Gantry Cranes
 

What are you guys using for Gantry or A-Frame cranes to pull your power? A friend has a cheapie i've used before but that thing makes me nervous! Northern has a decent one 10' wide 10' tall. I figured a little taller might be nice.

mine is 15 high and 15 wide,the extra height is nice for the boats with a lot of free board.

where did you get yours?sounds nice

I have a Wallace aluminum adjustable.
https://www.wallacecranes.com/produc...rtable-cranes/

Mines 11' high and 9' wide, I plan to make it wider with a longer beam but works for now..craigslist is your friend..

10 foot wont get it up, out and over the transom. At least it didnt work for me. I had to borrow a tow motor.

A local tow truck can also pluck that baby and set her back in for not more than beer money.

That is what I do to. My local guy pulls and sets it in about 30 minutes either direction. Of course I have every detail ready.

I built one out of wood. Needed 12' of vertical and it barely cleared the transom. $120 worth of lumber and a 1 ton chain fall worked perfect.

got it off ebay from the seller wayne hayse,it is made in chicago

harbor freight has one they say 100 to 147 tall bout 10 foot wide 700 bucks. I use a standard cherry picker. then I stick the upright piece from a standard engine stand in the boom for more length-height. then I chain the back of the cherry picker to a riding mower, boat trailer, engine block to hold it down. generally takes 2 lifts to get it out-in. drop it on a pallet. raise the boom. pick it up and drop in the hole. I also usually only do short blocks. heads go on after block in place. ebay. 400 bucks. 12 foot wide. 8 to 12 foot height. twice that at harbor freight.

I think my buddy's a frame is 10' high and it barely got the oil pan over the transom last time we pulled it. I was thinking 12' min. if i'm going to buy my own. Don't want it to be too big because portability would be nice. Thanks for the input.

That's bad ass

How much did it set you back?

There is a big one, just the frame, on craigslist right now near me. It is big, heavy, and not so portable... I think he has it at $1000 which is probably it's weight in scrap iron. Judging by the beam size it can probably handle a few tons from one lifting moment. Was hoping to find something a little more "portable"

but 400 on ebay, I woulda never spent 200 on cherry picker. but cherry picker is 15 years old. dunno if gantrys that price then. and there's craigslist people want more than new ones for their old, rusty, non-portable hunks of iron...

Have had a Harbor fright cherry picker for 20 years. Also a bought a H/F gantry about 7 years ago. Used them both so many times I cant count.

Did you have to widen your H/F gantry?

I bought a used H/F one off of Craig's List and yes I had to have a wider beam made. It would not fit around my trailer or the boat's 8'6" beam. I do like how it's adjustable and will be able to roll it out of my 10 ft shop doors.

Mine is an L.K. Goodwin . Model SF3512 that I extended the legs 2 foot. I bought it off Craigslist for 600 , guy used it to move granite slabs.

managed to find it on Craigslist, got it for $800

There is one on ebay right now used but it doesn't look very tall. $600 I think. That is an awesome price for what you got! I may go with the Harbor Junk unit and just lengthen the beam.

Lucky enough with my inboard 67 Nova race boat I only had to widen it a couple inches so I built new longer plates that the cross beam sits on. Like said I love how it can be wound down to be shorter and I leave mine outside and it still looks as good as when it was bought.

I just did a search and found Titan from Collierville, TN has a 1 ton gantry for $499 delivered. 12' height by 97.5" wide. It has a jack system for raising and lowering too. The one I borrowed last go round had no jacks so I ended up raising and lowering it with my chainfall pulling on a tree branch. That made deploying and stowing it a major pain in the a**. Plus at a little over 10" I had to let the air out of my trailer tires and raise the nose to get the rear of my boat down enough to clear the bottom of the engine.
I think I'm going to have a tow truck pluck mine next time though. It would take at least ten visits to pay that $500 back. I don't have to pull engines too often, but if I had more room and really wanted my own gantry I'd look into that Titan.

