DansYellow66

Notice I threw in the Corvette at the end to avoid being OT. After stewing about it for 2-1/2 years I finally bit the bullet and put RaceDeck tiles down in my garage and as I had greatly feared I can only move the car I keep stored over against the wall on crank up dollies with the greatest of back-wrenching effort. It's basically now just a garage ornament. My dollies are older Harbor Freight ones with 3-1/2" steel wheels. In spite of all the bad reviews of these mine have actually worked well on concrete. Although some have been reported to lack axle bearings, mine actually have roller bearings and as long as I kept them and the caster bearing greased well they worked fine. On the RaceDeck floor - not so well although they did work with a lot more effort. And when I say they did work I mean with great difficulty. I've already figured out I need to lower the car down on the dollies while parked to avoid the casters putting shallow deressions in the RD flooring.

So, I thought the only major complaint with these has been the casters so maybe replacing them with 4" all roller bearing polyurethane casters from a big supplier might help things. Wrong? No matter what I did the casters would not swivel and the car would not move. Put the HF casters back on and managed to get the car back over to the wall.

Called up the supplier and this time talked to the manager for advise (should have done so first time). After some thought he said he felt the polyurethane wheels were not a good choice for this application as they were too soft. He recommended exchanging them for 4" Phenolic wheels which are hard as nails. They lack the axle ball bearings but he said the axle bushing and hard material allowed them to roll well. So - before installing I took them apart and lubed them up really well and installed yesterday. Pretty much pulled everything in my back getting the car out away from the wall so I could change out the new casters. This time after manually turning the casters to align - I actually could get it to roll but only with great effort (and I mean great) and minor adjustments in direction took a lot of effort so this is not the solution. Car is back against the wall and may be there awhile while my back gets better. I think these are good quality casters and that I could probably note some improvement on concrete over the somewhat sloppy HF ones - but still not good or even marginal.

So - looking at options. I hear great things about the 5000 series GoJaks and RaceDeck says they use them to roll a pickup around in their shop with ease(???). They appears to have 4' phenolic casters (a guess on the material) and not sure about bearings. Although a quality product it's hard to see how they could fare much better than my modified HF units. And at about $900 from Summit, they would not be an inexpensive trial test. Has anyone actually used these under their car on RaceDeck flooring? Are they workable? I'm actually in pretty fair shape for a 67 year old and exercise a lot and do most of what I did 25 years ago - but time passes by as does strength and a sound back.

Other options - put the floor over in our daily driver garage. Take the RD flooring out of the drive in path and path over to the wall and leave exposed concrete (sort of weird) . Experiment with some sort of hard surface sheathing to lay over the floor - like Masonite or OSB sheathing (sort of doubtful). Get another lift but the other car parked in the garage on grade is a Lightning PU and it's too tall to allow parking another car over the top of due to a 11'4" ceiling. Sell off a car. Give up and find a margarita bar. But hoping for some first-hand feedback on the GoJaks.

Bajaholic

GoJacks are going to work exactly the same. The harbor freight ones are just cheep clones but are basically the same as far as the way the weight is displaced and transferred to the floor via the 4 wheels.

My suggestion is get 4 thin pieces of sheet aluminum/tin and place them to the outside at the angle to spin the car out, when you want to take the storage car out for a run. Though the slight edge when moving at first will require a slight nudge, it shouldn't be too bad. When you put the car back, just reverse the process. Once the car is in place, just slide the sheet's under the car for storage.

By using the the sheet of aluminum or tin, it is MUCH thinner and will have greater strength so you will have a less "rise" to bump over with the wheels of the edge than the Masonite or wood alternative.

skids

Although maybe a little pricy, you could make your own wheel skates and use something like this. http://www.castercity.com/scrw.htm http://www.castercity.com/scrw.htm
I would assume these would not imbed into the tile. Swivel ones. http://www.castercity.com/scrw.htm

DansYellow66

Yes, the caster firm I dealt with suggested a 6 inch caster also, but they can't be adapted to my HF jack dollies - 4 inch is max and even a bit tight. I really like their crank up/crank down feature. The "car" is a Cobra Replica and chassis clearance is also not enough to get a 6 inch tall wheel under the frame and around the wheel. But thanks for the suggestion.

