Good day all! I've been in the process of pulling the engine/trans on my 88 GTA for the past several months (planning stages). My biggest struggle, one that many here seem to have as well, was finding a good engine hoist. I spent hours searching the boards and the internet at large. For my car, I estimated I would need a reach of about 68-70" on the boom. Looking at the common ones from Amazon, HF, NT and the like, all of them were either way too short or had bad reviews or both. To make matters worse, the info was often very misleading - boom length, to a user, means "how far over the car will the boom reach before I hit the bumper/grill", but most tech info gave the total length of the boom arm, front-to-rear. Most booms lose about 14-18" it seems, because of the pivot point and the vertical arm that the jacking piston sits on. Another consideration was how high the boom would reach, especially since I was planning to use a tilter, which increases the starting height of the boom, reducing the amount of the "range" the boom has for lifting.
I mostly searched for one in the 2T range, as i was hoping to find one that would fold up. After weeks of not finding anything, I started looking at the 2T and 3T non-folding ones, with no real luck. The best ones I found were either Dragway or Vestil. I almost bought the Vestil EHN-40-T or EHS-60-T. I also started looking at renting one (never worked out for me as I always needed it longer than I expected, so it ends up costing more to rent than to buy) and finally found a rental place that advertised a hoist that was both long enough and tall enough. Silly them, they named the brand and model and I was able to find it on Grainger. The Westward 3CZ71 hoist fits the bill for 3rd Gens. It's not cheap, but the boom reaches 79" and raises 86" at that length. It's not cheap (about $900 plus shipping). But it is what you need, unless you want to pull your bumper off, or drop the engine out the bottom, neither of which I wanted to do. I ordered it last Thursday, shipping was $250, it arrived the next day on a pallet. Took a couple of hours to assemble. All welds looked good and all bolts fit where they were supposed to. It doesn't fold, but I can break it down if needed (will do so eventually). It has casters at all 4 corners, which is really nice. But the proof is in the pudding. After spending Friday and Saturday preparing, I hooked it up on Sunday morning and easily pulled the engine and trans out together, clearing the front rad support with inches to spare. I probably had a foot between the vertical arm and my bumper. I did have to use the tilter to angle the engine up and then flatten it back out again, as expected. Highly recommend this hoist!