DIY Hoist System (Rooftop Tents, Kayaks, Jeep Tops, Ladders, etc.)

so you've just arrived back home from your over landing excursions weekend camping adventures and now it's that point in time where you're in between trips or for some of you it might be that time of year to start getting prepared for the winter season keeping your rooftop tent kayaks and other recreational items on your vehicle when not in use leaves them vulnerable to theft and potential damage for long-term exposure to the environment things like falling limbs hail extreme temperatures mildew and the silent killer uv from the sun keeping your items stored ensures that they are safe and that the integrity of the material holds up for many years to come so granted you have the space to do it where and how can you store your recreational items there are plenty of storage options out there to consider from simple do-it-yourself construction to pre-manufactured dollies and hoist systems we decided to go the do-it-yourself route we thought we'd share it with you it's actually pretty cool so if you want to see how we built our storage solution just hang out we're going to raise the roof top 10. hey welcome back to the gator overland channel i'm john and in today's video i'll be explaining how to construct a do-it-yourself hoist system to store your recreational or household items as mentioned before prolonged exposure to the environment can degrade the integrity of your items material and it's in your best interest to keep that stuff stored when not in use even if you don't own any of that stuff this hoist system can still be utilized as an elevated storage solution to help free up space in your garage you would just have to construct a full platform instead of using separate boards like i've done if your space does not allow for the benefits of elevated storage there are still plenty of other options out there to consider like mobile hoists dollies and wall mounts i'll leave a few links in the description below for you to check out for yourself in the description you'll also find a full list of tools and materials required to complete this project as well as links to my dropbox for full construction information and links to my social media platforms and email address should you need to contact me personally about this build now just a heads up there will be some technical explaining on this video so you can better understand how the hoist system works so for your time saving convenience and your viewing convenience this video is time stamped select from the timeline below and you can go to any point of this video without having to scroll or fully watch through with all that said let's get started tools everything you see here is at least but not limited to what is required to construct the hoist system you might even have a few tools of your own to help make the construction process go even easier for you i have my cutting equipment over here circular saw for the wood hacks off of the metal and the pvc cutter works great for cutting the 3 8 poly rope i have my fastener tools here simple adjustable wrench ratcheting wrench with extension and a set of sockets and my marking utensils for marking where to cut and where to drill on wood and the wall you also find that tape works great for masking out outlines and where to drill on the wall as well speaking of drill you definitely want to invest in a drill make sure the battery is charged go ahead and pick up one of these 3 8 adapters for your drill driver that way you can run your sockets very efficiently you want to have a 1 8 a 1 4 and a 7 16 drill bit here i'll explain more about why but basically we need to make that 3 8 hole a little bit bigger with a 7 16 drill bit you want to invest in a set of wood bits as well the way i designed this hoist system is for the rooftop tent to actually fasten to the load boards so what we're going to do is countersink a one inch hole into the wood and then follow through with that for the bolts that actually attach the rooftop tint to the rack through the wood and to this that way it becomes one uniform unit and it's extremely rigid you don't have to worry about it falling off the load boards which is going to be great so then you have your measuring equipment here tape measure speed square level and more important is going to be the stud finder especially have walls like i do ceilings like i do where it's taped floated and painted and if you don't own one of these already go ahead and invest in a contractor calculator it makes doing math functions with fractions really fast you're probably wondering why i have the baking soda sitting here for those of you who are using this for a rooftop tent storage before you put it up for the winter or however long you're wanting to do go ahead and toss one of these bad boys up in there that way when you open up your rooftop tent in however long in the future it's going to be nice and fresh on the inside and that'll wrap up the tools these are all the materials required to construct your hoist system don't forget to check the description below for a full list of materials tools and amazon affiliate links for a lot of the materials you see here for your online shopping convenience for the load boards i used 2x6 untreated pine it's inexpensive and more than capable of supporting and hoisting our 140 pound load i use three eight foot lengths here you can see an assortment of lag bolt fasteners spring clips swivel pulley stationary pulley quick link i got some eye bolts both the machine type of the bolt and the lag style i got some 3 8 washers you'll need a bunch of those i have a 5 16 wire rope clamp here i actually use two different kinds of wire rope clamps in this project the other one i'm going to show right here it actually squeezes and is a little bit slimmer profile and is going to work great with the stationary load bar pulley on the actual load bar i went with 3 8 diamond poly rope you want something capable of at least 100 pounds anything higher than 100 pounds is going to be to the good ours is