I've been looking for a way to add a swivel to the hook on my engine hoist. A few weekends ago I bought a chain boomer at a pawn shop for 5 bucks, disassembled it and altered one end to fit in the hoist. It will work great, but I've never worked with boomers so I'm hesitant to use it.

The boomer says its capacity is 16,200 and that its Working Load Limit is 1/4, so that means 4,000 pounds, right?

Never heard one called a chain boomer. Chain binder is what we always bought for the machine shop. But you're probably safe if your through-bolt is strong enough and as long as you don't try to pick up the whole vehicle.

I used to pull a flatbed and have heard them called boomer or binders. Same thing. If you're gently lifting the motor, you should be ok. If you're tugging on it with force, you need to be careful. I used those to cinch down 50,000+ # of steel, machinery, etc all the time. I'd use a 10' cheater pipe to cinch them down and they took all kinds of abuse during turns and braking. Never had one fail although I'm obviously not guaranteeing the one you have.

Bottom line, if you don't abuse that (and you have a strong enough bolt like fierofool said), you should be just fine.

Thanks for the input. I'm always careful when I lift something with the hoist.

I've looked all over for some kind of swivel hook but the only one I could find looked like it came off an aircraft carrier and was huge. I thought about welding something up but I'm not inclined to trust my self-taught welding skills with the job.

Calling them boomers may be an Oklahoma thing. I've heard them called binders, too, but boomer is much more common around here.

You'll be just fine with that set up.
The hoist will fail before your swivel will.
Have at it!