Hoisting a Yaris with a crane

[Idahotom]

I am selling my current crane (a small one, 22 ton capacity with 101' of stick, tandem axles, about 35' long, not a monster) to a friend in Arizona (800 miles away). Part of our deal is that I will drive it down to him, and he pays the fuel (6-8 mpg). From Arizona I then need to get to Houston Texas (1200 miles), where I'll pick up another crane of a similar size and then drive it back to Idaho (1700 miles).

This is way too far to drag my towbar equipped 1999 RAV4, my usual short haul tow vehicle. I have no interest in equipping the Yaris so I can to tow it, no need with the beater Rav4 all set up for that already. After a brief consideration of using a light trailer I have (no tow hitch on the Yaris, no trailer lights connection, and again no desire for same as I have all that on the Rav), I finally hit on what seems to be the perfect solution.

The crane isn't a boom truck, with a large flatbed with lots of room, my crane boom comes down to about 5' above the bed when driving down the road, and i only have a 14' flatbed. Doing some measuring today, it appears that if I take the wheels off the '08 HB, and park it on the bed about 2" from the rear of the crane carrier/truck cab, I will have about 2" of clearance between the lowered boom and the top of the roof! I then only had to figure a rigging system to safely lift my stripped down Yaris, call it 2200 lbs or so, 600 lbs per wheel roughly max.

I made this simple scrap angle iron bracket in about 10 minutes, there will be 4 of these obviously.


The fronts slightly different from the rears due to the hubs/spindles. The slight bend is to assure the rigging stays offset of the bodywork. I'll use a small lightweight spreader bar (as I have to be able to carry it in the car to Houston) that will run left/right, crossways, with 2 rigging straps from a shackle at each end of the bar, one going to a front tire left side, the other going rear tire left side. Rigged correctly the car won't even know it's being lifted, all force being where it usually comes from, the wheels. While up in the air I'll attach chains to the boat hook tie downs, in order to secure it while going down the road. Once in Houston, the process will reverse and I'll hit the road with the Yaris on the new crane. It should only take 1/2 hr. or so and the long drive to Houston will be accomplished with the usual Yaris economy, plus I can take Ted the dog as no airline travel is part of the picture> Flying commercial is a huge pain these days, especially for this private pilot, I'd rather drive. I pick things up and move them around for a living, so I feel pretty comfortable with this setup. I'll post a picture of the Yaris 100' in the air in a few weeks.

[CoryM]

Sounds fun. Do you have a way to keep the lugs from seeing any bending, or shear loads while lifting? They should only be loaded in tension, and won't take much force otherwise. Also may want to chain the car to the flatbed so that a big bump doesn't bounce it on it's suspension into your boom. 2" isn't much clearance.

Cheers.

[Betrivent]

I would feel so much safer if the contact plate was bolted through all 4 studs.. just me though.

[Idahotom]

Originally Posted by CoryM

Sounds fun. Do you have a way to keep the lugs from seeing any bending, or shear loads while lifting? They should only be loaded in tension, and won't take much force otherwise. Also may want to chain the car to the flatbed so that a big bump doesn't bounce it on it's suspension into your boom. 2" isn't much clearance.

Cheers.

Good call Cory, I plan to shim the small gap between my lifting bracket and the brake drum (the hub sticks out a bit) and tighten them up, that should fool them into thinking they are being used as normal. For the loads involved, much less then when being driven, turning sharply and hitting potholes etc., it should be good enough, not ideal but good enough. Yeah it'll be sucked down tight to the bed, and if the so far calculated clearance is too crazy close, I can always put a block on my boom stand to keep it up a few inches higher, the winch keeps it all snugged up.

Hitting all 4 lugs would be better, but a lot more work to fab, and again I think this is good enough. That sounds half ass, but overbuilding is easy, I get a kick out of doing things just enough to get the job done safely. Especially something used twice. I'll consider all four but probably won't bother. Good call though.