just shy of 200 pounds here we have our safety chain this is just simple swing chain it's capable of 200 pound capacity this is actually going to support the full load of what we have on our load bars after we get everything hoisted up basically we'll connect it and back down just enough to where all the load is off of the rope and on to the chain itself just gives an additional peace of mind for anybody who's parking or walking under the load system this is the backbone of the hoist system this is inch and a half by inch and a half perforated square tubing it comes in a 36 inch length i used three for my project but you can definitely get away with two i went with the idea of better to have and not need than need and not have the longer you make this just allows for more adjustability for anybody who's going with a wider set for their hoist system here are two manual winch options both of which are more than capable of hoisting the load this one would be ideal for the project but the disadvantage about it you have to invest in an additional bracket that allows you to turn the winch 90 degrees for full operation of the winch crank at a convenience i ended up going with the worm gear option which is great for mounting directly to the wall and having full operation of the crank but it comes with a caveat of 40 to 1 ratio which makes it really easy to maneuver and hoist but it's going to do it at a rate of 10 times slower than this one so for speed convenience you want to do this one with the bracket for just being able to hoist in general and go directly to the wall you go with this one i have a trick up my sleeve to make this one go a lot faster first you want to take into account any type of obstruction that you might have in the area of that you're trying to hoist in our situation our tent is seven feet long by about four and a half almost five feet wide so i have a space nine foot by twelve foot but i do have the obstructions of the overhead door motor the track system and you also want to take into account the door when it's open and it's closed there's also lighting to pay attention to i actually had to replace a 8-foot cfl bulb with a smaller led setup actually worked out pretty good it's a lot brighter than the other one considering it's a whole lot smaller next do you plan on driving your vehicle into the garage to access your hoist system it won't be so much of an issue for the smaller suvs and cars but full full-size trucks and vehicles with lift kits or high-mounted rooftop tents or kayaks it might be an issue passing through the threshold mine's at 92 inches my 2-inch lift on my jeep with 37-inch tires puts my rooftop tent just at 89.5 inches so i'm able to access my garage directly in the middle but as i get through the ceiling is a lot higher and there's no more issues after that if it does come to an issue where you're just shy of your threshold don't forget you can deflate your tires and allow a little bit of extra room for you to pass through and then you'll just inflate after that say it's a situation where no matter what you can't get your vehicle to go into the garage there's no problem with getting an extra hand and removing the rooftop tent and you can use the load board system like i have here and put casters on the bottom and uses it as a dolly into your garage and then hoist thereafter not a bad idea just a food for thought now once you have all those factors and dimensions accounted for you're ready to start you just need to account for the weight of whatever you're planning to load that way you can order and get the right capacity equipment to suit your load a little stud finding how to you'll want to have a tape measure you want to have some tape as you can see i've already applied some you want to have a sharpie and you want to have a stud finder definitely make sure the batteries work and it's finding studs obviously you want to remove all your metal jewelry anything necklaces because it will throw off the sensor so first go ahead and apply yourself some tape on the wall you can do two foot six foot eight foot somewhere in there you will be able to find a set of studs this is just so you can mark without putting it on your actual wall place your stud finder just below the tape activate it and start moving slowly sideways that's the edge of a stud we're going to mark a line we're going to keep on moving and then you'll start seeing it go away there's the edge marked there next you take your tape measure measure out the lines that you found in between the stud set we have it about three and a half inches which is one and three quarters that is where you're going to put your drill i've done this hundreds of times and this seems to be work obviously if you did the stud here stud here you're only dealing with an inch and a half stud going up and down split the difference nails it every time it's going to work great for finding that blind ceiling joist as mentioned previously in the description below there is a link to a drop box for all this construction information as well as a diagram specific to this hoist design so i figured i'd give you a little bit of terminology so you can better understand up here the square tubing is going to be called the ceiling brace right here in the middle is going to be called the pulley junction block it's basically four stationary pulleys that guide the line into the load bridle the load bridle receives the load from all the four lines and directs it towards the winch and then down the wall and then you have your load boards let's talk about the ceiling brace or the backbone as mentioned before i used a little bit more of the square tubing than necessary to complete the project really all you need is an amount of length for a little bit of adjustability and enough room for bolts on either side of it what i did was they come in a 36 inch length i just cut it in half it was less to cut and now i have a little bit more adjustability where i needed to move it left or right i can just decide where i want to put the actual eye bolt themselves