DansYellow66

Unfortunately, you are voicing my same fears about the GoJaks. Can't see any way they could be significantly better. At this point it's not the dolly - the flooring just has too much resistance.

You are thinking the same thing I am except for the Masonite/plywood. I would probably use two tracks about 3' wide to move the car against the wall with each track of two pieces, the outer pieces of which I would slide under the car out of the way. I'm just thinking the 170 lb wheel load would do a number on thin aluminum unless I got it about 1/8 or 3/16 in thick - not sure. Thanks

Frankie the Fink

53Gary66

I used Go Jacks to move my c-1 and c-2 on a Race Deck garage floor for years, no problem!

Bajaholic

I am not sure how far away you are? I am at Lake of the Ozarks (Osage Beach). If you have a couple of left over tiles, and want to borrow my GoJacks to try it, we could test at my place. The offer is there. A couple hour drive vs spending $ just to try something, may be worth it?

As far as the tin/aluminum, the support underneath the tin should in theory be supported enough to not bend anything? I would think a 22 or 24 gauge thickness would be plenty strong. I am sure Menards/Home Depot etc would have sample pieces that you could easily test before you went out and purchased what you need.

53Gary66

I don't live near you, sorry.
Just to add to my post, the only thing I had to be sure to do was to align the Go Jack wheels in the direction I wanted to move. After that it was easy. BTW I'm not a big guy I'm over 70 and I moved the cars by myself.

Bajaholic

The offer was for the OP. You seem to have it worked out. I am wondering if there is different manufacturers of the tiles or if a new floor is different than the old ones in shape of the tiles? I have known people that had the tile floors in the past and did not comment on moving cars w/GoJacks or the tire trays w/casters.

DansYellow66

What model are you GoJaks are you using? Do you have to align the casters manually before moving the car or do they caster around on their own? Do the GoJak casters use a bearing on the axles or just a bushing?

Thanks

DansYellow66

Thanks for the offer but I only have a few pieces of tile left over. Still thinking it over.

DansYellow66

Afraid you may be right. Expediency was a big criteria for going with PVC tile as I have way to much stuff crammed in here to sit out in a driveway for a week waiting on epoxy to cure - and I think casters would eventually eat up epoxy if nothing else happened to it first. It's a crowded space. But such are the things we do to appease wives on where we live and house design.





I do have a bunch of sections of 1/4" plywood I cut up for jack stands and jacks. Just hoped I wouldn't have to have 4 big sheets of it to move this car around.

53Gary66

The Go Jack is the 5200# (smaller of the two) and this is the Race Deck pattern.

DansYellow66

The 5000 series are the ones I've looked at but I have a hard time believing they have a drastically improved caster wheel over those I put on my dollies. I have the coin top pattern as I read that smaller caster wheels work a bit better on them. RaceDeck said they didn't think the coin pattern or the diamond pattern would make much difference. Do you know if the casters on those have roller or ball bearings on the axles?

Thanks

DansYellow66

Pricing out 8 each .063" 36x36 inch pieces of aluminum gets real expensive quick. Sort of up there almost halfway with the GoJaks.

Bajaholic

Another thought, Desk chair mats? Again, it is well supported by the tiles, you are just smoothing out the top to make it roll easier?

DansYellow66

Still looking at high density Masonite (hardboard) in .105 or .155 thickness. It's inexpensive, not extremely heavy and rated at 2200 lbs/square inch.

emdoller

Bajaholic

I have to admit; I am surprised at the work needed to move the Harbor Freight Jacks. I have had GoJacks for 20+ years and did not realize how spoiled I have been. If the video is accurate, I have to say.... Why **** around, buy the better jacks and move forward!