Thread: Potential Disaster Averted

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Just before Thanksgiving, I was using my 4-post lift when I heard a strange popping and cracking sound. This lift has been in service for 8 to 10 years and I use it constantly. When I first bought it, I considered it a luxury item. I had done some work for a guy and he wanted to trade me an older street rod that he had as payment. I didn’t particularly want that car, but figured I could flip it for some quick cash. I did that and used the money to buy the lift.

Over the years though, it has become a type of handicap device for me as my back issues have worsened. Without my lift, I doubt very seriously that I could even do maintenance on my cars, much less build one.

After the cracking noises, I flashed back to some pictures I had seen that showed collapsed lifts and dogged everything off until I could do an inspection. Good thing I did. One of the four cables had parted one of it’s strands and another strand was frayed pretty bad. It wasn’t going to make many more lifts before it failed completely. Also, I found signs of impending failure on a couple of the other cables, but they were still pretty much intact. With the holidays, there was no way to order parts, so nothing to do but wait.



While on the phone the following Monday, the tech I spoke with said to check the cable sheaves for wear since that was what they had found to cause most cable failures. He was absolutely right, too. I was shocked to see the amount of wear on the shaft and sheave of the cable that failed.



Now, you might think that I should have had a lot of warning, but that was not really the case. I did seem to be a little slower while being lowered, but that was about the only real warning. The tech said that the sheaves were supposed to lubed annually, but these hadn't been lubed since I assembled the lift. The reason was that there was no way to grease anything without completely disassembling all the sheaves and cables. Sorry, but only the most anal person would do that.

I ordered new bushings for the other nine pulleys and drilled the shafts so that I could grease them without taking everything apart. Funny thing is, that the new replacement shaft was already drilled. Guess they figured out that no grease fittings was a screw up.

I spent a couple of days before going in the hospital stringing new cables (I replaced all four) and rebuilding the sheaves with new bushings. I also modified the covers for the safety locks and pulleys so that I could remove them with out unstringing the cables. Now I can both lube and inspect it in minutes. I can’t believe how much better it works now. Hopefully, I’ll get another 10 years out of it with better maintenance and I will definitely be checking it out more frequently.

Damn, that's scary!

Great post, thanks for sharing the warning, and glad to hear you got it fixed without pains.

When I read the thread title, I was wondering how this could be a disaster.?.? But once I read through the original post I said to myself, YEP! That could've been a huge disaster!!
And then to read about lubing the sheeve axles with no grease zerks… and you're supposed to do this annually? Kinda hokey imho.

But as always you got it fixed up first class. And with a real Public Service Announcement (PSA) . Thanks for the heads up.

So glad you caught this before a real disaster occurred!

Yeah, there are a lot of this pattern of lift in service. They are all made in China,most likely. Even some of the ones with name brands, but the big names probably have slightly different options and QC. I thought it might be worth posting this as it just could help someone avoid a similar issue.

Overall, for a fairly inexpensive storage/service type lift (most of the emphasis probably should be on storage) I think that it has held up well. When I'm using it, there is no way to know the number of times it goes up and down in a day.

Glad you caught it early (all things considered). It's become difficult in modern times to tell the iffy products from the first class ones. Price (either way is too crude of a measure). Ken Thurm, a former member here, and I had an interesting conversation some years back about the difficulties of producers/marketers being able to remain viable price and quality wise with global dynamics being what they are/were. He had to send his fabrication to China to remain even close in price to be viable, but struggled with the quality control. He made contracts that specified the quality level he demanded and his foreign "partners" complied at first, but over time they tried to get away with cutting corners hoping to not get caught. In the end he sent his own employee over there to watch out for his interests day to day. I understand now that there are U.S. companies who offer the service of being on site inspectors (for a fee of course) to manage QC for U.S. companies. Sigh...............

lifts scare hell out of me. my brain just does not like 3k lbs hovering above it . i have screwup braces i use when i have one on the lift .

Originally Posted by shine

lifts scare hell out of me.

Don't worry, I give mine plenty of respect. I make sure all four corners are on the safety locks before getting under the load. There is another spring loaded set of locks just above them in case the main locks fail. They are already positioned to catch on the safety catches, except they are about 3/8" or so above the main locks.

The two post style lifts are the ones that really scare me. Admittedly, they do seem to be easier to perform work under, but I've seen too many videos of unbalanced loads tumbling off them. One local shop nearly let my dads pickup fall off one when he went in for an oil change. It appears that even folks that use them regularly have trouble getting the balance right.

This guy had a very bad day with a 2 post:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgglmbsPqYs

Sure seems like there should be a way to lock the arms once they are in place. You can see them swing as the car starts to move, but even I know that it should have had a stand under the back with no engine and trans.

i raise them a couple of feet the bounce the hell out of them. once in the air i put my jacks under them front and rear .
the arms on my lift lock into place .

Crikey that's frightening. Thanks for posting.
We had a two post hoist back at Rock Bottom. my #2 son has taken that place over, I 'd better send him a link to your potential close call warning.
I've got a lift in our present property (Our New Selection,) that climbs up the wall to lift heavy stuff up to the mezzanine.
I'll certainly be keeping an eye out on it now.