CAR HUNT! or BOF & me car shopping!
It may help to get cars up and pulled on the deck to do what I have done with my car trailer and winch. I jack them up and put a piece of 2x12 cut about 1 & 1/2 foot long where the tires were sunk then let them back down on the boards before winching. Funny to see you with an S10 and a ranger as I have recently bought both also. lol
Yeah, I've done that before and will have to this time too. I carry dunage with me in pass side tool box. The boards over the holes is the second step. First you have to dig out to put jack under car. Then once jacked up, I usually just push dirt from jack into the tire hole. Once the car is on the ground, it's usually high enough to put on the tow hooks.
That leads to the main problem. The cars will slide on ground to my ramps OK. But once a non rolling wheel hit my ramps they want to lift out of ramp bracket on tail of the deck. Once the ramp lifts out of the bracket the ramp will slide up and foward as the non rolling car tire or wheel tries to get onto the ramp. (That would be where the big "C" clamps would come into play) My ramps are not smooth to let the wheel slide either. The just have cross angle steel with the point down to resemble a ladder. So each time the tire hits one it wants to lift each time. I usually work around this with wood blocks holding the ramp while wedged against the rockers.
Now, if you get all that under control, if the truck and ramps are not exactly level the non rolling/steerable tires will want to slide off the side of the ramps due to not being able to steer non rolling tires.
Hence the ease of a rollback that drives up, tucks deck under bumper, quick lift out of holes, place boards down over holes let car/deck down, the wench onto deck. Once car is halfway on deck, yuo tilt deck to lift car from back holes and continue wenching onto the deck.
No muss no fuss but $75.00 for each car pick and ride to my house.
I'm still hoping I can weld sheet steel on top of my ramps to make them smooth as ice, but I will also need some side to side direction guide of some sort to keep from slipping off the narrow ramps.
Yard dawg and I have been planning some sort of wide sheet ramp that would slide off the deck onto the ramps and latch into them at their widest point from side to side, using the ramps as support and the sheet on top between the gap in the ramps to allow for easy rollback "like" sliding onto the deck. Also would be putting car ramps under FOTO's front tires to lower tail of deck closer to ground.
Been sleeping on this problem for a while.:-k
Weird we got the same vehicles at the same time.
My s-10 blew a fuel pump while my son and I was finishing up cleaning on Sunday. I can't even get a wrench on the fule filter to change out. Not enough room to work so it's heading to the junk yard this AM with 3 cans of gloss black and alot of clean up done to it. Oh well, I've even sent them to the yard after putting new pumps in just to find out some other unfixable problem arises. (I am not a mechanic)