Electric powered bed lift

Consider the addition of pneumatic piston supports, much like those used on bay doors. They come in a wide range of poundage. Our rear bed has them and opening the engine compartment with mattress in place is a no effort task.

hershey wrote:
Consider the addition of pneumatic piston supports, much like those used on bay doors. They come in a wide range of poundage. Our rear bed has them and opening the engine compartment with mattress in place is a no effort task.

I have the strongest available gas shocks available on it. It is still to heavy for my small wife to lift.

Maybe try adding additional or try adding a linear actuator

Re positioning the gas lifts farther from the hing should solve your problem. I have seen units that have adjustable brackets for this reason. Another contributing factor may be that if it's an older unit the gas lifts might be tired.

Hatch lift
You may want to try these

MrLugs wrote:
Re positioning the gas lifts farther from the hing should solve your problem. I have seen units that have adjustable brackets for this reason. Another contributing factor may be that if it's an older unit the gas lifts might be tired.

When my wife put memory foam on top of our mattress it was heavy and would not stay up. Moving the hinge point 1.5 ins solved the problem.

"RicB".....We had the same issue with our Monaco when we added a nice pillow top mattress. I tried several things including stronger pistons, but found that the bed frame, including the side rails and bed base couldn't handle the stress of the additional pistons.

I looked at an electric lift, but the design of the Monaco bed had no place to install it and I was back to having to make a stronger frame.

Finally, I bit the bullet and made a metal bar that spanned between the two frame rails (for structural support) and added plates that through bolted (carriage bolts under the mattress) through the base.

Once the frame was made, I added four pistons. The bed was then effortless to lift. Some beds only lift half the base, but the Monaco lifted 3/4's of the bed frame and required a LOT of lift to get it to work.

For stronger supports try Strut-Your-Stuff on Ebay. They have an enormous selection at very good prices.

How do you calculate the lift power that you need, when choosing struts?

I'd like to put some on my bed, also on my van hood, but I don't know what to buy.

"Naio".....Unless you're an engineer, it will be tough to calculate what you need. I added struts to the front hood of my Dutch Star. It originally came with one of those hood rods like you see in cars.

Figuring the position isn't too hard, but depending on where you lift figuring the poundage becomes an issue. Luckily on my project, I had the same length pistons on my rear hood. I removed those and tried them. They just didn't quite lift the hood and hold it. They were 25# models. I ordered two 30# models and they worked perfectly. This isn't scientific, but more of the poor man's way.