Dear Stoddard,
I enjoyed chatting with you at Hershey. As promised, attached are photos documenting how I jacked my rusty 1962 S-90 sunroof coupe up into my garage ceiling. I think the car is Oslo Blue; wheels and interior are red. This happened around 1985. I am the one in the plaid shirt with curly hair at the time.
You can see the car is resting on a couple of landscape timbers sitting on the jack stands. I estimate that with no engine or wheels, the car weighs about 1700–1800 lbs, so a maximum of about 450 lbs per corner. The left side of the car rests on the back wall of the garage. The original 2x6 garage collar cross beam was reinforced by sistering on a 2x10. It didn’t sag in the middle of the 19-foot span more than 1/8” after the car was up.
We built and temporarily installed wooden posts to guide the timbers as the car was raised in steps. (Yes, I kept them to get the car back down!) Holes were cross-drilled through the wood guides to insert solid steel rods to rest the timbers on. Each end of the car went up 6” at a time. The whole process only took about two hours. Once up, I installed 3/8” threaded rod to support the end of the timbers on the right side of the car. The pictures show the guide posts removed at the end.
I joked with the half dozen friends who helped that I knew we didn’t need that much help, but I wanted to make sure that in case of a disaster there would be someone still unhurt to call 911! Credit to my Dad, the engineer who dreamed up this Rube Goldberg.
— Craig Erickson, Rochester, NY
