Hey everyone, I've bought myself a belly hoist for my garage and I was wondering if anyone can confirm if this will be ok to use on my beetle?

I know the proper place to put the jackstands is under the torsion housings, bit the hoist wont' reach that far. Would it be ok to place a length of timber with rubber strips under the sills where the body bolts to the pan as a load spreading measure?

I've used 2 poster hoists for many years on all types of Volksies and I'm with Grumble, not my idea of fun. Maybe you can make a fixture that gets up to the torsion housing and fwd to the beam???

I'm quite sure it could be made to work safely.
I would be looking at a beam of some sort going from the torsion tube at the rear to the
front where the side rails start on each side.

I have a Bendpac belly hoist which works great.
The 2 rear arms go on the torsion arms.
The front arms are too long to pickup the front, so I run a piece of 4x2 across.
Most of the weight is taken in the centre, and the outer ends pickup the outside edge for extra stability.
Stable as!

I put my bug on my belly lift at work all the time. I just put the normal rubber pads under where the floor pan comes down. One front and one back on each side. I have never had a drama or heard any horrible bending or breaking noises

Yeah, I had a feeling that the preferred method was to run a beam setup between the front and rear torsion bar housings.

Not sure how engineered this would need to be, looks like a trip to the steel suppliers and crack out the welder. I'll try the timber strip for a few seconds just to get the wheel dollies under the wheels and i'll report back how it worked.

Umm... jacking points ???

They're at Center of Gravity after all... are designed strong enough to take half the weight of the car... and sit lower than any other point on the pan.

Picking up by them and some rubber pads under the two M12 pan bolts each side at the front firewall to level it slightly nose down should be fine I'd think.

As regards to safety... well being slightly nose down it'd take a lot of force to lift it up.

I'd still pref a two post tho....

Although the jacking points would take the load OK, I would prefer the rear lift-point to be further back....say, the torsion bar tubes?

The last thing you need is for the car to tip backwards.

You do not have to go to the front torsion bar housing, i lift all my cars on my two post hoist with the pad under the cap on the rear torsion bar housing and the front pad on the two body bolts on each side at the cornor of the pan behind the beam.