I will take delivery of my MaxJax soon. I'd like to install it so I can open both doors on the car all the way without hitting the columns. Will that be possible? I have shelves lining the wall and I have a space between them I left for opening doors when in the garage.

 

Well, measure the max opening you need vs the max distance you can place the 2 lifts. If you need the pads extended out to max then you might consider larger anchors. Put in 2 set of anchors, one at std and one at max. Question - why do you need the doors open when on the lift?

 

I will sometimes be working on the interior of the car when it is not on the lift, as well as parking the car between the columns. I don't trust the floor on my 60 year old garage. I am going to cut out the concrete and pour thicker pads with a steel plate imbedded flush with the floor, so I can drill and tap mounting holes. I will have a few different sets of holes drilled on the plate furthest from the wall.

 

All of your dimensions are known, so I can't see why a scale drawing doesn't suffice for your situation.

Myself, I took delivery and then brought my cars in for a sanity check with the actual Maxjax. Following that I chalked out a pattern on my garage floor, and had it cut, dug out and then refilled with some high strength concrete along with some rebar.

As to your plan to tap into a steel plate, what holds the plate itself in place? I actually have too many questions with regard to that plan to want to put to you here. Don't re-engineer something that thousands have already put in place!

I may have previously suggested that you look into the Garage Journal's thread on the Maxjax and I would suggest that you go there, cruise the thread as a whole lot more expertise can be found there as opposed to just the Corvette audience.

If I didn't previously point you to this thread here it is again.

https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/...st-here.35763/

Myself, having done the job once, the only thing I would do differently is to epoxy the anchors rather than using the expanding type. You can certainly drill bunch of holes incrementally spaced without needing a steel plate. You need a hammer drill and the hard concrete can be a bit of a challenge in terms of getting a nice hole. I messed up two of my holes and used epoxy for those two.

Here's my floor cutout. My rebar grid has room for one more bolt hole if I needed it, but so far I haven't.

 

I think you are right, I need to do a dry run when they get here and mock up everything in place. I have drilled many holes in concrete and installed anchors, I know it works but I don't like it. Besides, those damn anchors are expensive! I have boxes and boxes of grade 8 bolts handy, a mag drill, and taps. I just much prefer a tapped steel plate as opposed to anchors. The plate will have something similar to Nelson Studs welded to the bottom to secure it in the concrete. A common procedure done in industrial applications.

I wonder If I need to go all the way across with new concrete as you did? I was just going to do 24" squares with thicker, rebar reinforced concrete.

I will look at the thread on GJ as well for ideas.

 

Delete

 

Holy **** 38 pages in the Garage Journal thread!

 

With a pile that big there's bound to be a pony or two in there!

 

I'm to page 11 now. After seeing all the trouble folks have had with the anchors I am more than ever going to use embedded steel plate. I have an industrial construction/fabrication background for decades, I will over-build it for sure!

 

Be sure to post pictures. Heavy metal and welding is not in my skill set.

 

Will do. Google "embedded steel plate" it is very common in industrial applications, probably overkill, but I'm more comfortable with it.

 

Have to ask, why your not using Nelson studs on underside of your plate?
I used 3/4" LDT bolts directly into my 4" floor,, they had a better rating than the wedge bolts MaxJax recommended. And can be reused. Just woundering,,,,teddy

 

3/4 x 4 1/2

 

I don't have the equipment to use Nelson studs, but I will improvise something similar. I am removing the drawing I posted earlier, I am not doing it that way.

 

I've had the Maxjax installed for just over ten years now and used epoxy to secure the anchor bolts in my, what I believe to be a 65-year-old floor. My layout was to accommodate both the C3 and a C5. Just wrapped brake project on a C3 last year...works nice in this 8-foot ceiling garage. If I were to do it over I would do as you and iggy did and are doing. Even have used it to get the Jeep up to access the wheels.

 

Commonly welded by hand,, nothing special unless you don't weld,, ,, ,,

 

I saw a pretty cool video, fabricator had a special welding gun, and the Nelson Stud had a ceramic ferrule on the end to contain the weld puddle. Of course, the same thing can be done manually.

 

Unless you have substandard concrete, quality anchors do not pull out. You have to use quality though, like Hilti ($$) and follow their directions for depth and hole cleanliness. Gluing anchors is acceptable, but you have to take care about getting the glue inside the anchor. We usually only glued studs, but in this case that is not feasible. Glued anchors are approved for CA earthquake construction, if you use quality glue (Gorilla won't cut it). In either case I default to Hilti products, as they always deliver.


BTW - I went over to GJ and on the 1st page were the anchor instructions - let it be said that I would never use those anchors! You want the drop in anchors where you use a set tool to set the anchor wedge. I never trusted pound in's and here's why - if your concrete is thinner than you think, you can blow through the bottom with a pound in, wedge anchors won't do this. Maybe there was a small mound of base at that exact point, your 6" slab is now 4.5" - 5" at that one point, one good hammer blow and it will drive that anchor right through and leave a cone shaped hole, that hole is now useless. Internal wedge anchow won't do this.

 

[QUOTE=ratflinger;1603797517]Unless you have substandard concrete, quality anchors do not pull out./QUOTE]
That is my concern, I don't trust the concrete, it was poured buy who knows who way before I was born, and has cracks.

 

The two epoxy anchors I used looked like this

https://toggler.com/products/power-s...tainless-steel

The pull strength is advertised as being way better than the Web-It expanding anchors, but even when using those, if you compute the torques on the lift, there's plenty of margin.

You definitely need to determine the thickness of your concrete, mine was marginal and I had cracks where I wanted to mount the lift.

From reading the garage journal threads long ago, there seemed to be plenty of misconceptions about how to set the expanding anchors. I remember the Danmar directions from 10 years ago as well as being a little confusing as well. I tested mine by trying to pull them out. You can compute that force from knowing the thread pitch and the torque to get to a given pull strength. I was pretty amazed at how sturdy things were and the, to me, phenomenal strength these bolts have inherently.

Once you stray from the Danmar kit, you are on your own so you better be sure of what you are doing. Some of the installs I saw looked pretty sketchy but I don't see any accident reports on line.