Great transformation. How do you like the lift? Ive been thinking of buying one

 

Yes - that is my buddies old Beretta.

Jack - as a huge fan of your 12 gauge garage - thanks!

As for the lift - It is pretty nice being able to get under your car without having to work on your back.

I kind of wish I had more projects to use the lift honestly!

 

Great job on your garage bonecrrusher! I like how it's a very functional garage now, especially with the MaxJax in there. Seriously, at a very minimum, every car guy needs to have an air compressor, air tools, and a lift in their garage.

Quick question! What is the little black box to the right of your Liftmaster opener? What's it do? I have two Liftmaster 3800's that I put in about 5 years ago and they didn't come with those boxes.

 

Ovilla - that black box is a remote power unit. When I moved door opener to the side - I lost my plug for the opener.

Liftmaster offers this product as people obviously move away from there tradition mounting places. Basically what it does is allow you to run 30' of electrical wire - to another convertor box that plugs into an outlet.

I believe the remote power unit was like $30 shipped.

I looked at getting condiut pipe - romex wire - and outlet plug - a junction box - and all the bends and what not to run an outlet out to the opener and the price was adding up to 2x more then what I paid for the unit - so thats what I went with.

Had to google it - its Liftmaster 580LM:

https://www.google.com/shopping/prod...ed=0CDQQ8wIwAA

Thanks.

 

it looks like you put the lift in the middle of your garage? how do you park the 2nd car now?

 

A MaxJax can be unbolted pretty easily and moved to stow along the wall.

 

What Jack said - I disassemble it - and move it to the sides of the garage.

I keep both my G8 and my Vette in the garage - unlike most people in the south.

 

Not sure if this should go into the detail forum - or what - but these are tools that I keep in the garage so - thats where this is going.

A few months back I decided to buy one of those expanding hoses - after some research on the web - I decided on the X-Hose Pro - this one has brass fittings and thicker hose - and it comes a shut of valve built into it.

The fitting quality is better then the cheap ones you can get at the box store since they are brass instead of plastic. My only concern is that I question how the hose is attached to the brass fittings - it just looks like it might wear out over time.

After using my hose setup and my foam gun one time - I immediately found a problem. When using my foam gun - I found that the water nozzle part of it absolutely sucks for rinsing off the car since you can't adjust the spray settings after scrubbing off the car. Now I did like that the Foam Gun that I own has those quick connect fittings on them.

So I had seen quick connect fittings on the popular detailing sites - and thought that was a pretty good idea. They offer them for 10+ shipping which I thought was a bit much - so I found the same set of quick connect fittings at Lowe's for 6 bucks.

I put the quick connect fittings on the garden hose, the foam gun, and my cheap adjustable spray nozzle.

This new setup makes washing off the cars pretty easy - I just notice that I fly through a lot more soap now, haha.

Pics of my setup:

 

Nice

 

Well, I am home back from my 10 day trip across the pond.

I started off my trip off my trip by flying to Frankfurt - renting an Opel Insignia (Buick Regal Turbo) - and driving out to Nurburg.

I rented a race car RSR - it was pretty pricey - but I paid for 4 laps around the 'Ring - and man that track is scarey as hell. My best session was my third lap - I passed 3 cars, and held off an e36 3 series Bimmer.

We then went to Stuttgart and went on a tour of the 911 plant - man those Germans know how to engineer a car and assemble it.

We saw the engine shop, the interior shop, and final assembly - there plant was spotless and pretty nice. It was a 2+ hour tour - and cost was best of all... Free.

We then went to Munich and had a number of Liters @ Oktoberfest, then to Salzburg for some back packing in the Alps, and then ended our trip in Prague.

No videos from the 'ring as video cameras are banned.

No pics from Porsche factory as they collected and held onto our phones/cameras.

My GF did capture a couple in car shots, and found some exterior - as well as picked up a new flag for my shop:

 

Shop update time...

I happened to get an email from Home Depot telling me they where starting to carry the Gladiator Garageworks brand. I looked at what they had and liked there dual wall units that come in a kit. There price was 30% off which wasn't bad - but being the thrifty guy that I am - I took the part number and cross shopped on Ebay, Google Shopping, Craigslist.

I happened to find a Sears outlet selling a set on Craiglist locally - which I'm not sure if its against Sears corporate policy to be posting on there - so I kind of questioned the whole deal.

I drove up there and sure enough - the dual unit was on the floor - marked down to what the Craiglist ad had said.

So I bought the set - and came back home.

I assembled them on Thursday and hung them up on the wall.

I also hung a Gladiator shelf unit that my GF had bought me for my birthday (which was back in Februrary and yeah I've been procrastinating a bit) - LOL.

Now for teh pics:




My other update....

So I've been looking for a vehicle that I can tool around in towing stuff, throw stuff in the back - and not worry about screwing up my leather seats. I had to borrow 6 trucks last year on separate occasions - so I started searching for a good affordable rig.

I started off looking at 2000+ Silverado/Sierras with the 4.8L V8 and 5 speed/4WD combo - but after talking to my friends with trucks the group consensus was to get something bigger as that 5 speed trans is pretty damn weak, and the 4.8L would struggle carrying anything including the Vette.

So I started looking at 2500 HD Silverado/Sierras. I wasn't sure if I wanted the 6.0L V8 Gas burner, or the Duramax.

I ended up finding a 2005 Sierra 2500 HD SLT here in Charlotte not far from my house at a GMC dealership.

We negotiated the price down - and I drove it home the next day.

So welcome my newest edition to the fleet.....

 

Well written & very informative!

How far are your lift posts apart when mounted. Are the concrete anchors a flush insert mount w/female thread?

Thanks....

 

Excellent write up and thread! Great transformation of your garage! Very nice!

 

Honda - the anchors are female end and are flush mounted.

It has been a long time since I've had an update.

I've been wanting a real workbench for a while now, and while I had the Gladiator composite top holding my rolling storage units together - it was not sturdy enough to do any work on it, and I couldn't attach a vise to it.

So after waiting/searching for Black Friday - I found that sears had a Gladiator 6' adjustable height maple top work bench for half off. So while I was in Detroit for the holiday - I ordered it online, and picked it up in the local NC store on Saturday after I flew back home.

Assembly took an hour or so - and I highly recommend you have a buddy to help you offload it from your truck, and lift it up when you are ready to flip it upright.

I adjusted the height to be 1 notch above my rolling storage units and now I have a good work surface finally.

I know the wall decorations are behind the bench, that will be dealt with later, haha.

Bench:



Last update - I also picked up a new set of jackstands for the truck, as the 2 ton jack stands I have now will barely reach the frame. HF had there aluminum 3 ton jack-stands marked down to $39 instead of $50, I used there 25% Cyber Monday coupon on the stands and got them for $29 - can't complain about that.

 

Looking good!