[67Lemons]

Rotary lifts are designed for high volume use in high production shops, think at least 30 times up and down per day for years but it’s definitely overkill for the home use. I would look at some of the Chinese lifts out there like Forward, Direct, Challenger and BendPack before buying a used lift.

Unfortunately most lifts aren’t maintained regularly and see some serious abuse, the most common issue is bent lift arms which leads to bent carriages which are high dollar repairs so proceed with caution on a used lift, also understand that most of the time when a shop is selling a lift it’s beat and near the end of its service life so it’s going to require an investment that may cost more than the lift is worth, of course there are those rare occasions where you find a great used lift but that’s getting as rare as real barn finds so do your research and have the lift inspected by a qualified installer (which will also add to the cost) The link I posted above will have contacts for installers in your area. If you contact one they may have a good used lift in stock so it never hurts to ask, they won’t sell junk typically since they understand the safety implications.

Next thing to check is a minimum of 4.125 inches of quality concrete which means no cracks near the bases, not wood floors (yep, I’ve seen it done) and fairly level so factor that into the equation as well when considering a lift. Typical overhead height for a standard 10k lift is 12’ as a minimum, you can purchase low ceiling height lifts, these usually have the baseplate on the floor and while they’ll typically fit a 8-10’ ceiling you run into how high you can lift the car and the baseplate on the floor is a PITA when trying to use a tranny jack, not a deal killer but not as convenient.

Finally you can do a four post lift, these are typically sold as DIY lifts or parking lifts since they aren’t designed to be used in production shops. They claim to be moveable on wheels but they’re pretty sketchy when moving and expect to not really move the lift around. Also you’ll want some sort of bridge jack so you can get the wheels up in the air off of the lift runways to remove the wheels or do any brake service. The good news is that they are typically 110v so you can make a simple whip with a cord to plug into an outlet. Not a bad way to go for parking but not ideal for any service where the wheels need to come off.