Suggestions please

[Dick2]

I want to find a way to lift the fiberglas bed cover off my truck and raise it to the 9ft. ceiling for storage.

Does anyone have a suggestion how to do this? My current thought is a rope block & tackle on ead end with a leveler bar, but I'm open to suggestions. I want something that will make it possible to raise the bed cover off the truck by myself, as well as lower it down again.

 

[Steve@Advance]

I just did that for the bosses camper cover at work. I built a 2" square tubing spreader bar, came off each corner with a 3/16 cable, made a bracket to hook under each corner of the camper.

I had a 10' piece of 3", 3/16 wall steel tubing, made 2 bushings, lined with 3" PVC, bolted to the underside of the roof beams.

Used a worm gear hand winch bolted to the wall, wrapped 3/16" cable around the tubing, down to the winch. Then used 2 cables, wrapped the other way around the tube, down to each side or the spreader bar. Crank the winch, turns the tube, winds up the cables to the spreader.

This worked well with a heavy duty tilt wall building and steel roof beams to attach to, I wouldn't try it with a wood constructed building without doing some serious reinforcing though. I did secure it with safety chains once it was up too!

 

[ss55]

I built something to lift the aluminum topper off my pickup and store it under the garage ceiling. It is similar to a canoe lift.

 

[F.E.Bear]

I used a heavy duty door operator and geared it down to a suitable speed to lift my 14 ft. boat to the ceiling above my small car. I have a pipe the length of the boat with the ropes going around the pipe through pulleys to straps under the boat. I hook everything up ready to go and push a button and up it goes. I then secure it to the rafters with chains and park the car under it. That is where it is all winter. I hang the trailer above the other side of the garage and park the van under it for the winter. I am a senior citizen, (in my 80's) and do it all by my self and don't even sweat.

Fred
Untitled URL Link

 

[JD Seller]

We used to have a bed lift for the flat beds wagons so we could put the gravity boxes on for fall corn picking.

It was a cable winch that went up to two more cables that attached on each corner of the wagon beds/boxes. The cables that attached where different lengths. So the bed lifted flat and did not rotate.

There where four pulleys that the drop cables went around so they where straight down on to the beds. The cables that lifted where in a loop. One end hooked to one corner of the bed. Then it went up over the pulley and then across the rafters and down trough the pulley on the opposite side to hook on the same end of the wagon. Then the winch cable hooked in the middle of this loop. The other end was the same setup. They where just different lengths of cable loops to make up for different pulley mounting heights on the rafters.

This lift raised the beds level and straight. They did not twist around.

 

[WvaJim]

Might get some ideas from this guys lift he built.
cap lift