but once you actually get the joists located you can put it at really any distance you want to i went with the dead center of the 18 inch length and 60 inches away is where i located the other one we have a 60 inch load bar so it's perfect if i was a little bit off i can choose one way or the other to locate it in a different hole the composition what you're looking at here is a four inch by 3 8 diameter eye bolt and on this side we have our carabiners one's actually connected to the rope the other one is for our safety chain and the way it's affixed we have our eye bolt you'll slide on a washer slide it through the tubing put on a washer put on the swivel pulley and fasten it with a nut on that side that's it the ceiling junction block is composed of a two by six we have cut down to the same track width as the joists we use for the ceiling braces and four stationary pulleys what this does it not only spaces down to match up with the swivel pulleys for less binding but these guide and equalize the line going to the load bridle that way everything pulls up at the same time the way i have these set up these are pretty much butt to butt and it puts the axles approximately three inches apart from each other i had these clocked to receive the line coming from the other direction the axles here are also three inches apart from each other the load bridle it's composed of the same one and a half inch square tubing we used for the ceiling braces but we cut it down to nine inches and we use five 3 8 by four inch long eye bolts what this does is it receives the four line tensions coming from the load boards and consolidates it down to one output going to the winch area what you'll do here is you'll put on a washer on your eye bolt then slide it through the tubing put on another washer and fix it with a 3 8 nut separating it by every other hole and in the middle you'll have the one going out to the winch these right here are your wire rope clamps and what you'll do here is you'll loosen them up and you'll set a level on your actual load boards and pull each one of them until the load boards are actually level and then tighten them down come back put this back up here in the middle make it look nice and uniform and up and out of the way just like you've done all the rest of them and that way when you actually do hoist your system everything comes up absolutely even it's perfect load boards now that we have our ceiling joists located we have everything structurally up there it was time to figure out what exact length i wanted to go with for this well on the lightner system it comes with a 60 inch load bar or five foot long load bar and it seems to work great for my rooftop tent you're welcome to do any length you want to obviously you have full adjustability through every single one of those holes in the tubing but 60 inches sounded good so i cut the board down to 59 inches the reason why that is is the stationary load bar pulleys that i put on here actually extend another inch or so but the middle of that pulley is another half inch so 59 inches plus one half inch plus one half inch makes 60 inches so i located the actual bracing in the ceiling exactly 60 inches apart so those pulley lines are directly in line with the pulleys at the each end right here now that your boards are cut i have my stationary pulleys mounted flush with the bottom of the board here and mounted in the direct center of the board on both ends the bottom of our rooftop tent is equipped with a set of t-slot rails that allow for adjustable fastening to your roof racks and load bars what i've done here is i've actually found the dead center of our 59 inch load board which is 29.5 inches the separation of the t-slot rail system on the bottom side of my tent is approximately 21-5 8 inches so to each side of the dead center line i have a set of holes at 10 and 13 16. these holes will allow me to utilize the same bolts that fasten to my lightner rack down through these load boards and fasten through the bottom once they're all connected it becomes one integral structure and everything will rise and fall at the same time you don't have to worry about load shifting at all it's going to be a great setup and lastly we have our effort line down to the winch it's in a mechanical advantage two configuration where these two lines are actually splitting the load my maximum capacity is limited to this one pulley here it's a hundred pound capacity so that means the line going down could be no more than a hundred pounds which 100 times two would be 200 pounds that means maximum hoist is going to be 200 pounds you're more than welcome to upgrade this pulley to a higher capacity that's no problem with that even this pulley here is capable of 400 pounds if you were to upgrade this pulley the maximum capacity with all the other configuration would be 400 pounds and that's because i used the same 100 pound pulleys at the end of each load board 100 pounds times four corners is 400 pounds so that would be the max load of your system if that's what you were concerned about how much you can lift with this but it's composed of a 5 16 quick link connected to a 420 pound capacity swivel pulley this is the pulley we use the 7 16 drill bit for to drill out so it'll fit on this quick link other than that we have our hook that comes equipped with the actual winch run through all you have to do is pop out the pins pull out the axle and run the line through and i have a 5 16 lag bolt done into the stud in the wall and have it connected as our anchor so it's just as simple as running it through the system and around and everything pulls together evenly splits the difference we only have 40 pounds worth of load out of our 160 over here going down to the winch system all right y'all this is that point of the video where things are going to get a little bit technical so if you don't want to listen to me explain the mechanical advantage of a pulley use the time stamps below and you can move yourself along in the video all right mechanical advantage of a pulley well