This was once my wife's blog, well maybe it was just her idea and she never posted in it, but either way I posted it in and I figured why stop now?
With a future renovation on the house I realized that garage I have is going to be the garage I have to keep for quite some time. I wanted to come up with something to make it more functional. When I saw the MaxJax I had to find out more about it. The MaxJax is considered a mid rise two post lift that handles 6000lbs.
The first requirement is to have a slab with a minimum thickness of 4 inches. The only way I could think to test this was to drill a whole though the slab. I decided to drill a hole that was not near the edge of the slab and far away from where I would drilling other holes if things worked out. Many people helped with different parts of this project you will see shout outs as I go though. (Thanks Ben)
I used a hanger to measure the depth which was ~4.25 inches. Sweet!!, I wonder what's next?
Ok so it doesn't matter what's next, the slab is thick enough lets order a lift! I figure if I had it I would figure out how to make it fit in the garage. (Thanks Rob)
The garage section where the sliding barn doors are is ~20ft, there is no way to have both doors open and really almost no way to get two cars it in anyway so I figured I could convert it to a one car garage which would also give me more height .
I decided to cut the doors in half and to have two five foot sections on the back track that would stay to the outside (but can move if I want them to) and two five foot sections on the front track that would be in the center that would essential be the doors I use to get the car into the garage.
I found trolley hangers on amazon that fit perfect.
There was not enough height in the garage even with the fact the the lift only goes up 45 inches, so I decided to raise the collar ties, This was my first test install of a trimmed 16ft board. (Thanks Ryan)
These are the 14ft boards cut at the angle of the roof on both sides. Wait a second didn't I say I used a 16ft board for the test? Crap, craigslist free here we go. (Thanks Me)
After another trip to home depot to buy 16ft boards I installed them and cut out the old collar ties. In theory I should now have six inches between the roof racks on the top of my wagon and the collar ties. (Thanks Cacky)
After the collar ties we raised I had to remove the center support and add supports on each side of the door. (Thanks Ed)
I originally had the lift delivered to work to save on shipping but this was the day I finally brought it home. It weights 800lbs, moving it was not easy.
Next was measuring out where the lift posts were going to go, we used chalk lines to make sure everything was square. We also decided to mount the lift posts 125 inches apart from the back of the base plate to the back of the other base plate. (Thanks Ryan)
These are like the wedge anchors that come with the lift, After doing a lot of reading and seeing people say check your wedge anchors before each use I decided that I wanted epoxy anchors.
These are the epoxy anchors the Danmar sells as an accessory for the maxjax lift. They looks great but they didn't like the way that they were going to work with a ~4in slab since these are over 5 inches long and there is 1.5 inches of smooth area at the top so that didn't leave much left to epoxy to the concrete. (Thanks Marcel)
Eventually I found the Hilti his-rn line of inserts. They only have a half an inch of smooth metal at the top of them. However they are 6 5/8 inches long. The good news is that they take the same 5/8 bolts that came with the lift. These would have to be cut down to 4 inches (Thanks stadium ops)
These are super expensive from hilti but ebay had some to offer.
There are three types of epoxy from hilti that are recommended.
Hit-re 500-sd
Hit re200r (r is regular set time)
Hig re200a (a is accelerated dry time)
The newest hilti epoxy gun that these work with is the hdm500. One color works with the 500 and one color insert works with the 200. I bought a used gun on ebay for a good price that is very resell-able.
Its time to mark and drill pilot holes.
I needed to drill a 1-1/8 in hole so there are three types of drill bits/drills that can be used
Spline Drive which would be awesome but drill bits are $$$
SDS MAX which came out to replace spline drive but I didn't have an sds max drill
SDS Plus I had access to the drill and a bit was only $25 on Amazon. It was a surely a challenge to drill the hole this big with this size drill, but it worked.
Using child labor to clean out the holes with a metal brush (Thanks Finn)
Using denatured alcohol to clean the holes
I drilled all of the way though the concrete so decided to buy 1-1/8 in wooden dowel to use as a false bottom so when I fill the hole with epoxy and push the insert down that it will ooze up the sides. I found it useful to twist the insets a little bit as I pushed them down. Not screw them in but just a slight twist.
Also vacuumed out the holes to get all the dust out. (Thanks Finn)
Lift bolted down!
