Putting together a home gym for the garage, and a powercage is a must. I’ve seen some on amazon for $250-300, and I know the quality isn’t going to be top, but I’m curious if people have any experience with these? How well did they hold up, could you do rack pulls from them, what did them in, etc?
I have a Body Solid power rack that cost me $264 at Play It Again Sports several years ago. I then added a lat/row attachment about a year ago.
It’s durable and works great! Check out the pics in my profile. I took some recent pics last week.
i too would like to know. York barbell also sells them for 400-600 dollars plus S&H. Are these worth getting. If you drop a 500 pound barbell on the pins will it make the whole setup collapse or breakdown right away?
If I was using 500+ pounds, I’d purchase an Elite Power Rack for about $850 (combo rack deal). 
Unless you’re DROPPING 500+ lbs on a regular occurance I wouldn’t worry about it, I have a body solid rack at my folks house that I use on holidays and it works great, I don’t make a habit of dropping weights on it but I do sort of throw the bar into the rack when reracking it. Also, anything that is designed is designed with a saftey factor in mind.
see the only reason to have a power rack versus my current setup is to have it to catch the occasional 500+ lb miss. If its just going to waffle its no good. The York barbell says they can take a 1000 lbs but i dont know if thats a static load or a falling load as a 500 pound bar can probably hit with over a thousand pounds of force(guessing without doing calculations) and then buying the rack and bench from elitefts, which will probably be more than good enough for me, would run me over a grand.
I have a TDS rack (the ones nybarbells/midwest barbell sell) and it has had 585 dumped and did not bat an eye. We do chain suspended gm’s with around 400lbs and we do not set the bar down nicely and this also has not bothered it.
I have loaded my rack-monolift with 765 and this also did not do anything. Although that was just sitting there, no lifting of that (yet).
I was looking specifically at a TDS rack, that’s great to hear!
I have a bodysolid rack and I failed 545 on a rack pull on Tuesday so I had to dump it, rack has held up.
I plan to get a Elite rack or something eventually. I would like more holes lower on the rack,closer hole spacing, bit wider base, bit taller so I could lift my log in the rack. Also some monster hooks for my log as well.
I only paid 150 used for it though so I can’t complain
Have an old bodysolid as well. Bought it at Jesup Gym Equipment (Rex rocks.)
We have beaten the piss out of it and it is still in pretty good shape. The only thing is that the base is reasonable in size but in regards to front to back stability it needs to be bolted down. Otherwise, for heavy squatting, you need to step on the frame in the front or put 100# plates on it or else it will tip when setting up to unrack or reracking.