A collector across the river in western Illinois called us last year with a good problem to have: a barn full of project cars, a new metal shop bay, and no way to get anything level, square, or off the ground for restoration work. He landed on a BendPak 4-post alignment lift, and a year later he’s still glad he did. We’re Auto Lift Services out of Ames, Iowa, and we installed that lift, leveled it, grouted it, and came back for the first service call. This is the honest, first-year story of what that lift has actually been like to own, and what we’d tell anyone else weighing a bendpak 4-post alignment lift for a restoration garage.
Compare 4-post alignment and storage lifts, arm styles, and ramp options before you buy. We install and service every model we sell across Iowa and western Illinois.
Why a Collector Picked a Bendpak 4-Post Alignment Lift Over a Standard Two-Post
This customer restores and stores several vehicles at once, and he needed something that could hold a car for days at a time while he pulled fenders, welded floor pans, and reworked suspension mounts. A two-post lift is great for oil changes and brake jobs, but it wasn’t built to carry the load of a car sitting up in the air for a week with parts scattered across the shop floor. A drive-on 4-post platform gave him that stability, plus a flat working surface he could roll a creeper or a cart across without worrying about arm placement under sheet metal that was already thin or cut open.
He also wanted the alignment capability built in from day one, even though most of his first-year work was metal fabrication rather than alignments. That’s a common reason folks choose a bendpak 4-post alignment lift over a plain storage lift — the turnplates and slip plates are already there when the car is finally back together and ready for a front-end check. We talked him through runway length, since some of his vehicles are longer classics that needed the extended platform option rather than a standard-length deck. Getting that measurement right before ordering saved him from having several inches of overhang once the car was actually on the lift.
Install Day: Concrete, Leveling, and Grout
Before we ever unloaded a runway off the truck, we had the concrete conversation with him the way we do with every alignment lift customer. Slab thickness and cure time matter more on a 4-post alignment platform than on almost anything else we install, because the ramps and legs need a flat, solid base to sit on for the life of the lift. His shop floor was newer and had been down long enough to cure properly, which kept the install on schedule.
The install itself ran close to two full days, which is normal for this class of equipment. We set the runways, checked cross-level and end-to-end level with a laser, shimmed where needed, and then grouted the base plates once everything was transit-level. That grout has to cure before the lift takes weight, so we had him stay off it for several hours after we finished — that’s standard practice on every alignment lift we set, not just this one, because a runway that isn’t fully seated in cured grout can shift out of level over time and throw off every alignment reading afterward. He appreciated knowing that up front instead of finding out mid-job that he couldn’t drive a car on that afternoon.
Symmetric vs Asymmetric Arms: What We Told Him and Why
Since a 4-post alignment lift is a drive-on platform rather than an arm-lift design, the symmetric-versus-asymmetric question doesn’t apply to the main runways themselves — it comes up when you’re deciding whether to also run a two-post or a rolling jack setup alongside it for other work. We walked him through the difference anyway because it’s a question we get on nearly every commercial and home shop quote: symmetric arms center the vehicle evenly for general lifting, while asymmetric arms swing the front short and rear long to open door clearance and match factory lift points on today’s longer front overhangs.
For his restoration work, we actually recommended he keep his existing two-post asymmetric-arm lift for lighter jobs and reserve the 4-post alignment lift purely for full-body work, alignments, and long-term storage between projects. That split let him use the right tool for each job instead of tying up the alignment rack doing simple tire rotations. If you’re choosing arms for a companion two-post lift to pair with a drive-on alignment platform, asymmetric is almost always the better call on modern trucks and cars because it keeps doors from hitting posts and gives you better access to rocker panels and pinch welds during metal work.
What Restoration Work Actually Looks Like on a 4-Post Platform
Over the first year, this lift saw everything from full floor pan replacement to quarter panel work to a frame-off rebuild on an older pickup. The flat runway surface let him build simple rolling stands and jack risers on top of the platform itself, something you can’t easily do with a two-post lift’s open middle. He’d raise the car to chest height, work standing up for hours at a time, then lower it back down and roll a full-size tool cart underneath when he needed the space back.
The alignment capability got its first real workout about eight months in, once one of his early restoration projects was mechanically buttoned up and ready for a front-end check before he put it back on the road. Having the turnplates and slip plates already integrated into the same lift he’d used for the bodywork meant he didn’t need a second piece of equipment or a trip to another shop. That’s the real value case for a bendpak 4-post alignment lift in a collector’s shop — one platform covers storage, heavy fabrication work, and the final alignment before a car goes back on the road.
The First Service Call: What Went Wrong and What We Fixed
Around month ten, he called us about a hydraulic hesitation on one side of the lift — it would raise slightly out of sync before catching back up. This is one of the most common calls we get on drive-on lifts of any brand, and it’s almost always related to air in the system, a slow cylinder seal, or a sync cable that’s stretched slightly since install. We walked through it over the phone first, the way we do with most service calls, checking fluid level and looking for obvious leaks before scheduling a truck to come out.
It turned out to be a minor sync adjustment rather than a cylinder problem, which kept the repair simple and inexpensive. We used that visit to also re-check level on the runways, since a year of grout cure and shop floor settling is worth a second look on any alignment lift. Everything was still within spec, which isn’t surprising on a properly installed and grouted platform, but it’s the kind of preventive check that catches small issues before they turn into alignment readings you can’t trust. We recommend that same follow-up look on every 4-post alignment lift we install, whether it’s in an Iowa dealership bay or a hobby shop across the state line.
Freight, Lead Time, and Delivery Reality for Western Illinois Shops
One thing we always cover with customers outside our immediate Iowa service area is logistics. Runways and legs for a bendpak 4-post alignment lift ship on a flatbed or in crates depending on the model, and unloading them without a forklift on site turns a straightforward delivery into a much longer day. We asked this customer up front whether he had equipment to get pallets off a truck, and because his shop had a forklift already, delivery went smoothly and on schedule.
Lead time is the other piece people underestimate. Between manufacturer build time and our own install calendar, ordering a 4-post alignment lift months ahead of when you actually need it is the difference between a smooth project and a rushed one. We told him the same thing we tell every customer from Ames to the Quad Cities: get us your slab details and site photos early, confirm pit versus no-pit and ceiling height, and we’ll build a realistic install date around your shop’s actual readiness rather than a guess.
Would He Buy the Same Lift Again
A year in, this customer told us he’d make the same choice again, with the one adjustment being that he’d have ordered the extended-length runways from the start instead of realizing partway through his first project that a couple of his longer vehicles needed the extra deck space. That’s a common lesson learned, and it’s why we push every collector and restoration customer to measure their longest vehicle, including any planned future purchases, before finalizing runway length on a 4-post alignment lift order.
Beyond that, the combination of storage capacity, flat working surface for metal work, and built-in alignment capability has held up exactly the way we expect from this class of equipment when it’s installed correctly and leveled properly at the start. If you’re weighing a similar setup for a restoration shop in Iowa or just across the border in Illinois, we’re happy to talk through runway length, symmetric versus asymmetric arms for any companion lift, and what your slab needs to look like before delivery day.
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