[Idahotom]

Just had a thought...... it would be super easy to weld a small flat bar right under the center hub, still using just two lugs but now the vert pull would be pretty much on the hub, more like it should be and is when in regular use. That will take about 2 minutes to do, cool.

[CoryM]

Yeah, flat bar or a V would be good, but mostly you want spacers so that the bar is bolted tight to the hub (no lug showing). The main thing is to get the lugs working as designed in tension only. When the wheel is bolted on, the lugs are pulled in tension, which creates the "clamping force" that holds the wheel to the hub. That is the only force that should be on the lugs. You need to create the same sort of surface to act as the clamp or you will bend/break your lugs.

PS: I'm a little jealous of playing with cranes for a living.

[bronsin]

Sounds like an interesting thing to do!

I hope I wont see you on YouTube!

[Idahotom]

I'll post a picture with the final version, call that first one a prototype, the more I think about it, it will be simple enough to transfer all the lifting force to the center hub as it should be, with all the lugs doing serving to position my bracket on the lug.

Here's a shot of the crane bed, the big pin that connects the hyd. cylinder to the boom will be about over the wind shield wipers, with the car carried backwards I am counting on the sloping hood and windshield to clear the stowed cylinder. It is going to be tight, but as I'm only 11'4" now height wise, as mentioned I can use wood blocking to shim up the boom rest so I gain more height under it, gaining 6 or 8" will be no problem, done it before while trucking bulky objects.

[CTScott]

This is the image that immediately came to mind when I read the title of this thread (this was from topgear, where Rutt lowered his Yaris down a cliff with a crane):

[Idahotom]

The front attach brackets.

The rear brackets, after welding a chunk of round bar underneath the hub. The fronts were a better design, but I already had the rears built so I just modified them to be a bit better.

That spreader bar was light gauge tubing, (I'll be packing this in the Yaris so wanted it light and small as possible) so I used 20' straps to the crane load hook to give a real nice gentle angle/less compression on the bar then short ones would have. You can see how the load kind of passes through the bar, all it does is keep the rigging spread out so the body is not tweaked. The front round slings cleared everything just right, the rears were up against the wheel wells but only barely, I could pull maybe 30 lbs and get air in there so not a lot of squeeze, as a result zero trauma to the sheet metal. I could have gone higher, another 40' anyway, but the wind was starting to come up and I was getting rotation, this was about 50 or 60'

Then the important thing, would it fit? Yes, with room to spare. I was working by myself, when I load it for real I'll have my helper position another few inches closer to the boom support structure, like right up against with some hi dens foam between it and the bumper. I'll also use thinner shims between the crane bed and the undercarriage, (taking care to protect the somewhat delicate brake backing plates) when for real I'll only need to block up the boom in the rest with a 6x6, putting the highest point (at the tip) around 12', well below max allowed height.
I'll tie down the body, not the suspension, so don't anticipate any bouncing, still, I'll leave 3 or 4" of clearance between the boom and the roof. You can't tell by this picture, but I offset it to one side, so the antenna clears the boom.

Test completed, I lifted it back off, and after beating the wheel studs back into position with a big hammer so the rims would fit, and a severe shimmy above 30 mph, all was as it was before. No....just kidding, nothing got bent, scratched, or even slightly tweaked. A fun project with the '08 HB and it will get me down there with my own transportation once I drop the crane off so mission accomplished

[Ben_]

WOW! Cool project

[Idahotom]

Well I ended up buying another type crane that has the hydraulic tank located differently then mine, so less bed space. Plus my buddy buying mine has decided he will drive up from Arizona, hook his Metro up with his tow bar, and tow it back. So, it appears I did this for nothing, other then our mutual amusement of course!

If anyone needs for some reason to hoist their Yaris with a crane, I will offer up the wheel hub brackets I made, along with advice on the needed rigging. $25.00! Hey you never know, someone might

[Betrivent]

Still impressive!