Wheel Horse Transmission Lift

I took a little time to make this on April 2-3 to make moving and draining transmissions easier to do.  I'm trying to do better at taking a break and making things I've been meaning to do for many years as things come up when I need them.  My back has been thanking me and it's part of that work smarter not harder...  

I have a bunch of these curved pieces of metal in the back my CNC Plasma cutter guy gave me years ago and I'm started to find uses for them.  They were pieces cut out from the work he was doing for peeps.  When he was giving me this stuff years ago scrap was pretty much worthless, no one would pick it up, and he said the more I took the more it saved him from having to haul it off.  Plus, the customer paid for the entire sheet of metal anyway.  That's where most of the metal for a lot of my projects come from.  The curve wasn't needed for this but the metal was free and free is good.  

I wanted something that would work with the forklift, could be used on the big workbench lift, and be able to be tilted when draining to get all of the old gear oil out of the transmission.  Pics are pretty self explanatory on how it was made. 

The center rod was turned down to fit the punched hole which kept the brackets from leaning inward but I thought it would be a lot safer to drill and pin the outsides, especially for draining when the hook was at one end.  After that I found the perfect balance point and used two split locking collars to keep the hook in place, they can easily be moved around if need be.  For draining like in the pic the hook can just be moved all the way to the front.  Just 3 bolts on or off, and it can easily be broken down by pulling the 2 cotter pins so it doesn't take up much space in the toolbox.

One more thing made off the list to make things easier and better around here, while doing a better job as well.