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Why You Don’t Need, or Even Want, Automatic Wheel Base Positioning
Automatic Wheel Base Positioning
If you look up the features available on Stertil-Koni lifts, one of them is an “Automatic Wheel Base Positioning” system, or AWBP. Rotary provides a similar feature called “Auto Spotting System.” In my opinion, these systems are useless, unsafe pieces of junk.
The idea behind AWBP is simple. You push a button, and the moving pistons of your lift drive into place under the truck automatically. At first glance, it seems like a cool feature to have. But, as with so many things, the devil is in the details.
First, there is no cost cutting benefit to an AWBP. Traditionally, when a company automates a piece of equipment, it frees up an employee and saves wages. But someone needs to be watching, ready to hit the emergency stop when the moving piston of an automotive lift is driving itself. So it doesn’t free employees up at all, and therefore the total labor savings in terms of dollars is zero. In terms of work, it saves only the effort required to hold down a button for 20 or 30 seconds as the lift rolls into place… A worker still has to stand there ready to hit a button, it just saves the work of holding the button down.
Second, the alleged precision of an AWBP amounts to nothing. Even if the AWBP can repeatedly line up within 1/32nd of an inch of where it is supposed to be (and my experience is that they don’t), there are 1,001 things that could make it unsafe to lift the truck.
To name a few:
- The truck could be off center forward and aft
- The truck could be off center left and right
- The truck could be slightly different than the one programmed into the computer
- The truck could be modified
- The truck could be damaged, or
- The lift could have the wrong adaptors on it.
This means that to lift the truck safely, a real, live person needs to stick his head under the truck, and confirm that the adaptors are hitting the truck on the lift points correctly EVERY TIME. Until the lift can somehow see the actual machine it is lifting, determine the safe lifting points, and verify that they are engaged, it will never be safe to depend on a computer to line up the lift on a truck.
Third, even if we don’t consider the dangerous conditions that could arise if the AWBP doesn’t position itself right, there are still major safety concerns with AWBP systems, just as there are any time a machine as large and heavy as an in-ground vehicle lift drives itself around in an area where humans can be present.
Imagine the injury that could occur if one worker crawled under a truck to change the lift adapters, and another worker put the AWBP system in motion. Further assume, that for some reason the guy that started the AWBP doesn’t hit the emergency stop, perhaps because he isn’t aware of what’s going on, which isn’t totally preposterous in a loud shop with hearing protection in place. Unless he had a remote control with him, the poor guy under the truck wouldn’t have a way to trip an emergency stop. He could easily be drug and pinned under a truck, his hands and body could be mangled, he could be crushed.
Service on the lift should always involve locking the machine out correctly. But in the case where an untrained or poorly trained employee fails to lock out the machine, the results of an accidental AWBP actuation could be lethal.
Lastly, I have never seen one of these systems work right, and my experience with Stertil-Koni’s system in particular has been abysmal. Early versions had a problem with the drive/select solenoid that caused the lift to start travelling upward when it was supposed to be traversing horizontally. The software would eventually stop the unit before it got too high. But it was a dangerous and embarrassing condition.
The self-rising lift problem was fixed pretty quickly. But the AWBP still didn’t work right most of the time. There were several reasons for this, but the 10¢ version is that the inertia of the lift would carry it past the set point after the computer had tried to stop it, causing it to jerk backwards and overrun the set point again, causing it to jerk forwards and overrun the setpoint again… The end result was that the machine would drive to approximately where it was supposed to be, and then jerk back and forth until the software faulted, bringing it to rest and requiring a re-start. Ironically, this problem was especially problematic on machines that had been installed correctly because the free-moving tracks would let the moving piston overrun instead of dragging it to a stop instantly as soon as the drive solenoid cut out.
In the final analysis, AWBP is never going to be a smart option. It is possible that all of the quirks of the AWBP system have been worked out (though I doubt it). It’s theoretically possible, I suppose, that someone could figure out how to make a safe one. It’s possible that they could engage the bus or truck correctly 100% of the time. But even if all that was worked out (and it isn’t) that still doesn’t make AWBP worth your money, because it doesn’t save you any.