Home Made Car Ramp

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Category: Automotive

Published on Thursday, 27 February 2020 03:05

Written by Ben

Hits: 5237

Introduction:

Dealing with car mechanics is inevitable for the tech savvy person and at some point he or she would resort to changing their own engine oil and filters and perform other maintenance work. However working with a car is quite different than working with a computer for example. One simple reason is that cars are, well, a bit bigger than a computer and access to their internal mechanics and electrical systems is often quite complicated, hard and definitely not user, or in this case, mechanic friendly.

For the most part, cars were not meant and not designed to be maintained professionally by the average joe and in order to do so, Joe would have to get some professional tools, accessories and gear in order to do so. My name is no Joe but in this case I am definitely an average one, since I am not a cars mechanic yet I do intend to maintain my own vesicles as much as I can on my own.

The car ramp is the ultimate basic tool for the aspiring Joes who wishe to know more about their cars and maintain them on their own. This basic concept makes handling your car easier, safer and more enjoyable. In this article i will demonstrate how to build your own home made car ramps. This project was a result of a necessity and the will to utilize materials and resources that were already present on site and would've been otherwise just thrown away. In addition to the latter, I wasn't willing to throw between 250$ to 1000$ over professionally made car ramps for home usage.

Parts:

Since I am not a welder and I didn't have metal parts lying around I had to resort to more common materials one could easily find. In this case, wood, or to be more exact, Particleboard, was the material of choice. I chose this material since I had a lot of it laying around, waiting to be thrown into the nearest bin. I wasn't going to build shelves out of it or any other piece of furniture so using it was naturally the easiest choice.

I wasn't quite sure about the strength of the material to be able to handle the weight of a car, I mean, after all, it was just a particleboard. To the very least it would serve as a temporary solution until I find more durable materials.

There important factors that had to be considered seriously before using the particleboard:

1. I had to make sure the particleboard pieces were not water soaked with water, inflated, bloated cracked and broken.
2. I made sure I had enough of the material for evenly made 4 car ramps

Planning:

Car ramps are what they are – ramps. They were not meant to lift the car all the way to an eyes level height, they were meant to lift the car high enough for the person handling the car would have an easier access to the underlying parts of a given car. There are exceptions of course, since there are car ramps that were built at height of between 1.8 and 2 meters, but they are not as common as the ones sold for home usage.

Since I had a finite amount of materials and the basic common sense to understand that the ramps need to exceed a certain height due to stability issues, I had to plan carefully. I am not an architecht or a mechanical engineer, but I do know that the higher a structure is built, the more displacement it needs, unless of course its base and the material it is made of (both the base and the structure itself) are quite durable and well built. In my case, I was using particleboard and I had so much of it.

Firstly I started with what I need – the goal itself – the ramp. I measured the width and length of my car's wheels and looked a bit online at some professionally made car ramps and cross referenced the data. I gathered what I could regarding my car's wheels displacement.

Secondly, I measured how much raw material I had to work with and based on that and the data that I had gathered beforehand, the final measurements of the ramps were decided upon with my fingers crossed :).

The minimum width of the ramp had to be at least 20cm. The length had to be at least 50cm given the fact that 20cm or so out of it would be diagonal. In this case, the diagonal part would be gradual since I lacked the tools to properly sand the “Stairs” that were made as a result of the overall diagonal shape.

Measuring, Marking and Cutting:

Measuring was the most crucial part of the overall project. My baseline was 4 individually separated measurement of 4 equally measured and marked ramps. I had to multiply that amount by 4 since each of the initial pieces of the 4 ramps would have to be joined with 3 more equally measured and cut pieces in order to increase their height. If for some reason I would've made a wrong measurement, I could've ended up with an unequal amount of pieces, leaving myself with unequal heightened ramps, making this entire project useless, or at the very least, delayed till I find more raw materials. It was better in that case to end up with 4 shorter than planned ramps than 4 unequaly heightened ramps.

After an initial measurement, I came to the conclusion that I had enough raw material to stack 4 pieces of particleboard for one ramp. After stacking 4 pieces of particleboard for each 2 ramps, I used nails to secure the pieces together

After cutting each pieces into two i was left with 4 ramps ready to be cut yet again in order to create the steps:

Creating The Steps:

the next stage was to create the diagonal part by cutting out equally measured steps. The measurement pattern was simple - The first step, which would be the top one, would be made by cutting the top board into two equally measured parts. One part would come off while the other would remain to create the step and its ledge. The next step would be made from the next underlying board by cutting its exposed part into two equally measured parts. The same goes for the third and fourth boards. 

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Since using a manual hand saw gets quite hard in time, i tried to cheat my way to the finish line of this project by checking if would the wheels of the car be able to get over a relatively big first step. I was wrong. As i was trying to lift the car over the ledge of the step the wheels jsut got shot over the ramp. It seems that the amount of engine power needed to get over the initial bigger friction caused by the thick ledgte :

I continuted the work of sawing the last step out of the bottom piece:

Prior Usage:

Make sure the space under the car is clear of any tools and obstacles

Make sure there are no people around the car that is independent to be lifted.

Make sure there are not obstacles of any kind around the car.

Make sure you would have enough space around the car, especially at the front, for the car to “drop” in case the car fails to drive over the ramp or in case the ramps themselves fail.

Clean the floor you wish to place the ramps over by using a broom. Sand and other small particles would be the ultimate friction killers so make sure their presence is minimal as possible. Make sure the ramps are steady and without any debris.

Usage:

The first attempt of testing the ramps involved using only two of them, just to make sure the wheels would actually get on the ramps:

Each one of the ramps was placed as close as possible its designated wheel. This was a mistake however, since the diagonal part is not really, well, diagonal and smooth, I had to drive the car a bit backwards for a few centimeters in order to gain momentum and climb these little stairs. Once I had noticed the car starts to tilt upwards, I hit the brakes and slowly drove forward, a few centimeters each time, till the car was completely leveled.

Cons:

• Low in height
• Heavy to carry
• Hard to carry – no handles of any sort
• Material is not durable enough and could easily get soaked with water and get cracked
• The external white later of the ramps does not have a high friction grade both with the wheels and the floor beneath the ramps
• The stairs cut out of the ramps would never be as good as a smooth diagonally cut surface.
• Long and thick screws should been used instead of the long nails which don't hold the particleboard stacks firmly enough
• Labor-some to create, especially when using a manual saw.

Pros:

• Gets the job done – lifts the car
• Cheap to make
• Utilizes existing materials and resources
• A stepping stone for the next ramp project

Summary:

Overall, the concept itself of a home made ramp is very good. The key to make this concept a success would be to use the right materials and in the right way. This project was a success since I eventually was able to lift the car and change my engine oil and filters by having an easier access to the underlying part of the car. However, the right materials were not used and the those were not used in the right way.

The ramps turned out to be very heavy to move around and handle. Though their weight contributes to the stability of the car being over them, it makes it very annoying to carry those ramps with you, especially when they don't include any handles. I had to carry 2 at a time due to their weight, making about 4 trips back and forth to my car in order to bring 4 ramps, one tools box and a bucket full of other car consumables.

On the positive side, it is a good solution for the resourceful person who wishes to utilize trash and in this case, Those ramps could've been perfected by sanding the steps to a diagonally smooth surface, gluing both the top and bottom parts of the ramps with rubber covers and covering the sides of the ramps with cover materials in order to prevent water penetration. The weight issue of the ramps could've been solved by just using a small cart or a bottom car servicing trolley or by lifting weights more often.

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