So tonight was a bit frustrating. The good news is I got the lift mounted on my ceiling. I don't trust the 5/8" enough to stand on it so this was a really tough task leaning out over the tank. In the end a step-stool, box of pampers and a bunch of children's books came to the rescue to hold the assembly in place! Props to Sfiligoi for making one hell of a sturdy light. I'm sure I could stand on the thing. It has ZERO flex.
Now for the bad news. The bracket on the end of the screw/shaft still seems to do what it wants especially under load where the forces are quite high. The fixture I'm guessing is 60lbs or so with the glass shields so I'll have to adjust my guide for the bracket to allow it to orient like it does under weight and that's it. I need to ensure the bracket always does exactly the same thing in both directions. If it doesn't and something catches after my cover is installed it will rip the entire thing to shreds. 150 lbs of force it's capable of.
The bigger letdown was the fact that the angle brackets I have the bearings mounted to bent under load. The bearing on the far left is mounted closer to the wood and it bent far less. One of the bearings for the other wire bent a lot. I was foolishly thinking these brackets were ok because the forces are downward only and they felt solid in that respect. Of course the forces on them are horizontal as well! So I need to swap these with wide brackets that allow zero movement in the horizontal axis.
Slightly bent:
Really bent.
On a positive note these issues can be easily fixed. The side with the slightly bent bracket lifted up about 4 inches before I chickened out. It was an incredibly smooth motion! The other end didn't lift at all though.
I'll update with a video tomorrow night when I have new brackets installed...