Car ramps

[Matty F]

Since I want to work on the underneath of my car, I'd like to put it up on ramps. I imagine the newsgroup readers will disapprove of me digging a pit in my garage floor. That would fill with water anyway.

I'd need it to support 1800 kg. My existing metal ramps are too small. There are a couple of designs here of full car ramps, made out of timber and plywood.

'd have really wide feet on them so they don't fall sideways, and an arrangement to chock the wheels. Anything else to worry about?

[Thomas Prufer]

Why should I disapprove? You could stand, rather than lie, and a grade and pump...

I'd probably extend the two lengthwise edges up by two inches with a bit of lath, to make it easier to not drive off it sideways. And put a sheet of plywood across the bottom, possibly in lieu of feet, which would keep the boxes at a fixed distance, make the floor a but warmer for lying down on, and catch oil drips and pingfuckits. (Also make it harder to stow away...). And lights look good, two fluorescent strips left and right somewhere, maybe?

Thomas Prufer

[Andrew Mawson]

small.

Why not a pit? I incorporated one in my last house's garage when I poured the slab. I cast the the pit floor first over a heavy guage poly sheet which was big enough to come up the sides, then cast the sides, all using waterproofer in the concrete. I did get a bit of a weap into it but it was very useful keeping the kids cars on the road! When I cast the floor slab for the garage I stepped it back from the pit edge by 4" leaving a 4" x4" ledge allowing 4x2 timbers to be used on edge to cover the pit when not in use.

AWEM

AWEM

[Nightjar]

I would consider a pit to be a much better option.

Not if it is properly constructed and the floor around it is higher than the ground outside.

They loook remarkably easy to drive off the side of and must be quite heavy to move about. If you have the height in the garage, why not build a couple of permanent blockwork or concrete ramps - effectively creating a small above-ground pit?

Colin Bignell

[Matty F]

The floor is the same height as the ground outside, at street level. The water in the stormwater drain for the area is about two feet lower than that. A pit that I can stand up in may well be below sea level!

I can make the ramps in a day.I've not poured a concrete floor in my garage yet, so a pit would be a long way off. In the meantime I want to see why my car keeps wanting to catch fire underneath. There appears to be oil running on to the exhaust pipe occasionally. A mechanic fixed an oil leak a while ago, and the ignition stopped working, so I fixed that. Now I have an oil leak again. Time to diy!

[Matty F]

If I had a pit it would haveto be less than a metre deep and I'd have to sit in it.

I have a small car and a large car, with different track widths. I'd like the ramp to be adjustable in width.

I like the lights. I could have a phone too!

[Roger Chapman]

That does not appear to be too much of a problem. I thought when you raised the restriction on depth that you had a hard rock problem but building from below the water table is a cinch compared with carving through solid rock. Concrete will set under water and even if you can't make it totally waterproof (and at a depth of 5 or 6 feet you should be able to) a sump and a submersible pump to deal with the seepage should make it a practicable pit.

[Matty F]

I'm liking a pit more now. The wooden ramp described is 16 inches high. A pit 40 inches deep would be luxury compared with that. I can easily dig the hole. I imagine I'd need to line the hole with reinforced concrete blocks if I'm having a 1.8 tonne car straddling the hole.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I do quite a lot of car stuff, and the number of times you want access under the car with the wheels still on the ground is limited.

I run one end of the car up on steel ramps, then jack up the other end and support with 'axle' stands. This allows one pair of wheels to be removed. After use the ramps can be hung up. What's shown in the pics would take up a lot of room - and you'll still need axle stands for many things anyway.

[Roger Chapman]

snip

I was thinking in terms of reinforced concrete cast in situ but wider concrete blocks would make for easier construction.

I have been pondering on how I would deal with the problem and have concluded that I would take a two stage approach. First dig an oversize hole and construct an oversize pit with as much waterproofing as I could achieve. Second cast the garage floor so that it overlaps the pit wall so that the wall can provide direct support to the car when it is over the pit. Third add a second floor and surrounding walls with a further water barrier between the two. If the second wall finishes a few inches short of the floor level the pit can be covered with stout timbers when not in use.

Don't make the pit too shallow. Working in a pit where you can't actually stand upright without your head having an interference fit with the car above can be a pain. Too deep and raised duckboards are an easy remedy. Indeed duckboards of some sort are likely to be an advantage anyway particularly if there is a remnant of water in the pit.

[Matty F]

There really shouldn't be a problem with water. At present there is a dirt floor that is perfectly dry.There's a concrete wall around the outside of the garage with a drainpipe outside that. There's another complication - across the floor a couple of feet down near the end of the garage there is the main power supply, phone and water pipe. In theory the pit needs to be half the length of the car plus a bit extra to allow climbing in. The longer car is 5.2 metres long so the pit would have to be at least 3 metres long. And I guess about 0.8 or 1 metre wide

[Matty F]

I've already borrowed some large axle stands and a very large jack.I have a couple of stands for a small car but maybe I'll buy some big ones. That's certainly the cheapest and quickest option.

[Nightjar]

Speaking from experience, you want it to be an inch or so higher, so water does not run in when it rains very heavily.

If it does not vary over the year, it is probably gulley with a U bend.

Work at low tide :-)

Realistically, provided you tank it, the only problem that is likely to present is it might try to float out of the ground, although that is more of a problem with an empty swimming pool than a garage pit.

If you do, you will never get around to digging the pit.

I would see that as making the pit easier to put in. It also gives you a good reson to get around to doing the floor.

Borrow axle stands and an inspection trolley?

Colin Bignell

[Jules Richardson]

Yeah, I'd go with that. I've always found that it doesn't take any longer to jack and slide stands under there than it does to plonk ramps in front of the wheels and drive up onto them. Then you get access to the wheels too, and stands are generally far less intrusive than ramps are.

I think the ones I normally use here are rated for 3 tons, but I've got some cheapo ones back in England that I might ship over one day - I think those will do 2t, so good for typical car work (they just have pins to hold the supports in place, the 3-tonners have a ratchet system and are a bit more adjustable)

cheers

Jules

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Keep an eye on Lidl (surprise, surprise) They have folding axle stands now and then - very good value and take up less space when not in use.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Nightjar saying something like:

Bingo. On the site of a disused steelworks near me, I found exactly that - a pair of 5' high concrete ramps I often used to drive down to, to do oil changes. Until they were bulldozed eventually, for site clearance.

[Harry Bloomfield]

You can buy pit liners - fibre glass/ plastic liners pre-formed to drop into a hole you dig. No chance of water ingress then.

[Andy Dingley]

The old trick was a bathtub.

However this sort of pit is too shallow to be much use. A deeper pit will also have so much hydrostatic pressure that if it's going to be wet without a liner, it's also capable of being so wet with a liner that it can burst the thing inwards.

Having grown up with two garages, both with pits (one truck-sized with rails to take a transmission jack), I'd much rather work by lifting above ground level today. Except that my current garage is too low and narrow, if I was still doing much on cars (rally prep etc.) I'd probably get a four poster.

[Harry Bloomfield]

Dave Plowman (News) presented the following explanation :

hich is exactly what I do at the moment. Front end run up ramps, jack the rear end up via the tow bar and lower onto stands.

I looked at the pre-formed pits, but found them a tad expensive at £900 to £2000 for the benefit I would gain.

[Harry Bloomfield]

on 01/03/2011, Jules Richardson supposed :

Aldi/Lidl sometimes offer the ratchet type cheap, I intend to grab some when I actually spot them on offer. For now, I drilled extra peg holes in my pin type stands.