Originally Posted By: Shannow
When I was a kid, it used to freak me out the setup that my Dad and his Brothers had.
They had a very heavily sloping bank off the road alongside the house, so they took huge slabs of wood size of railroad sleepers, but from memory longer.
Sunk two vertically into the ground so that they were about a decent car track width apart, and were about 5' (must have been more, they could walk under it...we're shortarses, so maybe 6'), then dug the horizontals into the dirt near the road, and coach bolted them to the verticals.
When it was oil change time, drive out into space on these sleepers with a brother using a shovel as a flag steer left/right, and stop.
When I worked for the rental car company on the Island, the building was split level, the lower part had the office and the hire centre I ran, and up the back was my workshop. The previous owner had built something similar to what your family made - there was a wooden ramp built out over the lower floor...and you had to drive up onto it too. There was no safety stuff at all - a couple of HQ Holdens were the biggest we had, and were maxxed out on width...I'd shuffle along the ramps on my toes holding onto the car, step around the wheel to get to the front. The HQ was maxxed out on length too, the rear wheels just up on the ramp, and the fronts nearly off the end. A scary and dangerous thing, but, that's what I had to use.