Getting Truck Into Garage

[cliles]

I am new to this forum so sorry if this has been posted previously, I did not find any answers via the search.

So I have recently purchased a 1990 K5, on 40's and it is too tall for the garage. I do not currently have the money to build a 3rd car garage, city code is keeping me from having a car port/shed in the back yard, but I still need a place to keep it in pieces between projects.

My first thought was to find some sort of donut like tires and swap them out when the truck needs to be garaged. I need to drop about 6" which is 12" of tire.

Does anybody have any potential solutions?

Thanks,

Chris

 

[Jessie James]

Can you let the air out of your tires?

If not, you can buy car wheel dollies. Remove the wheel, put on some rims (ala Craiglist?) and put them on a dolly for each wheel. Push the truck into the garage.

That's all I can think of...

 

[texas4x4rebel]

Got my truck in the garage by putting a set of 15s on and letting all the air out just barely scraped the door pulling in. Truck had a 8in suspension and 3in body and 39.5s

 

[cliles]

Thought about that, forgot to mention that driveway is relatively steep incline, and short of me having something to anchor a come-a-long to in the garage, I am not sure I could push it in. Thanks

 

[cliles]

That may just work, what size tires are on your 15's?

 

[mrdrinksalil]

 

[garydan]

I was trying to think of a way to use the winch on the front of my truck to "pull down" the body. It sounded too dangerous so I forgot about it.

Something like feeding the cable down underneath the front of the truck loop it around the rear axle and hook it to a rear cross member.

 

[cliles]

that looks about right, what size tires are those?

 

[dhcomp]

Find a set of 15 or 16" steel wheels, and head to the junk yard or used tire store to buy whatever SMALL car tires that will fit.

This is your safest bet. Other than that, you could run on bare rims on 2 wheels if needed, and just run tires in the back. Obviously, on an incline, 4 bare rims would be bad.

What axles are you running? If you are running a 14ff in teh rear, which i hope you are with 40"ers, you will run into clearance issues under the rear pumpkin with bare rims.

 

[cliles]

I got a dana 60 in the front and a ford 9 inch in the back. I was told that the ford 9 inch was chosen because of the smaller/higher pumpkin.

 

[texas4x4rebel]

That may just work, what size tires are on your 15's?

Tire size beats me they came off a jeep but with air in them they where still to tall, had to let most the air out.

 

[JEBSR]

I put 16's with factory tires on as well. Still close but works.

 

[owenst7]

You're winch idea wasn't crazy really. I wrap a chain over the frame and under my big floor jack to look at the suspension at full bump. If you had two chains, you could lock it in place and then let the jack back down.

I'd use a strong chain though. I'm pretty careful about it when I do it but I have really soft springs too so it doesn't take much force...On that same note, you have to be somewhat careful not to tweak the frame while you're doing it. Spread the load out evenly.

Course, I don't think I'd want to try it this way unless it was just to get past where the garage door hangs down. Would hate to have the chain come loose or something while I was wiggling the truck around and have the top of the cab smash into the ceiling. Man, I'd love to see pictures of that though

You know, every time I've bought tires at a regular tire shop, they offer to dispose of my baldies for like $2.50/tire. I wouldn't be surprised if you asked if you could get some throw-aways for a "tire swing" (circumvent their liability). Sounds like a set of 235/85s or similar would probably work for ya, I'm sure tire shops pay to dispose of tons of those every day.

 

[cegusman]

I let the air out of my tires and compress the suspension with ratchet straps.

 

[NV_K5]

Tires w/out rims

I used to use tires on these small rims but the tires would buckle and sometimes create enough lift to cause the roof to hit the door frame. Usually I can pull just the rear tires off and replace with these rims, but with the hard top on I have to do all four tires.

 

[cliles]

do the tireless rims scratch up the garage/driveway much?

 

[mrdrinksalil]

that looks about right, what size tires are those?

no idea. They are 16" ford wheels though. Tires were used and came off a subaru I think. I'd just go to a tire place and look through their pile of used tires.

 

[NV_K5]

It leaves a mark for sure, but if you go easy it's not deep enough to scar the driveway.

 

[garydan]

It leaves a mark for sure, but if you go easy it's not deep enough to scar the driveway.

I was thinking about the bare rim solution, but maybe duct taping the edges really well to provide some level of padding.

 

[BoondocK5]

I can't tell you how many times I've rolled my old Blazer in and out of the garage with the rear diff on a floor jack, just enough to keep the drums from scaring the concrete.