RAD Sportz Kayak Storage Hoist - Overhead Pulley System with 125lb

I gave this 5 stars because of the price point. You get a lot for your money. The kit is relatively simple to put together and includes everything you need to hoist your kayak up out of the way. The components aren't the highest quality but at this price there's nothing bad I can say... It works. I would suggest pre drilling the holes for the lag bolts. I didn't bother rigging the brake, just my preference. The straps are adjustable which is a big plus.

I bought this hoist to store two kayaks (a Liquidlogic XP-9 and an XP-10) which are relatively short (9 and 10 feet, respectively) and wide (28 inches) in the living room of my apartment. Installation was extremely easy. Each system comes with two easy to install mounting plates on which the rest of the system is mounted. It takes two anchor points per plate, so I had to drill four holes per system on my concrete roof with a hammer drill and install sturdy anchors. As long as you measure correctly and align the holes properly, you will have a very nice looking system in place. I installed two hoists parallel to each other over my living room, one over the couch and the other over the coffee table. Then you mount the rest of the system on the plates and the entire process should take no longer than half an hour. Measure twice carefully (remember to consider a six inch clearance if mounting against a side wall) and drill once! After passing the lines through the pulleys there will be two lines, one for the back pulley and one for the front. I have had single rope systems which in theory should work, but in reality they do not because the friction on all the pulleys would have to be equal and it rarely is, which causes the load to tilt when raising or lowering. Yes, handling two independent ropes can be a little hard, but it is better than lowering a tilted 30 pound boat. Two lines guarantee horizontal lifting and, more importantly, a perfectly horizontal storing position. Lifting and lowering the kayaks is an easy operation. Once the webbing is tightly wrapped around the kayak you just pull the lines and it goes up. If you pull from behind the break it will go up with minor effort; once the kayak has reached its height you walk to the front of the break and it locks in place. Pass the lines through a cleat and that thing is not going anywhere. The cord that comes with the system is very low quality and it will have to be replaced as it frays easily with the friction from the break. I changed it for seven strand paracord (yes, it is a little expensive but well worth it) which is light, narrow, has a 500lb load capacity, works well with pulleys, and also looks good. This thing is in my living room and I like things to look nice. It looks very nice. If you mount this right, the kayaks will go as high up against the ceiling as you could possibly want. The tallest point in my kayaks is six inches from the ceiling, which means there is as much clearance as possible under the boats. I have standard height ceilings and it does not look crowded in there. The living room is perfectly usable and someone up to about 5'9" will be able to stand under the boats. Excellent solution for an extremely low price. High quality materials except for the rope. Definitely recommend.

I wanted to hang my Thule cargo box in the garage, out of the way. The reviews and price of this hoist led me to place the order. I have 9-foot ceilings in the garage, so there is not room to hang the Thule above the door, over the car, so I put it in between the two garage doors. I mounted a 2x4 to hang the hoist from, using 3 1/2 inch heavy duty screws. Then, I mounted the hoist on the 2x4. The instructions are somewhat brief, but good enough to get the job done. I remember seeing some reviews complaining about plastic parts, but mine is all metal except the pulley rollers. Installation of the pulleys was pretty straightforward, except again, the instructions for threading the rope through the pulleys (particularly the part about the braking system) was pretty cryptic. Hanging the Thule was a bit of a challenge, dropping it to the garage floor once until I figured out how to use the pulley system and brake. More explanation of that would be very useful in the instructions. The bottom of the Thule is just over 6'3" from the floor. I am 6'3" tall and just barely can walk under it. My hair does touch, but my head does not. It seems to be solid enough, except the hangers. I have enough screws and bolts holding it up to support a small elephant, but I am concerned about the weak link - the hangers. The weight of the Thule (or canoe or kayak or...) is supported by just two rather small connectors (rivets I think) holding the hooks, and those two are supported by a small bolt holding the hanger to the pulley (see the photos). I went to the garage this morning to see if it was still hanging - it is! I would give this a 5-star rating if I felt the weak link wasn't so weak, and if the instructions were better.

This thing is awesome and a steal at this price. Very well made. They've apparently upgraded the nylon webbing slings, they're plenty beefy now. Can't believe you can get this setup for this price. Works perfectly.

