“We just bought a place and it came with a boat lift. Is it any good?”
The most common call we get, and the honest answer is that an inherited lift is a mystery until somebody looks at it. It may be excellent. It may have been sitting unused for six years. The previous owner is rarely around to ask, and a lift that looks fine from the dock can be a season from an expensive afternoon.
What we look at, roughly in the order it matters:
- The cables. First and always. Broken strands, a flattened section, a kink — any of those and the answer is stop lifting until they are changed. This is the one thing worth walking down and looking at yourself today.
- The motor’s nameplate, and the wiring run that feeds it. There is a pattern on this lake: a dock built twenty-odd years ago, wiring sized for the motor of the day, and a newer, hungrier motor bolted on at some point since. It works until it does not. The calculator will tell you whether the run is adequate for what is on there now.
- The belt and the gear plate. A glazed belt keeps working while quietly costing you lifting power. A gear plate that has run dry is a repair that gets more expensive the longer it turns.
- The brackets and bunks — whether they suit the boat you are actually putting on it, which is often not the boat they were set up for.
- What it is hanging from. A flat-plate lift hangs off the boathouse’s header beam, usually timber. We look at what that beam is and what size it is, and at the posts underneath — whether they are sound, and whether they are still plumb. A boathouse that has settled or started to lean changes what can safely hang in it, and that is worth knowing before anyone talks about a lift.
- How it behaves under real weight. Empty, most lifts look fine. The useful test is with the boat on it.
One more thing worth knowing as a new owner, because it surprises people: on Lake Sinclair a boat lift is not allowed to stand on its own in the water — it has to hang inside a boathouse. If what you bought has a dock but no boathouse, that changes the conversation before it starts. The rules, plainly →
Coming to look costs nothing. If it is sound we will tell you it is sound, which is a perfectly common outcome and a good use of an afternoon. What happens when you get in touch →
“I bought a bigger boat. Will the lift I already have handle it?”
Sometimes yes, sometimes it needs work, and it is genuinely not answerable over the phone — but here is what decides it, so you know what we are going to be measuring.
The boat’s real weight, not the brochure’s. Dry weight is a marketing number. What matters is the boat wet: fuel, water, batteries, and the gear that lives aboard all season. People are consistently surprised by the difference, and it is the single most common reason a lift that “should be fine” is not.
That weight then has to sit inside what the gear plate is rated for, and the drive has to match it. The pairings we fit:
- 1 HP heavy duty motor with the 6,500 lb gear plate.
- 1.5 HP motor with the 7,500 lb or 8,500 lb plates.
Then the cable. ¼ in. is standard and covers the large majority of boats on this lake. 5/16 in. is for wake boats and heavier hulls. Both use a 5/16 in. thimble, which surprises people — a ¼ in. thimble is too small and too flimsy for the job, so a 5/16 thimble on ¼ cable is correct rather than a mistake.
Wake boats bring their own question. They are heavy, they carry ballast, and they often want high-performance brackets on double-stack 4 in. I-beams rather than the standard arrangement.
Often the answer is a motor, plate or cable upgrade on the frame you already have rather than a new lift. But which of those it is depends on what is out there, so we come and measure it. Modifications → If you have not bought the boat yet →
“I’m switching from a pontoon to a V-hull. Do I need a whole new lift?”
Usually not. The frame, the drive and the cables generally stay; what changes is the part the hull actually sits on. Most people call those bunks, the product line calls them brackets, and they are the same conversation.
What fits what:
- V-hull brackets, small or tall depending on the hull’s deadrise and how it sits.
- Low-rise pontoon brackets — these lift the boat from the pontoons. The bracket sits under the tubes and takes the load there.
- Pontoon risers — tall brackets that lift from the floor instead. A different part for a different situation, and the one people most often confuse with the above. Getting these two mixed up means buying the wrong thing.
- Tritoons take six brackets rather than four, because there is a third tube to support.