what does a pulley do pulley actually just redirects line tension to an effort source like a winch so what we have here is actually the exact same configurations with two different types of mechanical advantage this is a mechanical advantage one where the load is actually connected directly to the load board and this is mechanical advantage too where the load tension line goes through directed through a pulley and connected to the ceiling mechanical advantage one mechanical advantage two same amount of line same everything but you can obviously see that there's quite a bit of difference in the amount of rope that's required for this particular scenario so what's the difference and why so mechanical advantage one if we take our tint system which if we compose it connected with this it's 140 pounds for the tent 20 pounds extra for this so we'll call it 160 pounds so 160 pounds divided by the four corners of the load boards is going to be 40 pounds per corner so there's going to be approximately 40 pounds of line tension going all the way around in a mechanical advantage one well the line tension is going to remain constant so as it goes up through here through this pulley it gets to the load bridle here 40 times 4 is 160 pounds so you actually are giving yourself some advantage here but by the time you get to the load bridle you want to make sure that all your pulley components on the other side of it are definitely within capacity to be able to hoist the load because you're about to deal with the full capacity of the load 160 pounds unfortunately that pulley back there is only 100 pound capacity so the way around this what we do is what's called mechanical advantage 2. we've disconnected from this actual stationary load bar pulley here run it through the pulley and connected it up to the ceiling and as you can see it's divided that distance by two it's also doing a lot more than that so what by two we have two line tensions this is the supporting load right here so 40 pounds was the original line tension but because it comes down here we're actually dividing that 40 pounds by two because it's basically splitting the load that line tension is going to remain constant it's going to go up and it's going to be 20 pounds here at the load bridle so 20 times 4 is 80 pounds 80 pounds is underneath my 100 pound capacity pulley over there and more than efficient for the winch so what i've also done is i've done mechanical advantage 2 on the other side of the load bridle and not only does it go to 80 pounds here but by splitting it over there i've now gone from 80 pounds to 40 pounds worth of effort it only takes 40 pounds worth of effort pulling down to raise a hundred and sixty pounds worth of a load so mechanical advantage one versus two pros and cons so mechanical advantage one is a one-to-one ratio and not in just the effort but also the speed or rate of pulling so as we could see here i had this 12 inches from this pulley and that 12 inches from this pulley for mechanical advantage one you give 12 inches worth of effort you're going to get 12 inches worth of lift and just the same if it's 40 pounds worth of effort or 40 pounds worth of load on this tension line it's going to be 40 pounds worth of pulling it's quite a bit when you think about it just thinking 40 pounds on one line mechanical advantage 2 becomes a 2 to 1 ratio so if i want to raise this load bar 12 inches i have to give 24 inches there's the first 12 inches and the second 12 inches for 12 inches worth of lift basically lifting the same amount of distance takes twice the amount of work at half the rate of speed but it can handle twice the amount of load does that make sense so when it gets down to it the big deal about why mechanical advantage and why i'm explaining it in this video is where to locate your hoist system in your storage area obviously if you go mechanical advantage one you need to bulk up on your pulley capabilities or capacities and you can do a quick rate of hoisting by doing mechanical advantage one if you go mechanical advantage two you're going to need twice the amount of distance of pulling obviously twice the amount two to one ratio it took me 24 inches to go 12 inches worth of height in our situation we only have to go 24 inches from the top of the rack to where i want it to stop in the ceiling so i need to be at least 48 50 inches away from the nearest wall if i want to hoist to but the advantage of this junction block here you don't have to hoist to just this closest wall you could go to that wall this wall if you want to go all the way to the ground you could go to the farthest wall possible yeah you have lines going across the ceiling and everything but you'll be able to load all the way on the ground and have mechanical advantage 2 hoist all the way up to the ceiling whereas with mechanical advantage one you wouldn't need near as much line but you would have a lot more effort and have to bulk up maybe cost a little bit more on the pulley systems but that in a nutshell is mechanical advantage for your pulley systems and i hope that you better unders i hope you understand it better not that you better understand it but i hope you understand it better if you go mechanical advantage 2 just make sure that your distance away from the wall mine i have it 60 inches away from the wall i only need to pull it 48 inches worth of effort we're good to go now that you've completed construction and you've double checked all your fasteners make sure they're tight and everything is good operating order it's time to get this thing prepared for our load our rooftop tint i've already gone ahead and lowered it down to 76 inches that's just lower than what my actual height of my bed rack is it's 78 and a half that'll allow us to have a little bit of slack when we put the load boards up underneath and be able to connect it back up to the top so from here we're just going to disassemble the whole thing and get it ready for putting the rooftop tint on [Applause] once your load boards are removed you'll notice that the load bridle