This works great! I have absolutely no spare room in my garage, so this hoist is perfect for my new kayak. It was fairly easy to install & very easy to operate. Seems plenty sturdy. I recommend this product.

I will say the product works. It will lift kayaks. The instructions are horrible. But the worst part about this product is how much space it actually takes up. Now I am partially to blame but they also don’t tell you how. Low this actually hangs when fully raised. This lift still hangs the kayak over 3 foot down from the ceiling. If your ceiling is 10 foot or higher probably not an issue

I just bought this to get my Tsunami 12 w/rudder out of the way. If you are not trying to lift 200 lbs this thing is awesome. Plenty sturdy enough to lift kayak. I installed it under the ceiling of a 10 x 12 pavillion for want of a better word for this small pole barn. Since it the ceiling is 1/2 inch plywood I was tempted to just screw it right to the plywood but that is nailed in place instead of screwed. Instead I used 3" deck screws to fasten 1x4 oak, pre-drilling the holes, and screwing into the collar ties of the roof rafters. The collar ties were on 2ft centers so I used (2) 26" sections. Oak between 2 collar ties is plenty to hold this weight and the 4ft in between does nothing so why waste the wood. I used the oak because that was what I had. If I had had 2x4s handy I would have used those. The lag screws which came with it are the correct length for using 2x4 material. I put the whole thing up by myself and it was simple, perhaps because I used the 26" boards instead of 6ft plus boards. I screwed I pre-drilled holes so that the pulley brackets were 6ft apart and screwed those up with lags ( bought shorter lags which were threaded all the way to the head because I used 3/4 oak. I wanted the threads to engage the oak not just the plywood behind it). After that simply attached to pulleys with the through bolts provided. Since the ceiling of the pavillion is pretty high, I ran the rope through as one piece, going through the pulleys as instructions describe but then threaded the bitter end back up through the brake and pulleys to knot it through the hole. I wanted to make sure there was wnough rope for the main system before cutting it. I then pulled 6ft of rope clear from the back pulley, cutting it with a rope cutting soldering iron. I used this 6ft to make the restrictor between the pulleys. The only issue I had was despite pre-drilling the first hole for the cleat, then screw snapped off at the head using an 18 volt Ryobi impact gun ( which I use for virtually every screw I put in anything). I used some Stainless panhead screws I had to put the cleat up. The brake is excellent and makes it much easier to cleat off because you don't have hold up the weight of the kayak while cleating off as well as uncleating. You do have release one rope at a time to bring the kayak down until there is some space between it and the ceiling so you can pull the line downand a little toward the other pulley so the brake stays released. When it's up tight against the ceiling it won't release both lines at the same time. Pull on one line to keep the brake off while letting out the other line to lower one end of the kayak, Reverse the process with the other line. When it's got a couple feet of clearance you can lower both ends at once. The only concern I have is that the brake essentially pinches the lines against the pulleys so I wonder how this will wear the lines over time. The line seems to be decent woven nylon line so chafe may nerver be an issue. I may get a few more of these to hang other things things like a tadpole trike. Well made for what it's designed to do, in my opinion. The only problem I could possibly anticipate anyone having with this is if they try to lift too much weight. It's for a kayak not an engine block.

