Getting pins out of my basement - by myself

stangbat

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I have a walk out basement. For the most part it beats messing with stairs, and it is great for moving machines in. I can get them unloaded and into the basement by myself. Getting them back out is a bit harder and takes another person because of this:

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Notice that nice tree at the top. :D

I went to Harbor Freight to see what I could rig up to pull machines up the hill by myself. Originally I was going to use pulleys and rope. However, they had a 12v remote control winch on sale that has 32' of cable. So I decided to go that route.

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I bolted U-clips to the back mounting points and made a cable to anchor it to the tree. 32' is just the right length to get to the bottom of the hill. And having the remote control will let me stay with a machine and guide it when going up the hill.

The final thing was to make a wheel attachment for my dolly to transport the machine up the hill. The wheels were also on sale.

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I haven't tried it with a machine yet. I won't need to move a machine out until next weekend. I may have a few kinks to work out, but I think it will do the job.
 
Nice work. I did the same thing to get pins out of my basement. The only difference is that I have to use ramps where yours is already a big ramp. And my winch is not remote controlled (have to look into that!).

For stairs I've found that connecting the winch cable to the axle of the hand truck worked better than the handle but it might not be as much of a problem in your situation (less angle and more room to work). I would also attach the upper wheels with something more secure than a bungee cable. I doubt anything catastrophic will happen but you don't want to damage your nice grass :)

EDIT: It also looks like the cable will be digging into the lawn as it pulls up the game. I had the same problem with my top stair and I built a little platform with a metal roller for the cable to ride in to solve it. Another option would be to loop the winch mounting cable over the first branch on the tree to give you a better angle and keep the winch up higher on the tree though that might get a little sketchy. You might also want to put a blanket or something between the tree and the mounting cable to prevent damage to the bark.

Oh... I noticed that the upper wheel mount is notched so it isn't going anywhere. Nice work!
 
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Thanks for the tips, Lindsey. You can't see it very easily in the picture, but I put a piece of vinyl tubing on the cable to protect the tree. It may not be enough, we'll see. I thought I had saved some pieces of garden hose for stuff like this but I couldn't find it. Must have thrown it out.

It is kind of borderline on how much the cable will dig into the yard. I may have to put something down to prevent that, or maybe raise the winch up a little bit.

Yes, I notched the mount for the wheel and it is pretty tightly secured with the bungee. I'm going to have to watch that and make sure the wheels don't get lifted off the dolly by any side forces. I may have to design a more secure mount, but right now the bungee makes for quick and easy removal.
 
That's awesome and a walkout basement is something on my must have list in my next house. Right now I have to fight with this :(

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Once at this point it is literally pinky finger gap on each side and nothing to do except slide it all the way down.

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My brother in-law (seen in the picture) and I have moving down to a science and last machine I brought in from the truck into the car was under 5 minutes. When I sold one and brought it up was another story and part way through the attempts I was going to give up and call the deal off cause it was so frustrating. It also didn't help that the buyer was not very strong and was there the whole time freaking out every time we hit or scraped my walls despite the machine receiving the cocoon treatment.
 
That's awesome and a walkout basement is something on my must have list in my next house. Right now I have to fight with this :(

I wish I'd taken pics of the steps I had to go up to get my TRON cab out of the seller's basement by myself. They looked like the steps Father Karras went down at the end of The Exorcist.
 
So how many times did you wich yourself up the hill to "test" it out? :D

Believe it or not, I haven't done that yet. I'll have to give it a try this afternoon. However, I'll need over 100 lbs of ballast to make it a fair test. :D

@mwong168, boy I'm glad I don't have to deal with anything like that!
 
Successfully tested this afternoon with over 200 lbs. In other words, my kids and I rode it up the hill several times. :D

The cable doesn't dig into the ground and the vinyl tubing on the cable around the tree seems to be fine.
 
got a couple fingers that look just like that

those air filled tires suck after awhile, when they leak
get solid tires for decades of service

would love to see that winch in action !
 

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I have to admit that having a walkout basement has made collecting pinball machines much easier. The picture shows what once was a set of stairs made out of 6x6 landscape timbers, that I converted into a ramp made of pavestones. The main reason was to be able to get the lawnmower into and out of the back yard. As a side benefit, it makes getting pinball machines into and out of the basement pretty easy, I can do it myself if there is no snow on the ground.
 

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Update

An update, it works great. No problems, couldn't have worked any better.

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This is what is taking its place:

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I have a walk out basement. For the most part it beats messing with stairs, and it is great for moving machines in. I can get them unloaded and into the basement by myself. Getting them back out is a bit harder and takes another person because of this:

dsc6816large.jpg


Notice that nice tree at the top. :D

I went to Harbor Freight to see what I could rig up to pull machines up the hill by myself. Originally I was going to use pulleys and rope. However, they had a 12v remote control winch on sale that has 32' of cable. So I decided to go that route.

dsc6818large.jpg


I bolted U-clips to the back mounting points and made a cable to anchor it to the tree. 32' is just the right length to get to the bottom of the hill. And having the remote control will let me stay with a machine and guide it when going up the hill.

The final thing was to make a wheel attachment for my dolly to transport the machine up the hill. The wheels were also on sale.

dsc6817large.jpg


I haven't tried it with a machine yet. I won't need to move a machine out until next weekend. I may have a few kinks to work out, but I think it will do the job.
If it were me instead of messing around with all that stuff i would just call a friend.
 
Yep, SW is gone. A tough decision. In the end I think Stargate is a better player so the choice to me became gameplay vs. eye candy. I have limited space so play won out.

If it were me instead of messing around with all that stuff i would just call a friend.

Do you seriously think that that never crossed my mind? Do you think my friends are at my beck and call and can drop everything whenever I need to move a machine?
 
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