actually wants to droop a little bit there's a few ways around that i use a gear tie you can use old wire of some sort but basically just come pull one of the strands that will get it up just put it around the rope right here give it a few twists and it won't go any further past that now for all the long leads if you're say you're gone for a while and you want them up out of the way go ahead and just reconnect them to the carabiner up here at the top and they'll probably be out of the way for you for the most part if not you can loop it or figure out what you want to do with it but that's what i do now that the vehicle is in the garage it's time to get the rooftop tent situated directly underneath the hoist system ideally the center of the rooftop tent needs to be in line with the junction pulley block up there unfortunately i'm not able to go all the way over directly in line with it because the threshold of the garage will hit the side of my truck so from here we'll have to loosen up the bolts and just slightly manhandle it over there it's really not that far and not that hard to do i can't say enough good things about the lightner rack system i've had it on for about eight months and in southeast texas not an ounce of rust that's an awesome feat plus they have these convenient rooftop tent brackets that allow me to just fasten it down with four nuts and bolts and that's simple 13 millimeters gonna get it done now that we have the nuts removed from the t-slot bolts that are holding down the roof nest it's actually very accessible we just have to pop it out of the bracket i'm going to go one step extra and apply these t-slots here they're a little bit longer bolt this is actually what we're going to do to run through the boards i after i got the roof invested in some smaller bolts that way they didn't hang down and get exposed and hit myself in the head when i'm up underneath the roof nest when we're camping or anything like that it's just an additional measure you can actually go with the longer bolts in general but from here i'm just going to slide those in [Applause] and just for better understanding we're only going to pop one up over the bracket here and just to be in the middle area somewhere so from here what i'm going to do is actually lift up on the roof nest i'm going to slide that secondary bolt that i had and i'm going to take the other bolt that's actually in the bracket and slide it towards the front of the truck we now have the added t-slot bolts in there everything's kind of situated just planned out for us to be able to put the boards on i just need to move the roof nest over into the center just by manhandling it now that we have the rooftop tent pretty much in line with the pulley junction block basically the center line of the in on roof nest is the dead center of the measurement between the 84 inches so basically we're going to split 38 39 inches by two which is about 19 inches on each side i've made a reference mark here on the bottom of where the load board should be and we're just going to slide them through now that we have the load bar positioned in the proper location by the mark 19 inches from the direct center it's just a matter of lining up the bolts with the hole there we go and fastening the knobs it's really that simple give that a good snug tight you're not fasting repeat that on the front now that you have your logo boards fastened to the bottom of the rooftop tent it's time to get your hoist system attached it's as simple as removing the carabiner from the eye bolt removing the rope from the carabiner just momentarily remember the eye bolts on the outside so we want to go from the inside to the outside of the pulley here reconnect the carabiner pull it down to the bottom like that and attach done do that four times all right the moment we've all been waiting for the winch that means everything's complete and it's time to hoist this thing as mentioned before i went with the worm gear style which is a 40 to 1 ratio and as mentioned it is a very long process to just go a few inches or even feet for our matter we're trying to go 24 inches so as mentioned there was a trick up my sleeve rather than cranking on this thing some of you thought about getting electric winch you got one 18-millimeter socket go and that's that that's simple nothing like enjoying the fruits of your labor and innovative ways of hoisting things it's great oh did you think we were done not yet there's one last step attaching the safety chain i've actually already gone out and counted which one i want to actually use for it and i put a little piece of red tape on there so i don't have to worry about keeping it even i'm just going to go to the one below it and connect that all the way around and then i'll back down the tension from the rope down to the safety chain [Music] if you enjoyed today's video found it informative or helpful in making your decision to construct your own hoist system give us a big thumbs up let us know how we're doing share if you'd like for a heads up on any future installs or adventures hit that subscribe button notification bell and you can follow us along our journey remember we at gator overland encourage each and every one of you to take a daily moment to unplug and reconnect with the outdoors even if it's just for a few minutes have fun keep it safe and just go thanks y'all [Music] you

Channel: Gator_Overland

Views: 15,003

Rating: 4.9026766 out of 5

Keywords: rooftop tent, RTT, Hoist, hoist system, kayak, roof top tent, roofnest, roof nest, ikamper, tuff stuff, 23zero, smittybuilt, Roam, roam tents, Tepui, DIY, Do it yourself, how to, front runner, cvt, raptor, yakima, freespirit, James baroud, roof rack, bed rack, sparrow, falcon, condor, overland, overlanding, off-road, camping, glamping, camp, trail, garage, ladder, rope, pulley, lift, storage, winch, ceiling, truck, suv, 4x4, toyota, 4runner, gladiator, jeep, tacoma, wrangler, fishing, poles, lawn

Id: vanAMSkzxKU

Length: 28min 40sec (1720 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 15 2021