five inches at 3,000 psi, which is fine for a 10,000-pound two-post but tight if he ever wanted to upgrade to a 12,000-pound. He now wishes he had gone to six inches at 3,500 psi and gotten the future-proof pour on the front end. Second, he would have run a second 220-volt drop to the opposite side of the garage during original construction, since he is now thinking about a second machine and will have to trench concrete to add the circuit.

His third-and-a-half regret is not spending the extra thousand dollars on truck-adapter arm extensions at the original purchase. He bought them six months later as an add-on and paid the individual retail price instead of the install-day bundle rate. Little stuff. But every collector we talk to has the same short list of I-wish-I-had-known items, which is exactly why we walk buyers through the full year of scenarios during the site survey. If you are a Quad Cities collector thinking about the same sequence, call us before the slab pour, not after — the sequencing dollars are the ones that pay back the fastest.