I made mine it's adjustable from 8' to 13'. I used 3" square tube and 21/2 square tube with a 6" aluminum I beam for the top.Its made to unbolt for storing it.

That's what I used to say when I used to rent a cherry picker back when I was a teenager. After the second or 3rd rental (having to pick it up when they were open and get it back before I was charged for another day) I figured just one more rental and I could have owned it. I also figured if I had one all the time I could have used it for other things so even though I didn't need it at the time I bought one and let it sit for a few months but I did use it and since have used it so many times I cant even count. As for my gantry, knew I was going to use it more then once being the race boat has 2 motors and I was just figuring it out at the time. I have since used it for motors, taking boats off of trailers, all kinds of stuff more then a few times now. I thought of the tow truck thing. Didn't think they would have a boom long enough and on top of that having a tow truck and driver sitting around while I was trying to get a motor lined up and such didn't seem worth the hassle.

The Titan looks like the best bang for the buck even though it has to be widened. Thanks everyone for all the replies!

I made one out of wood. 6x6 for the sides, 4x4 for the feet and some 2x6s for the angles from feet to sides and 2x4s from sides to beam. I used 3 2x12's for the beam across the top. Notch out the 6x6 at the top to sit the beam on.

Depending on the boat, 12' might not always cut it. I rented a 12'x12' from United Rental for a month for mock up work. With chain hoist they supplied, engine still wouldn't clear back of a 40OL with oil pan on.. I've been searching for a good deal on one too.

Miss my first i/o. I pulled that engine with an eye loop in a 4x4 laid across the rafters of my garage. No way with these bigger boats that can take some chop.
I wonder if one could put a beam at the peak of the garage. I'd be afraid to do it without an engineered design. But that would be always ready and take up less space that entire gantry. My brother's gantry was in the way most of the time it was here.

check all the local small boat yards around you. some have the wherewithal, crane truck or backhoe. usually cheap. or even broken travel lift you can back under. and it isn't done in your driveway with neighbors staring...again.

I priced a beam locally for $160... That is a 20' long 4x6 I beam to replace the one the titan unit comes with, I would probably cut it down for 12' width between the uprights. Still searching for a better option though. Let me know if you come across a better deal.

4 by 6 is a LOT of metal. Are you installing 6v92's? I just bought a couple of seats off a guy who built his own. Just sent him a text to see if he wants to post his setup. Large, yet totally portable.

If I was to make another one I would make the whole thing out of aluminum.

Mine is 12' ish to the roof and 14' ish over all and it is really close ..


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If I had an intercooler forget it

You know what is sad? How many of us have a way to pull a motor out of a boat. Car owners I bet its less then 1%. Boat owners probably 50/50.

I had this old sundancer. 1 summer I was a member of the motor-of-the-week club. Finally get it out to the sandbar. This boat pulls up with this wake board tower on it. Spousal unit says "He's worse than you. He has his engine puller built right on to his boat!"

Although it isn't really boaters who have such a high rate of people doing their own engine r&r's. It is US. Performance boaters. First, we over build the engines. Then we run them at higher throttle settings than anybody but fighter pilots. Then we come on here and b!tch cuz our engine puller isn't tall or wide enough...

Dude, I went through so many 302's in a boat one year a lot of years ago I was going to paint little motors on the side of the boat with slashes through them like fighter pilots do on the side of their planes for kills.

I built mine out of 6" and 8" I beam that my buddy gave me from a old job he did. Its 14' tall and 12' wide and has easily pulled the motors out of my fountain. I put casters on it so it rolls pretty good but a little difficult to roll by yourself but it can be done. The legs and base are 6" I beam and the top beam is the 8".

Built mine out of wood and galvanized hardware and used a chain hoist from HF. I have the detailed plans at home, let me know and I'll snap a pic for you. In total it's about 14ft tall. I've used it to pull and install a total of 3 times. Total cost was around $215 in wood and hardware plus the cost of the hoist, I had chain left over from another project. I consider it a big win be it that local shops were asking $500 to simply lift the engines out. Here are some pics I have on me for reference.

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