Automotive Two Post Lifts: A Council Bluffs Collector’s First Year, Told Straight

A Council Bluffs collector we sold automotive two post lifts to twelve months ago called us this week — same guy, one year in — with a story we want other collectors to hear before they buy. He stores three cars on the lift and services two of them off it. The install was almost wrong. His garage door caught his Chevelle mirror the first week. His ceiling was a foot tighter than the builder’s blueprint claimed. This piece is his first year, told straight, with the numbers he wishes he’d known day one.

Month one: the install we almost got wrong on door swing

When the collector originally spec’d the bay, he sent us a builder’s blueprint showing a 16-foot garage door and 22 feet of interior width. On paper the two columns for his automotive two post lifts fit fine on twelve-foot centerlines. But the garage door rolls up on tracks that eat into the interior clear width — six inches on each side. His actual clear width at column height was 20 feet 8 inches, not 22. His ’68 Chevelle door, opened to sixty degrees, needed 20 feet 10 inches to clear the driver-side column. The first time he opened the car door on the lift he chipped the mirror. Fixable, not tragic, but avoidable. The lesson: measure the clear width at column height with the garage door open. Blueprints show framing, not tracks and hardware. And measure the widest door swing on the widest car you plan to lift. Since that install we walk every buyer through door-swing math before we ship columns. It takes ten minutes and saves paint.

Ceiling height: what the collector’s builder missed

The builder’s plans said ten feet six inches ceiling. When we measured on install day it was ten feet two inches at the lowest joist. Four inches short of the plans and one inch short of the asymmetric overhead spec on the automotive two post lifts we’d already shipped. We rotated the shutoff bar to the low position, and it worked — but barely. The collector’s Suburban with roof racks sits at six feet nine inches tall. Fully raised it clears the shutoff bar by four inches. That is a tolerance he did not want. If he’d known the real ceiling number, we would have shipped a baseplate model. Builders round ceiling height to the joist location on the drawings, not the lowest actual obstruction. A duct run or a plumbing chase can drop your usable height four to six inches without showing on the plans. Measure before you order. Measure at the exact location where the lift shutoff will sit, not the middle of the room. Ten minutes with a tape measure would have saved us a shipping change and him a headache.

First service: rotating shocks on a stored 1969 Camaro

By month three the collector was rotating stored cars off the lift for driving season. First service off his automotive two post lifts was fresh shocks on the ’69 Camaro. He’d never used a lift before — he’d been on jack stands for twenty years. The thing that surprised him most was how much faster the work went and how much better the access was. Removing the rear leaf spring bushings, which he said used to take him a full Saturday on stands, took him two hours on the lift. The other surprise was arm-pad placement. He’d assumed the pads sat wherever the arms landed. In fact each pad has to seat on the frame’s factory jack point or a reinforced pinch weld. On the Camaro the pinch welds are further back than most cars — a tech would know, a collector might not. We walked him through pad placement on a video call before he lifted the first time. Do the same before your first solo service. It is not intuitive from the manual. Our installation reference covers the arm-pad geometry with diagrams.

Storage vs service: why one lift is not the other

Half of collectors we sell automotive two post lifts to want to use the lift for both storage and service. We tell all of them the same thing: a 2-post is a service lift that can store, but it is not a storage lift. If storage is the primary job, buy a 4-post. A 2-post holds a car on four contact pads under the frame — safe indefinitely, but the pads slowly compress the paint over months. A 4-post holds the car on the tires with the suspension loaded, which is how it sits in your driveway anyway. The Council Bluffs collector uses his 2-post primarily for service and only rotates cars up for short-term storage between projects. That works. What does not work is parking a car on a 2-post for eighteen months while you finish another build. The pinch-weld paint will flatten. Choose the tool for the primary job. If you’re sixty percent service and forty percent storage, buy the 2-post. If you’re sixty percent storage, buy the 4-post and stop reading buyer’s guides that don’t tell you the truth.

What surprised him about winter humidity on the cables

Council Bluffs winters run cold and humid. His shop is heated to 55 in winter but the humidity swings. By month eight the equalizer cables on his automotive two post lifts had picked up light surface rust — nothing structural, but visible. He called us worried. This is normal. Cables on any 2-post lift are steel and will oxidize in a humid unheated or semi-heated shop unless you wipe them down and light-oil them once a season. We recommend a light coat of chain lube or WD-40 on the exposed cable sections every three months in Iowa’s climate. That is not in most owner’s manuals — it should be. Inside the columns the cables stay cleaner because they’re less exposed. Outside, at the pulleys, they see the humidity. If you catch surface rust early, it wipes off. If you ignore it for two years, you’re replacing cables. In the store we sell replacement cables for every major brand, but the fifteen-minute maintenance is cheaper than the cable set.

The one part he had to order in year one

An arm restraint pin. Not the whole restraint, just the pin. He caught a fender on one of his arms during a repositioning move and bent the pin. It kept the arm from locking positively — a safety issue we would not let him ignore. We shipped a replacement pin from stock the next day. The whole cost was in the low double digits including freight. Two things worth noting for any buyer of automotive two post lifts. First: the arm restraint pins are wear items. If you catch them, bend them, or drop something on them, they need replacement — not straightening. A bent pin will not lock the arm reliably. Second: buy from a supplier that stocks parts. We keep restraint pins, cable sets, hydraulic hose kits, and cylinder rebuild kits for every lift we sell. The collectors and shops we’ve supplied for a decade know they can call and have a part in their hand in three days. Buying a lift from a company that vanishes after the sale is a bad plan.

Would he buy the same lift again?

Yes, with two changes. First, he would have measured his ceiling and clear width himself before ordering — not trusted the builder’s plans. Second, he would have spent the extra low-hundreds premium for the taller column height option. His automotive two post lifts have never come short on any car he’s owned, but he’s now looking at buying a Bronco, and the Bronco with a roof rack would be a stretch. The overall satisfaction was high. His summary: he could have paid a mid-thousands discount for a no-name lift on the internet, and he would have spent that back on parts and downtime in the first two years. That is a common story we hear a year in. The lift is not a place to save money on a fifteen-year purchase. Buy from a supplier who will still exist in year five when you need a cable. Buy the right configuration for your ceiling, your slab, and your vehicles. Measure twice. Call us at 800-674-9302 before you spec.