When a third-generation family garage in Council Bluffs called us about BendPak 4 post lifts, the owner led with a photo of his grandfather’s shop from 1978 and a torn-up oil pan gasket on the bench. He needed a hoist that would let him drop the pan, reseal it, and still park a customer car overhead at night. That’s the exact seam BendPak 4 post lifts live on, and choosing between the storage-oriented HD-9 and the commercial-rated HDS series is where most shops get lost.
Every 4-post platform we stock, filterable by capacity, runway length, and ceiling height. Free install quote by phone.
The dimensions that actually matter for BendPak 4 post lifts
A four-post hoist is a rectangle of steel. The numbers you need are outside width between columns, inside width between runways, runway length, minimum drive-through clearance, and locked-height at each notch. For BendPak 4 post lifts in the storage class, outside width sits near 132 to 138 inches column-to-column, with inside runway spacing around 39 to 42 inches. Runways typically run 173 to 176 inches. Locks click on roughly every three inches from a low park height of about 20 inches up to a full raised height around 78 inches under the runway. On the commercial HDS-14 and HDS-18, those numbers grow — expect closer to 144 inches column-to-column and a stronger front cross-tube. Measure your slab before you shop, not after; a 24-foot deep bay reads fine on paper but chokes when you add the ramp overhang and open a hood.
Why oil pan gasket work needs a specific configuration
The Council Bluffs owner wasn’t wrong to want a four-post over a two-post for oil pan work. With a four-post, the vehicle sits on its wheels on the runways, so torque converter access, exhaust drops, and pan reseals happen without unloading suspension. But you cannot reach the pan bolts without either a rolling jack that lifts one axle off the runway or a full drive-on with dropped crossmembers. For BendPak 4 post lifts, the sliding bridge jack option — sold separately — is what makes engine-side work practical. Without it you’re rolling under a locked car with no wheel-off access, which is fine for fluid changes but not for a pan gasket. We tell shops planning any real engine work: budget the rolling jack into the lift purchase, not as a later add-on. It’s cheaper together and the jack rails have to be spec’d for the runway width you order.
Brand history: how BendPak got here
BendPak started in the 1960s in Southern California as a hydraulic press manufacturer, then moved into automotive lifts. The lineup grew through the 1990s and 2000s to include two-post, four-post, mid-rise scissor, and mobile column lines. Today BendPak sits alongside Rotary and Challenger as one of the three names American installers stock at real volume, and the 4-post family is where BendPak owns the storage and light-commercial slot most cleanly. The company’s paint and finish work has improved noticeably over the last decade, and their aftermarket ecosystem — jack platforms, aluminum ramps, drip trays, caster kits — is deeper than any competitor’s for home-storage buyers. That accessory depth is why a hobbyist in Council Bluffs, a Corvette collector in Ames, and a body shop in Waterloo can all end up on the same catalog page for different reasons.
The parts pipeline, in plain English
Parts for BendPak 4 post lifts move on two tracks. Fast-moving items — cables, locks, pulleys, hoses, drip trays — sit in distributor stock across the Midwest and typically ship next-day. Column assemblies, hydraulic cylinders, and runway sections come from the factory on longer lead times, sometimes four to eight weeks depending on which quarter you order. We hold the fast movers in-house and drop-ship the heavy items. When a shop in central Iowa needs a cable replacement on Friday, we don’t wait on a factory pallet — we pull one off our shelf. That distinction matters most on older BendPak 4 post lifts where the exact cable end fitting or lock ladder version has changed across generations.
Ceiling height, door swing, and the Council Bluffs bay
The garage in question had a nine-foot ceiling and a standard eight-foot residential overhead door. On BendPak 4 post lifts in the HD-9 storage class, overall height sits at about 82 inches on the low-ceiling variant and 96 inches on the standard version. A nine-foot ceiling clears the low variant with a full car raised to the top lock, but the standard version does not. Door swing on the sectional door was the second constraint — with the door up, the highest track section hangs at roughly 12 inches below the ceiling, which pinches the useable overhead. We spec’d the low-ceiling variant and confirmed the collector Chevelle would clear the runway at every lock. It’s the kind of math you have to do before you sign a quote, not after.
Storage class vs. commercial class BendPak 4 post lifts
The line between storage and commercial isn’t just capacity. It’s duty cycle, lock spacing, cable diameter, safety-lock actuation, and cross-tube welds. Storage-class BendPak 4 post lifts assume a car parks overnight; commercial-class assume forty raise-lower cycles per day. For a home garage or a light-service shop that lifts three or four cars per shift, the storage class is honest. For a tire shop or dealership doing constant wheels-off work, the HDS commercial class is the correct spend. We’ve seen shops cheap out on this and burn through a storage-class lift in eighteen months. We’ve also seen home garages massively over-buy commercial when the HD-9 would have done the job for a decade. Ask the actual duty cycle before you match the frame.
What we do at Auto Lift Services
Based in Ames, we install and service BendPak 4 post lifts across Iowa, western Illinois, Nebraska, and northern Missouri. Every lift we sell ships with a real install crew, not a drop-off. We stock cables, locks, hydraulic fittings, and slider bearings for the current and last two generations of the BendPak four-post line. If you’re comparing a storage HD-9 against a commercial HDS-14, or you want to know whether your Council Bluffs bay actually fits the runway you’re looking at, we can walk your slab dimensions in a ten-minute phone call and pull a real quote afterward. See our related guides on 4-post lift buying decisions and home-garage lift installation for the wider picture.
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