I needed a better solution for quick and easy lowering and raising the kayaks (isn't that why your reading this?) . I have 10'6" ceiling in my garage and thought this would be a great tool to add to my overall garage organization but make my kayaks more accessible. 1. Out of the box, the instructions are terrible (which most other reviews share- haven't been changed as of DEC 15, 2016.. Hah. Pretty sure the only reason they included them were for all the legal disclaimers, etc. That said, we live in a day and age where YouTube will tell you anything you need to know about anything. If you do a search of RAD kayak hoist, the first video is 4 minutes and will walk you through it. So the instructions, well- toss them aside and get going. 2. Check your ceiling joist to find out which direction they run.. Of course my floor joists didn't run the right way and I had to add a 2x4. Not a big deal, but if you don't have the tools on hand, it can add a day or 2 to the install. (you will need your own 2x4, lag bolts, washers, tape measure, drill, and drill bit.) the instructions do tell you what to buy if you need to get them to install the hoist. But I already knew this, and my board was already put up prior to the item arriving. 3. Item was very well packaged, and all tools/bolts etc. We're accounted for. That said I've heard some reviews about not knowing what bolt/screw went where. It's easy. You get 4 wood lag screws (hex head) for attaching the 2 brackets (without the pulleys) to the 2x4 or joist. 4 bolts to attach the pulley mount to the brackets. And then 2 basic Phillips head wood screws to attach the cleat to the wall. 4. The threading of the rope through the pulley is the most confusing part of the install, but refer back to #1 above. Watch the video and your good to go! 5. Once everything was attached and assembled, I was impressed with how easy it was to raise and lower the kayak. (one handed for 60lb kayak) The brake works as designed, and gives me greater peace of mind knowing the cleat and brake will keep the item from falling.. ****READ THIS IF YOU SKIPPED ABOVE IF YOUR WORRIED ABOUT THE 1 STAR REVIEWS**** 6. THE only reason I couldn't give this item 5 stars is because of the straps that attach your kayak to the hooks of the pulley.. I've read many 1 star reviews about the straps failing(breaking) or completely sliding off the end of the kayak. I can say, from inspection the straps appear well made. I'm not certain how they would fail, but like all things - sometimes a little user TLC can go a long way. However, I did experience the straps sliding issue. It was a nuisance at best, and added to the overall frustration of my process. It was also difficult to get the hooks to sit in tight to the kayak, to keep the straps in place and not slide toward the end of the Kayak. It's not how it was designed (I know, reference pic 1 to see how much space it adds between the kayak and pulley. ***GAME OF INCHES*** After having successfully attached the strap where I felt they wouldn't slide off (that'll do I said to myself) , I easily raised the kayak to the ceiling. Now- here was the most frustrating part for me. I prefer to place my kayaks above the garage doors, because above them is a lot of wasted space. My old system used regular lashing straps (set of 2 on amazon is only $8)and eye bolts to raise my kayaks to the ceiling prior to using the hoist with no clearance issues. But a lot of shoulder problems from having to push up the kayak, and pull on the strap simultaneously. ... The issue: the 2x4 added wasted space to the overall distance between the ceiling and kayak...and also the hooks that connect to the straps also added about 4-6 inches from the flex in the hooks. ***see photos. The first photo shows how low the kayak hangs when hooked to the straps. You can see there's a lot of space between the pulley and the hooks and the kayak. I knew it would be close, and I was right. It hung about 3 inches too low and my garage door would ride along the bottom of my kayaks on the way up. Obviously not what I wanted. ***MY STRAP SOLUTION *** Looking at the kayak, I believed if I could get the kayak to raise 4 inches higher, I would achieve clearance and allow the garage door to freely raise and lower. I used the original lashing straps ($8 on amazon) which had hooks. This solved two problems. The first being, when this strap is cinched.... it's tight. And it doesn't move on the listing kayak. Second, when you press the hooks out flat and connect them to the eyelets of the strap not only is it secure, but it also keeps the hooks flat against my Kayak. Successfully decreasing the total space about 4", and thus hanging high enough above my garage door to allow it to freely move up and down without rubbing or bumping. Overall, I'm very happy with my purchase as long as the pulleys themselves don't fail. Overall I'd say 3 stars, because hey, the product works. It could be improved (RAD FEEL FREE TO ADD THESE lashing STRAPS AND PAY ME An INTELLECTUAL FEE FOR SOLVING YOUR BIGGEST Problem) But, In the end I placed 4 stars because of the price. It was the best price I could find. Most of you won't be foolish to try and hang above your garage doors, but the straps are a bit frustrating and could be improved. I put pictures of the lashing straps hooks I use if you want to upgrade. I got them also from Amazon. They have a 300 lb safe working load. (over kill, but again. Peace of mind) Hope this helps someone solve there concerns about strap breaking or clearance issues if you too are playing the game of inches!!! Total time on project? 2 nights or 4 hrs.. And 1 day waiting for the AHAAAAAA moment and 5 minute fix to my problem. Hope it helps.

Ich habe damit meine kleine Thule Box aufgehangen. Funktioniert super als günstige Alternative zu dem Original. Es ist schnell montiert und die Beschreibung ist leicht zu verstehen

Perfekt! Lätt att få upp gummibåten i taket, spar utrymme!

Fiable et performant Le kit est parfait

Buen producto, se instala fácil se ve resistente, de buena calidad.

Muito bom e pratica instalacao