A collector in the Des Moines metro who stores four vehicles year-round bought a set of automotive two post lifts from us last spring, and asked us six months in whether we could write up the first-year ownership experience for other collectors thinking about the same decision. This is that write-up – an honest, month-by-month account of what it’s actually like to own a properly-installed two-post lift for suspension and shock replacement, wheel work, and long-term vehicle storage. What the automotive two post lifts brand history looks like, how the parts pipeline actually performs, and what we’d change if we did it again.
Rotary and BendPak two-posts sized for collector garages – installed by our crew across the Des Moines metro, warrantied and parts-supported for decades.
Month One: Choosing the Lift and the Install
The collector called us in April looking at automotive two post lifts for a 30×40 pole building shop with 12-foot side walls, concrete floor, and a mix of a 1970 Trans Am, a 1998 Miata, a modern F-150, and a project ’69 Camaro on jack stands. Vehicle weights ranged from 2,300 lb (Miata) to 5,900 lb (F-150). Ceiling clearance measured at 11 feet 8 inches at the lowest point of the bar joist trusses.
Ceiling ruled out overhead-style – the 12-foot minimum was too tight given the truss line. We spec’d a Rotary SPO10 baseplate with 82-inch rise, asymmetric arms, low-profile pads, drive-over ramps, and the rubber cross-bar cover. Total lift package landed in the mid-$6,000 range with all options. Install took one day. Two-tech crew arrived from Ames at 8am, rigged the columns, drilled anchors into the existing 6-inch, 4,000 psi pad, ran the crossover hydraulic line, filled and bled the reservoir, cycled the lift under a 6,000 lb test weight, and walked the collector through operation. Home by 5pm. The collector’s take on month one: “Faster than I expected, everything the sales quote said it would be, no surprises.” That’s the honest report. When automotive two post lifts get properly spec’d for the building and the vehicle mix, install is uneventful. Uneventful is what you want.
Month Two: Suspension Work on the Trans Am
The first real work on the new lift was a front suspension rebuild on the 1970 Trans Am. Kingpin bushings, upper and lower control arm bushings, new shocks, new springs. Job took a Saturday afternoon plus part of a Sunday. On jack stands it would have been a two-weekend job with a lot of crawling.
The collector’s report: “Being able to stand up under the car and reach the upper control arm mount bolt from below in one motion changed the job entirely. Not just faster – less exhausting, and I could actually see what I was doing.” That’s the case for automotive two post lifts in a collector shop. It’s not about speed, though speed helps. It’s about the difference between working comfortably at eye level and crawling under a jacked-up car with a headlamp. On a 55-year-old vehicle with 55-year-old fasteners, being able to work carefully at eye level protects the parts you don’t want to break. The rear shock replacement the following weekend took about 90 minutes, mostly because the Trans Am’s shock upper mount is inside the trunk area – a job the lift didn’t help with but didn’t hinder either. Month two also included a wheel-bearing repack on the Miata. Wheels off, brake caliper off, hub off, bearings out, cleaned, repacked, reassembled. Two hours instead of the four the collector had budgeted. Suspension and wheel work is what a home lift really shines at.
Month Three: Storing a Vehicle on the Lift
Winter came early. The collector wanted the Miata off the floor for winter storage – a common ask for collectors with automotive two post lifts. Question was whether it’s safe to leave a vehicle on the lift for four to five months at full height.
Short answer: yes, on properly-installed lifts with mechanical safety locks engaged. The hydraulic cylinders are not what holds the vehicle at height during storage – the mechanical safety locks are. The cylinders can be fully released (which is actually preferred, to take load off the seals and hydraulic system), and the vehicle sits on the mechanical locks for the storage period. We recommend cycling the lift down and back up once a month during storage to verify safety-lock function and prevent any seal set. The collector did this in November, December, January, and February – five-minute exercise each time. The Miata came off the lift in March for spring shakedown. No issues, no seal drift, no cable stretch, no lock wear. Longer term storage on automotive two post lifts is a genuine collector use case that manufacturers design for explicitly. The Rotary literature covers it, the ALI training covers it, and the mechanical design supports it. It’s not stress-testing the equipment – it’s using it as designed. Some collectors run “storage lifts” for this specific purpose, which are 4-post lifts optimized for parking. But a properly-used 2-post handles occasional storage duty without issue.
Month Six: Brand History and Why Rotary Was Right
Six months in, the collector asked why we recommended Rotary over the several other brands he’d looked at. Fair question. The short version: brand history and parts pipeline.