- Personal watercraft — jet skis, Sea-Doos — run on eight small V-hull brackets.
So the answer to “new lift or new bunks” is usually the bunks. What a modification involves →
“The lift in my old boathouse hasn’t run in years. Can it be fixed?”
More often than people expect. On a sound frame, nearly everything else is replaceable:
- Pulleys. The older style can be inspected and often kept. A lot of people take the chance to move to the 3 in. four-ton yarding block, which is what we fit new.
- Cables, which on a lift that has sat unused are almost always the first thing to deal with.
- The belt — an AX-34 on the ordinary plates, and it ships inside a replacement gear plate, so a plate does not need a belt ordered alongside it.
- Motor and gear plate, together or separately.
What decides it is usually not the lift at all — it is the boathouse. The lift hangs from the header beam, and older boathouses on this lake were frequently built without a lift in mind at all: beams sized for a roof rather than for a boat, framing that was never asked to carry that kind of load. Add a post that has settled or started to lean, which happens here, and the question stops being about pulleys.
So we look at the beam and what it is made of, at its size, and at the posts under it. If those are sound, a lift that has not moved in years is usually a day’s work and a parts list.
If they are not, it depends what is needed. Reinforcing or replacing a header beam so a lift can hang from it is our work. Rebuilding a boathouse is not — and we will say which one you are looking at rather than starting and finding out.
Either way, we will tell you which of those you are in. Repairs →
“Should I call you or an electrician?”
There is a clean way to tell, and it saves people real money.
It trips on the first lift of the day with the boat on
Probably electrical
Voltage is falling on the run out to the dock. Heavier wire is the fix, and anything inside a panel is a licensed electrician’s job.
Run the numbers first, then you know what to ask for.
The first lifts are fine, then it quits after several
That is us
The motor has run past what it can shed. It is a lift problem, not a wiring problem.
Heavier wire will not fix it. Do not spend money there.
If it turns out to be the supply, we will say so plainly — and you will walk into that conversation with an electrician knowing the conductor size and the distance rather than asking them to guess.
More questions
The cable keeps bunching up on the drum. Why?
Because the cable is going slack, and on a boat lift that nearly always means the carriage is floating — either when the lift is sitting down, or when a wake reaches the lowered lift while you are out on the water. The drum keeps turning against no tension and the wraps come back on in the wrong place.
The question worth asking yourself is whether it always did this. If it did not, the usual answer is that the carriage lumber has dried out over the years and floats more than it used to. The fix is to weight the carriage or add cable weights, and it is a straightforward part to fit.
Up runs the lift down and down runs it up. What happened?
Somebody ran it all the way down and past the bottom. Once the cable ran out the drum kept turning, and the cable started winding back on the other way round — so now the controls do the opposite of what they say.
It is not a wiring fault, so there is nothing to be gained by chasing the switch. It needs running back down and re-spooling the right way, which is not a job to take on with a loaded drum. Leave it and get in touch.
My lift labors even though the boat is well inside its rating. Why?
Check where the boat is sitting before anything else. Too much weight toward the back makes the lift work inefficiently, and it will strain on a boat that is comfortably inside what the plate is rated for.
A four-inch drop on the back I-beam is normal on a sound structure — a beam sitting lower than it used to is a different question. Beyond that, or if the lift is obviously laboring, park the boat more evenly next time — where exactly depends on the boat, so it is worth a couple of tries to find where yours wants to sit.
If it is already parked as far forward as it will safely sit and still labors, the thing to look at is the lift rather than the boat. On an older setup, wear and cable that has bunched on the drum — among other things — can put the load out left to right as well as front to back, and moving the boat will not straighten that. That is a lift to get looked at rather than a boat to park differently.
How do I find out what my lift is rated for?
The gear plate is where the rating lives, and it is usually stamped or plated on the unit. If it is not legible — and on an older lift it often is not — the motor and plate together tell us what it is, because the pairings are fixed: a 1 HP heavy duty runs a 6,500 lb plate, a 1.5 HP runs the 7,500 or 8,500.
