Hi, I'm a newbie, and I'm finally trying to gather my courage up to work on a Fiero that I've had for a while. ( I'm also retired now, so I have a bit more time).

Anyway, there was a post a while back by a member named Toddster describing dropping the engine with the use of an engine hoist.
This looks messy, but possibly doable. I have the 4 cylinder, so the process will be somewhat different -- and maybe easier.

My question is about the rating of the hoist. The post specifies a 2 ton hoist -- and I have one of those. But in the pics, the hoist is shown extended to the last possible position. This reduces the hoist rating. Mine is labelled as a half ton at that spot.

I'm guesing that this is sufficient, as the hoist in the pics looks similar to mine. Also, a 2 ton (max rating) hoist seems to be about the largest normally found.

So, can anyone tell me if my hoist should be sufficient?

Thanks,

ford2go

I used mine to lower the cradle on the extended limit and it worked fine. The cradle with all the components is likely under the 1/2 ton rating. I wouldn't lift the back end of the car with the cradle attached but i used mine to lift the backend off the cradle after lowering the cradle to a cart.

I also used mine at the half ton location to both lower the cradle/v6/auto to the ground....and to lift the empty back of the car high enough afterwards (used the trunk latch as a lift point BTW...I don't really recommend that one...it has worked for me 3 times now, but I recognize the risk I am taking). I would switch it to at least the 1 ton location if I were going to lift the car with the loaded cradle still in it....but for that it is easier to just throw a jack under it than to position chains for a proper lift.

Welcome to the Forum! (and the obsession)

1/2 ton is 1000 lbs. I've used my hoist to lift the whole cradle with engine and trans at that setting too.

I've on 3 occassions (different fiero's) picked up the back end of the car by it's engine lifting brackets to set up the jack stands before dropping the craddle, engine and trans. My hoist is a summit racing hoist with the arm all the way to it's 2nd to rearward hole. I wouldn't do this with a harbor freight hoist as it seems that the left legs on those don't want to carry any load and that wasn't just isolated to one HF hoist it was several and I had one even tip over with a 302 injected ford being removed from a 93 Mustang dropping it down on the fender before the motor rolled upside down back into the engine bay. That really sucked.

Take all the excess parts off the duke ,coils, distributor ,starter ,A/C,,alt,ect,manifolds it will be much lighter than a V 6 you will be fine if worried assist it up or down, a jack is of some assistance comming down