Rotary Lift traces to 1925 in Memphis and has been continuously producing hydraulic lifts since. The design lineage on the SPO/SPOA series goes back to the 1980s and the parts availability on those models – cable sets, cylinder seal kits, safety-lock mechanisms – is still current at the factory today. If a Rotary SPOA10 you buy in 2026 needs a cable set in 2038, you’ll get one from Rotary next-day. That’s not a promise every lift brand can honestly make. Challenger, our other primary recommendation, has similar longevity – the CL series traces back to the 1990s and the parts pipeline is equally solid. We stock both brands in Ames. Newer brands, including some that show up frequently on marketplace listings, don’t have 40 years of production behind them. That’s not a knock – some of those lifts are perfectly good hardware – but the parts pipeline question in year 15 is different. When automotive two post lifts are a 20 to 25 year purchase, the brand’s ability to still supply parts in year 20 is a real consideration. For collectors especially, where the lift is going to sit in the shop for decades, we push hard toward Rotary or Challenger.
Month Seven: The Parts Pipeline Test
Month seven brought the parts pipeline test. The collector clipped a low-profile pad on a floor drain cover coming out of the shop, cracking the urethane. Not the lift’s fault – a shop-layout issue that got fixed the same weekend with a redesigned drain cover.
But: needed a replacement pad. Called us Monday morning, gave the SKU, we shipped the pad from Ames stock the same afternoon, arrived at the collector’s shop Wednesday. Total cost was under $85 for the pad and shipping. This is the automotive two post lifts parts pipeline working as designed. Common wear items – pads, pad rubber, arm-restraint gears, safety-lock springs, cable clips – are stocked in Ames and ship same-day to Iowa addresses. Less common items – cylinder seal kits, cable sets, hydraulic power units – are stocked at Rotary’s Nashville distribution center and typically ship next-business-day. The parts pipeline is a real differentiator between the brands we sell and the marketplace-listing brands. When you can get a $60 pad in two days versus a two-week overseas shipment or a “no longer available” response, the practical utility of the lift stays high across its whole life. For a collector who wants to actually use the lift for 20 or 25 years – not just buy it and hope – the parts pipeline is a core part of the value proposition. That was one of the biggest factors in this collector’s original decision, and by month seven he’d confirmed it works as advertised.
Month Nine: What Cable Inspection Involves
Month nine was the first six-month lift inspection. Collector called us out for the walk-through, partly to learn what to look for on his own going forward, partly because we include one free inspection in the first year of ownership.
Cable inspection on a properly-installed two-post takes about 30 minutes. We look at the equalizer cable and the two lift cables for kinking, fraying, corrosion, and stretch. New cables at year-one show essentially no wear if the lift has been used at normal load with clean hydraulic fluid. This collector’s cables were pristine. We also inspect the sheave grooves (where the cables wrap around the pulleys), the cable clamps at both ends, and the equalizer bar for wear. All good on this lift. Cylinder seal inspection is visual – look for weep at the base of the cylinder rod. Any wet spot is a warning. This collector’s cylinders were dry. Hydraulic fluid check: color and level. Normal ISO 32 AW fluid stays clear amber for 5 to 10 years in a home shop use case. Dark brown or milky fluid is a red flag – dark brown means overheating, milky means water contamination. The inspection took a total of 45 minutes and turned into a mini-training session for the collector. This is the ownership pattern we recommend for automotive two post lifts: professional inspection year one, self-inspection years two through nine, professional inspection year ten.
Twelve Months In: What We’d Do Again
Twelve months in, the collector’s honest verdict: buy the lift, buy it from someone who installs it, buy Rotary or Challenger. Everything else is preference.
What he’d do the same: Rotary SPO10 baseplate configuration matched to his 11-foot ceiling. Two-tech professional install. Low-profile pads. Drive-over ramps. Full concrete pre-check before install. All good decisions that held up in year one. What he’d change: he’d add the air-line kit from day one. He didn’t order it initially and ended up adding it in month four when he got tired of running an extension cord for his impact wrench. $220 add-on that would have been better ordered upfront. Small thing, but worth noting for anyone spec’ing new automotive two post lifts. He’d also position the lift bay two feet further from the workbench wall to give more creeper roll-out space. Six inches of position matters more than it seems on paper. If we were doing the install again we’d spend more time on floor layout before drilling anchors. Overall: twelve months of use, zero maintenance issues, zero warranty claims, and the lift has changed how he works on cars. That’s the honest first-year review. If you’re a Des Moines-metro collector thinking about automotive two post lifts, call 800-674-9302 or email founder@autoliftserv.com. We’ll walk your building, spec the right configuration, and give you a fixed installed price.
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