I bought a Greg Smith Atlas Pro 9000 four-post lift for the garage. For the money I'm happy with it for the most part, but I have some advice for anyone who chooses to go this route.
First, have it delivered. I rented a truck and trailer and that was a big mistake. The thing is huge and took two forklifts just to get it on the trailer. If I were to do it again I'd rent a forklift.
The manual is a joke. None of the figures are referenced, so you can't really tell what they're talking about (see fig 3)... which one is Fig 3? The manual also assumes you have an overhead crane to assemble it. The manual basically tells you to the following:
Step 1 - assemble the lift.
End.
The parts are not well padded in the humongous crate. There were numerous scratches and the bolts had broken out of the bag and were scattered. I called them up and sent pictures and they were nice about it and compensated me for the issues, so the customer service is actually good.
I had to figure out how to put this thing together and ditched the directions pretty early on. Start with the cross members and fit them into the posts. You will need an engine hoist. I put this together myself, but there were some scary moments as the rails are uber heavy.
What they don't tell you is that each post has to be vertical for this lift to go all the way up. Before you lift up, you have to wiggle the posts to make sure they're straight. If you don't, the lift will bind and pop the 20A breaker. They say you don't have to have it mounted with bolts in the floor, but you pretty much have to.
The casters work well and it moves easily. The locking mechanisms are good and I feel safe under it. It is extra wide, which is nice, and extra tall, but I had to remove the garage door opener to get my 69 Bird on it.
all in all I'd say I'm happy with it, but again, you'd better be good at figuring things out because the instruction manual is lame. I'll post a how-to when I have time as I took pictures while I put it together.
