Engine hoists

Hmmm, Interesting.
I've been playing with the idea of fabricating some sort of boom arm to mount to the bumper of our big truck using cable or chain.
Sort of like a light weight home built wrecker. You could easily position the truck in front of the racecar, attach a come-a-long or hoist or whatever to the extended boom, pull the engine, and pull forward once the engine was clear of the bay, it would collapse easily and store in the bed of the truck.
  Second idea is to build a heavy duty canopy frame, strong enough to easily support the weight of a car engine and trans. You could build it out of roll bar material using your tubing bender and welder. Obviously, there would be some engineering and testing involved, but think about how conveinent an overhead hoist inside a canopy would be. Add lights, maybe a lightweight I-beam with trolley, SWEET!

SBT, You beat me to it with the suggestion of a coulpe of sheets of plywood.  We do the same.  Just make sure you do a "test roll" of the hoist and position the sheets so that you don't drop a caster off the plywood into the mud while the motor is halfway/out.   IF you do drop a wheel, that's where the little 2' X 2' plywood sheets that you brought for the jackstands come in handy.

buy a used or beat up regular hoist off craigslist. you can replace the jack for $60 at harbor freight.

knock the silly little casters off it and engineer a way to mount better, bigger wheels on it.  if you can lower the legs and the base in the process, you won't have to get the car as high in the air to clear them.

some decent 4 or 5" double wheel casters welded to gussets at the ends of the legs and the base can make for a nice cheap low-pro hoist.

sheets of plywood take care of the rest of the concerns.

Our local Pick-N-Pull (junkyard chain) has self-built gantry cranes in the yard with chain hoists for pulling motors.  They're actually a pretty decent design - they use small car tires for the wheels!  That enables them to roll pretty well even on the highly irregular gravel.  I do not know the details of how they built or sourced the swivel hubs for the wheels but at least the upper mount is a manufactured, grease-able part and they're clearly using wheels and tires they got off incoming junk cars since they're mismatched in every way.  They might have used the hubs off the cars themselves and welded them to custom uprights which then bolt to the upper swivel which then bolts to the gantry crane.

If you find a source for swivels that would work for that see if they have lockable ones.  If you're working alone and have to roll the gantry any distance at all then it would be really helpful to lock a pair of the wheels to keep from swiveling so it will go straight.  They have to be unlockable though so you can roll it sideways over the car.

You could make the height adjustable by using two sizes of tubing for your uprights - one slips into the other and can telescope up and down.  Use a couple pairs (or more) of hefty bolts or pins like you would with a press.  Something that positively locks in place would be better since you might rattle them loose while rolling around otherwise.

I'm about to take off for Summit Point but once I'm back if I can get to the junkyard I could take some pictures of their cranes.  I could also sketch up something for the height adjust if it's not clear enough above.

I'm going to have to tow my tractor to the races, it's the only way I know how to pull an engine out.

You aint nuts!

Its genius!   I have a gravel driveway and have pretty much worn the wheels off my hoist with LeMony engine swaps.

Northern also sell truck bed mounted hoists.  For about 150

Eh. Big-block Cadillac weighs about 620 lbs. I need something beefier.

This. I put larger casters on the back of mine and dropped the front down enough to fit under a lowered RX-7 with flat tires.