And you don't have a fork lift or forks on a tractor loader to do the work?

I came up with a hoist system to do the work of simply lifting and lowering the cap to the ground after the truck is pulled out from under it. It is a pretty crude lever, but should do the job.

For reference my cap is a Leer 180 - it is a mid height (taller than the roof of the truck). The truck is also a long bed.

For power I have a 2000lb come-along that has a 2:1 ratio cable run and that in turn goes to another 2:1 reduction cable run on the lever, for a total of 4:1.

I'll post up some pictures. I should have taken some before I took it apart this evening. There is still a bit of work to do to get it working though.

Hold something in your hand with your arm fully extended and raise it - that is the same principal. The cable hoist attaches where your elbow is and your hand would be the center of the cap (reaching inside the bed underneath the roof).

When I got the cap installed at the store the place had a neat dolly with an electric winch. That would be nice, but I don't have the room to wheel it around so it would have been a waste of money to set that up. I have about $100-120 worth of wood and hardware wrapped in to mine, I had the come-along already.

 

Here are a couple pictures. It is pretty much done, I just have to bolt it together. All the pieces aren't in the picture - there are 2 2x4's that go under the arms you see there. Then on the end of those 4 pieces there is another assembly. If you know how a floor jack works the part that you set your block on that does the lifting is what the assembly is - it travels up and down always level (not straight, it moves in an arc because of the arms but that doesn't matter any - keeping the cap level is).








I don't know how much this means right now, but I test lifted the arms you see there. Being held on the end like that should still but a decent amount of stress on the hoist - enough to tension the cables and get the mechanism working. Cranking it up was like a feather. Then I went to drop it and the come-along wouldn't let out any cable. I pulled the latches and I had to pull on the cable to get it down. When it is all together and the load of the cap is on there I think that will change I figured the cap to be around 300lbs. If my math is right, that puts well over 1000lbs of force on the hoist cable, 2:1 and there is 500lbs on the come-along assembly, and 2:1 again and that is 250lbs on the come-along cable drum. That is, of course, negating losses and inefficiencies.

 

I gave the system a test run this evening and it does work. Here are a few pictures.



The two darker 2x4's on the left side are the rails that the cap rests on when it is lifted.



The cap is fully resting on the contraption here. This was just before I drove out from under it.

I had someone else helping me and they have some other pictures of the cap flying so I'll see if I can get those up too.

All said and done this thing works. I'm glad I put the second pulley in there and didn't entirely rely on the mechanical advantage of the come-along alone. There is a good bit of force on it, enough that it would have been a bit of a struggle to get it to crank.

Lowering is pretty easy - you just have to be careful with the drum release on the come-along. I just take the load off of it with the handle, pop the latch, and slowly let the cable back out.

More notes later, long night.

 

Cool!! I can see something like this working with a floor jack placed under the arms where you have the lift cable mounted.
At any rate, what problems have you had with it? Were you able to lower it enough to maybe rest the cap on sawhorses or something?
More photos, please.

 

Very nice.

 

The one big problem I had with it is two parts.

1. The balance of the cap is NOT centered, though the front window (towards the cab) is removable so I yanked it out. I had to adjust the position where the cap was resting on the lift mechanism.

2. When I lowered it back down the top arm of the lifter hit the top of the cap where the rear window is so I couldn't drop it down real far without interference between the cap and the top arms.

The other problem that number 2 above created was it was a challenge to lift the cap off the lifter with 2 people when I got it down as far as I could get. The cap is HEAVY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It is real awkward trying to lift it and move it.

That all having been said, this weekend I built a dolly out of 2x4's that has a rail height of 40". The way it works is I'll drive out from under the cap, then move the dolly in place, and set the cap down on the dolly. I am hoping the rail clamps are able to go around the 2x4 rails on the top of the dolly - not sure yet if that will work. The plan is to have it to where I can wheel it around by my self.

Tomorrow (Sunday 7/28) should be the test run for it as I didn't get that far with it this evening.

The dolly is a frame that rests on a hand truck. My plan was to have the rails 36" off the ground when on the hand truck, and I factored in 6" for the hand truck height. In actuality, the hand truck came out to 10" so the rails are 40" off the ground - that works just fine, and should give me some head room for the clearance between the cap and the top arms of the lifter.

I also bought a crank style brake winch (similar to what is on a boat trailer, only this one can raise and lower a load without unlatching and freewheeling the spool on the way down/cable going out). I may try to rig it up to the lifter tomorrow too. I haven't got that far with the device yet. I'll take a look at it once I get it all assembled again.

More pictures to come.

 

Today's run with the set up was a success.

Here is a run-through of the set up.

These are the counterweights. I haven't actually tried to see what it will do without them, I'd just rather be on the safe side and have it well anchored to the ground. You can also see the come-along I used for the winch power and the 2" yellow tie-down straps I used to stabilize the vertical part.



This is the assembled lifter mechanism. If you look at the blocks I used they are different than the previous run - the other ones are ~400lb capacity rope blocks. I was not real comfortable with that rigging, so I replaced them with 2" safety hook blocks from Tuf-Tug (Tractor Supply sells them), their model SB1000H. These are real nice, heavy wire rope blocks.



Here is the dolly I made to set the cap on. It came out pretty good.





The cap removal starts with backing the truck up to the lifter. This was easier said than done - I had to re-position the truck several times to get the cap to rest right on the lifter.

This picture set is after I backed up to the lifter and lifted the cap off the bed rails.









Even after my multiple re-positions I still had the cap off-center, the left side lifted higher than the right. That's OK - it didn't cause much of a problem with the balance of the lift.





This next picture set is after I wheeled the dolly underneath and dropped the cap back down.







After the cap was on the dolly I figured there was no need to clamp it, so I never tried to see if the clamps had enough clearance.

I did have to reposition the cap on the dolly a couple times too. Even still, I think I got it a little too far up on the dolly = a lot of weight on the front. The idea is to have the greater majority of weight resting where the tires are, and just a little bit of weight on the front. It was still not so heavy I couldn't lift it and move it, just I will pay more attention to that next time I do this.

There were no problems with the lift/moving of the cap. Everything worked and I hit my goal of being able to do the process solo. The biggest challenge of the process was getting the cap wheeled in to the garage. #1 - the rack on the top had to come off. Sitting on the dolly it was still too high to get through the garage door. #2 - the cap is HEAVY - trying to get it to move up hill on the driveway then make it up and over the bump to the garage floor was a pain. I was trying to be real careful with it so I wouldn't bump anything getting in the garage, but after 3 tries I had to get the speed up and let the momentum of the thing rolling bounce it up to the floor (all that and the elevation difference was about 3/4 of an inch!).

 

Great report, Thanks.

BTW, nice screwdriver. Is it a High Sierra or Home built. Sorry, don't want to hijack the thread.

VE3SLM

 

Neither. Tarheel model 400. I have a model 200 also. The 200 hit a tree when I was doing some landscaping several years ago and bent the mount, so when I got this truck I got an all new set up = easier to mount a non-bent up bracket. Plus this one goes down to 160.

 

Nice! Thanks!