A photo of the motor plate and the gear plate is usually enough for us to tell you over the phone.
We’re shopping for a bigger boat. What should we check before we buy it?
Weight first, because it is the one people are most often wrong about: what the boat weighs wet — fuel, water, batteries and the gear that lives aboard all season — is what the gear plate has to be rated for, not the brochure’s dry figure. Then the boathouse, and all of it is easier to deal with before the boat is bought than after it is sitting on a trailer in the driveway. Length is set by the slip rather than by the lift. Structure is what the lift hangs from — the two header beams the pipe hangers typically hang from, the smaller third header at the front that usually carries the gear plate, and the posts and pilings under all of it. And where the lift sits in the slip matters, because a lift that went in for a smaller boat is usually further forward than a bigger one wants.
The lift that comes with a house on this lake is often twenty to twenty-five years old and was set up for the boat of its day, so none of this means anything is wrong — it means the answer depends on your slip. It cannot be given from a listing photo, and when we look at a beam that is an experienced opinion rather than an engineered load calculation or a certification of your boathouse; where we think a job needs an engineer, we say so before we quote. Send photos of the slip and the lift while you are still shopping. On Lake Sinclair an estimate is free.
We have taken those four apart one at a time, with what each one means for the boat in front of you. Buying a bigger boat for an older boathouse →
How long a boat will fit in my boathouse?
The slip decides that, not the lift. A lift can be changed; the opening you back into is the building itself, and it is the first thing worth establishing while you shop. It is also the whole boat that has to fit rather than the hull — a swim platform or a pulpit hanging off the ends takes up slip too, and a published length does not always include them. The lift takes its share as well.
The slip is not always the last word. On some slips the front can be opened up to gain length, and whether that is possible comes down to how deep the water is there. It is also Georgia Power’s land, and they require a permit for any activity on it — a permit for one thing is not cover for another, so it is their answer as much as ours. That makes it a boat-shopping question rather than an after-the-fact one, because the answer can be no. We would have to look at yours before saying either way, and on Lake Sinclair there is no charge for coming to look.
My slip is long enough for the boat I want. Why would the lift still need work?
Usually because of where the lift sits in the slip. Older boats were smaller, and the lifts that went in for them were generally installed further forward than a bigger boat wants. So the slip can be long enough and the gear plate can be rated for the weight, and the lift can still be in the wrong place to pick the boat up at the right weight distribution.
This is the one nobody expects. It is normal work rather than bad news, but it is work: the lift often has to be reinstalled, modified or reconfigured to suit the new boat, and that is worth knowing while you are still choosing the boat rather than the first weekend it is home. What is involved depends on the lift and on the boathouse, so photos of the slip and the lift are the place to start, and we look before we say.
What is different about a tritoon lift?
Six brackets instead of four. A tritoon has a third tube down the center and it needs supporting, so the bracket layout changes rather than the lift itself.
Can I put a jet ski on the same lift as the boat?
Personal watercraft run on their own arrangement — eight small V-hull brackets — rather than sharing with a boat. Whether there is room for a separate PWC lift in your boathouse is a question about the structure, and worth checking before ordering anything: Georgia Power requires accessory items to fit inside the existing building envelope.
My lift is fine. Is there anything I should be doing to it?
Two things, neither of which costs anything. Look at the cables now and then for broken strands — that is the failure that damages a boat. And grease the gear plate and the pipe bearings a couple of times a season under normal summer use, more if the lift works hard; the heat thins the grease and it runs out of where you put it.
Do you charge to come and look?
No. On Lake Sinclair an estimate is free, and stays free whether or not you go ahead with anything.
Not on this list
Ask us the one that is
If your question is not here, it is probably a good one. Photos of the slip and the lift tell us more than a paragraph, and there is no charge for an answer.
Send us the details → Maintenance checklist → What happens next → See our work →