What do you think of this hoist?

[Kaptain_K]

An old buddy left this hoist behind a few years ago and I'm still trying to figure out how it would be better than a bed mounted crane hoist? He sure seemed to think it was the 'shiznit'. I don't see a whole lot of use for it besides loading big wood into a trailer and maybe into the truck bed itself. It won't swivel like a bed crane does. Does anybody see advantages of this over the much simpler bed cranes? It's in pieces, so you can leave the mount on the truck and still use the pass-through receiver, etc. but I'd need to have mounts fabbed onto the truck to catch the left and right 2" receivers...does that make sense? Here's a few pics:
thanks..

 

[treeman82]

I could see a few places where that would be useful. Mostly dragging branches up long inclines where you need to keep the butt off the ground. Also would be good for picking up logs if you could have the truck on top of a wall. However it would tie up the truck, and I'm sure it would cost quite a few bucks to set up... winch, additional hitches on truck, etc. etc.

 

[TreeW?rx]

That thing looks like a mechanical nightmare. Besides having to mount 2 more receivers on your truck, it doesnt look like any of the pivot points are greasable and the pulley is mounted on a pin (gonna sound like you stepped on the cat the whole time you use it). Serious wear problem there. Not only that, you are gonna have to power it with a bed mounted winch, more room lost. If you do decide to use it, take it to a welder and have them check out the welds before you put any weight on it. It wouldnt be good to have it come apart and skewer something valuable, say your truck, or your leg.

IMLO, you may be able to turn it in to something useful, but pretty limited. It almost looks like a home made tow truck mount. Throw it in the back yard. When you run in to a need for some box beam, you have some.

 

[ForTheArborist]

Get a cheap $500 Ford 750 or something from the 70s, and weld it up to receive that. That way you're not comprimising any of your good trucks with something that should be on a truck that can set for cheap.

 

[teamtree]

Looks like you could put it on a loader and set trusses with it. I have seen a few like that for that purpose.

 

[pdqdl]

I used to have a very similar unit that I built to take advantage of the winch I already had in the bed of a truck. Later, I re-mounted the same A-frame to other trucks for hoisting engines or other heavy loads with a hand winch.

My observations:

1. This will work very well as a simple hoist, providing you don't expect tow-truck capacities with it. Yours looks better made than the one I used, and we never used anything like those tow-bars for attachement. Instead, we used the pivot points for the tailgate on the truck. It only took 5 minutes to put it on.

2. When mounted to a dump bed, the hydraulics make a very nice assist for a chain hoist. Pretty good for pulling engines or truck beds.

3. If you plan on running a winch line over that pulley from the bed of the truck, BE AWARE THAT IT IS CRITICALLY UNSAFE UNLESS THE A-FRAME IS CHAINED DOWN, in addition to being chained UP. This all somewhat depends on where the winch is mounted, and how high the A-frame is raised during use. If the load shifts or rocks so that the A-frame is more perpendicular to gravity than 45°, then the load pulling down on the winch line will have more forward force than downward force, and the A-frame will flip UP, dropping the load.

Don't doubt me on this, We dropped a 366 truck engine on the ground when we moved the "tow truck". I had it all on video, too. (Long since lost, so don't ask me to post it)

 

[Kaptain_K]

Thank you VERY much for that advice. I have a few better photos here with the unit plugged into the receiver. I simply held it up for the photo with a small winch strap tied to the bedrail hooks....but I assumed i'd need a chain to secure it both UP and DOWN. I just put it up on craigslist because I think I'd be better off with a simple bed mounted swivel/crane thingy, and they are pretty cheap. Anyway, this might be useful to somebody but I wondered if I was missing the point of having it...seems like a bother to me for limited use. I have a boom truck and the lower boom has an 8,000 lb. lifting loop on it, so I guess I'm covered for pulling engines and the like.

 

[Hoister]

Weld an Axle underneath it and put a tongue on it ...You could haul your Sea-Doo...

If you dont have a Sea-Doo ..then ..your just gonna have to go get one


That sheave looks like its for 1/2 inch cable ...

The bridle ..er..that thingy with the shackle in it ..I'm not a big fan of the miter's there ..nore the weldments on the plates ..looks like they may have been to cold ..
But somebody used there noodle to put a gusset ring around the shackle hole ..

I wonder if at some point there were 2 jacks to go on the other receiver hitch tubes to stiffen it up and not blow the truck springs ?



Yeah wouldn't hurt to have somebody look it over ..... I could use something like that around the house for pulling stumps ..