I'm in the process of building a pole barn...(Fiero Home..lol) I have 2 pieces of 11" X 4.5" X 15.5' I Beam. If I were to plant 5.5' of the I beam in the ground and concrete it there how long can I make the boom ? I just want a single hinge not a cantilever. And should I use the other heavy 11" X 4.5" I Beam as the boom or use a lighter piece like 8" stuff ? Also does anyone know where I can get a hinge ? Grangers catalog has them but $400.00 seems a bit much.

Someone out there is a structural engineer right...lol I would like this thing heavy enough to lift the rear end of a Fiero...Guess what I have in mind!

Back in the old day, me and Joe-Bob used to jack up our cars the hard way; We got Bessie and Jack, our best hosses, and had 'em pull that sucker up on a little ramp we made. Then we had Billy-Ray put jackstands (or whatever he found, one time he tried to use milk crates. Billy-Ray wudn't the sharpest tool in the shed) They we took some blocks of wood that Paw whittled down into triangles for the front wheels. That reminds me of the time when Claetus and Zeke come to our farm dressed like huge chickens! Paw-paw, being hungry (and drunk on moonshine, as usual) tried to shoot em with the scatter gun, but when he shot em, it didn't hurt em none because all the shells where loaded with rock salt, for shootin nosy cats that tried to kill the chickens! That was kind of ironical, because paw didn't want to kill the cats, 'cause the tree-huggin neighbors would get angry, but paw ended up shooting the chickens anyhow! That reminds me of the time my brother, Bill-Bob, got really sick. See, him being a youngin at the time, he wanted to make dinner for us family, and he shot him a chicken (one of them wild chickens with the purty feathers) He pulled all it's feathers off and all, but he didn't cook him, and he tried to eat it hiself before we got home! Yungins just don't learn I reckon. That reminds me of what Paw used to do to the chickens late at night when ain't nobody was lookin......

2m4, I think that you should look at putting up a inverted U frame (youll need to acquire one more piece if I beam) and just get some sort of pully and come-a-long to lift the car. Im not sure a crane is the safest idea, but then Im really not sure what you have in mind but What Im thinking should turn out like this...

IIIIII
I | I
I | I
I I
I I

Even something like this should be an A-frame, but if your going to sink the I beams 5.5' deep and concrete them, you should be OK.

Thats just .02 from an Electrical Engineer

Ive removed the transaxles by using a cherry picker hooked to the trunk latch. Ive also done it using six concrete blocks, 2 floor jacks, and 2 jack stands.

Shiner, were you humming "dueling banjos" when you wrote that?