sorry @MiM I never thought to shoot a video loading but I do have over 40000 miles on my wheel lift and as bigdog explained it does get easy enough after a few tries, what everybody finds intimidating at first it the fact that even with the bag deflated the lift forks are still six to eight inches off the ground but as you back up against it the weight of the slingshot tire just pushes the collapsed lift down towards the ground as your truck suspension then loads up and stops sagging closer to the ground and you just bump it up from there, so you actually get out and check it the first few times when you back up against it prior to climbing it, stopped right against it, if your happy with the alignment jump back in and bump it up, you don't have to take a run at it. but remember the sling weighs about 606 lbs on the rear tire and the lift total weight can get up around 70 lbs so your placing enough weight back there that you really do need a 3/4 ton suspension. anything less than that should be using a dolly. Both bigdog and I BOTH use 1/2 tons but I had additional springs added to mine as almost a couple hundred thousand miles of construction work had them sagging pretty good. I sold my demo lift off to Arkansas once I built the dolLies and haven't got around to building another one yet for a video . Gregory Allen was at Eureka Springs with that demo towing his SS behind his motorhome with air ride so it hadno problem adjusting for the extra weight that far out on the hitch.
Trailering???
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Drew, that’s going to depend on the front end clearance you have after you get it loaded....I didn’t want to take a chance on wrecking my front end on a bump in the pavement....or railroad tracks. I only had 3” inches and I wasn’t comfortable with it...now maybe I would have been ok ...but price the front end parts...the eight bolts are very easy to get to...
You take out 4...#2 bolts and 4...#4 bolts..you can reach them from the front of the SS -
@kev, I have a 2016 4x4 Tahoe. From my research, the Tahoe should be able to accommodate a tongue weight of 800 lbs safely. Shouldn't this be acceptable? I saw bigdog's post above. He mentioned taking off his front end for the piece of mind of having extra ground clearance. Is this required?
I designed the lift so that the rear tire drops down into the cradle and is the lowest point, then under the tire theres a two inch strap and on the bottom of that strap I now include another 1/8 sacrificial WEAR STRAP. the purpose of all this is to allow the rear tire to be lifted no more than 4'' of the ground when towing . this should only lower your front spoiler 1,1/4'' So as long as you drive accordingly I I/4 inch lower shouldn't be a problem, meaning slow down going into parking lot entrances etc, slow down when pulling off the edge of ashpalt onto gravel shoulder etc. Its imaginable that as your tow vehicle bounces on bumps it may spring up and lower the spoiler even further but in fact it doesn't with all that weight on hitch, if anything it bounces lower and that's where the skid plate, sacrificial wear bar comes in. Its perfectly ok for it to scrape the ground occasionally then bounce right back up verses the front spoiler dropping down . in the 4000 miles I have on mine I can honestly say I,ve never scraped the front spoiler on the ground except on entering steep drive ways or areas where it would have scraped if driving forward in.
