Most Popular Ceiling Mount for Ford Explorer

Overall I give this Thule Multilift Cargo Lift a five star rating; however installing this device takes some effort and skill. Maybe more effort and skill than the typical DYI'er can provide. The instructions provided do not have any words or dimensions, only pictures. Other than following the routing of the rope through the pullies it didn't provide me any benefit. Also, my system did not come with any screws or bolts. For me that was not a big deal as I have plenty of hardware I can use. There is one center bracket and four pullies to install. The spacing does not line up with typical dimensions so I had to improvise to get the Multilift installed. My garage ceiling has joist spacing that is 16" on center. That is typical, although some may have 24" on center spacing. Either way the spacing for the screws to secure the various components does not match. I guess you could use toggle bolts to hold the components to the ceiling sheetrock but I didn't trust that idea. What I did was to span my ceiling joists with 1"x4" wood and then attach the components to them. The kit comes with a template so getting the actual components set up on the 1"x4" wood strips was simple enough. Once all the components are installed then the rope is routed through the pullies. As you can see in the pictures I had a close clearance between the roof box and my roll-up garage door. I think it is about 2". Since I don't have a tall roll-up garage door I cannot drive my car in or out with the roof box installed. That didn't matter to me since my only goal was to store the roof box out of harms way. My last comment is that it takes two people to lift the roof box up and get the Multilift ropes in place. I tried to do it by myself but that did not work. I do like this Thule Multilift but it took some effort to install it. I really like the way it is raised and lowered by turning a mechanism with a handle. There is a less expensive lift sold on the internet but it did not use as many pullies to raise and lower the roof box and it relied on a rope to lift and lower it.

For our 3 grandkids we needed a way to carry camping stuff. This works great. It opens from either side, key locked on both. We have hung it from the garage ceiling for easy installation. All the stuff fits well.