Hi Lift Jack Dangers

So my wife and I always maintain our road bikes (Seven Cycles and Ridley) and our chains and shifting are nearly silent. We seem to run across tri-athletes with $5,000+ rides in their full aero tuck with a freakin squeaky chain! Why is that? Or is that the unanswerable question. LOL.

PS: we use Dumonde Tech or Park CL-1.

 

I don't want to stereotype anyone but triathlete's bike maintenance skills are typically tragic. That...and some people just don't know any better.

I'd still rather them come in with a squeaky chain than one that they lubed with whateverthefuck.

I'm the guy that carries a 1oz bottle of lube with me to use on other people's bikes.

I use Pro-Link in the shop. At home I use a mix of straight waxed chains or Squirt. If I could find a way to wax a hi-lift that's what I would go with. Ha.

I use dry lubes for tons of things around the house and garage too. Much better than any wet lube or WD-40 if you're particular about routine maintenance.

Wet lubes are the simplest products to use but far from the best or most efficient.

 

They are junk for off-road use in my opinion. They buckle and bend way easier than most would expect.

A bottle jack with a steel base and threaded head is handy. The cast iron ones aren't to be used on an uneven surface!

 

A friend of mine has interest in helping me move a tiny house…. He goes after it like it on his bucket list. Anyways. He showed up with a high lift jack the other day. Let’s just say that one jack is not a solution to our situation. It was funny though we stood there looking at it in the trunk of his car wrapped in a ratty ass beach towel. It felt like I was behind a bar buying a gun someone had found. I had that oh that looks so dangerous I don’t want to touch it. I also didn’t want to show interest as he might feel his solution would work.

 

well, I mean, if that’s the limit of your imagination….

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cu-NJsqPHMw

 

Are you using a real Hi Lift or a knock off?

 

BTW…

securely “guying” the foot/base of a hi-lift can improve safety and help reduce the potential for ‘kick out’. For example:

when lifting say, under the driver’s door, guying the base of the jack, independently, to each of the opposite passenger-side rims creates a tensioned ‘triangle’ between the passenger-side wheels and foot of the jack. Of course, whatever you do this with must be extremely low stretch material, strong enough and appropriately “pre-tensioned”… just chucking a strap under the truck and hooking it, loosely, somewhere, is not gonna do much/anything if the jack unseats, likewise, only a single guy and the jack can still ‘swing’ out’ and, even with multiple guys, the jack can still ‘corkscrew’ or topple.

 

Found the one real danger of Hi Lift

surface rust where using it scraped some paint off

anyone got a solution to this? I’m thinking either red touch up paint
Or wipe some oil on there like fluid film hope it stays put and I remember to not touch it and rub off

 

I lube the mechanical parts with a dry lube like T9 and give no shits about the rest. The rust will get wore off the next time I use it or I will eventually buy a new jack. They are cheap.

TBQH, after several bad experiences with my hi-lift I don’t even bring it with me anymore. In one case, the jack would not go in reverse because of a small amount of mud in the mechanism (the pin might also have be bent slightly). I had to force it to slide with a screwdriver every notch. It was a bad situation and the jack fighting me at every step made it a PITA. I almost tossed it into the Mississippi.

I don’t understand the popularity of such jacks. I might bring it if I go somewhere remote where there is a good chance of not being able to get a tug.

 

Use it!!! Carry some spray lube with as well, that prevents this.....

The hi lift is one of the tools I won't go into the woods without. It's lack of stability is an advantage in a lot of situations. Example being if you are hicentered on a log or sapling wedged between your tire and fender well, you can jack the truck up and push or drive off the jack to get over the log/sapling. You can use it to unseat a tire if you get mud or a stick stuck in the bead. It can be use to pry things apart or clamp stuff together. Tons of uses for it, but it does suck for changing tires. Get a bottle jack/jackstand combo for that.

 

It’s versatile for sure. I also would never use it for changing a tire if had any other jack to use. But when I have needed it the most, it has let me down.

On the flip side, I ounce got high centered on a muddy small mound completely unprepared and got myself out with nearby wood and the stock bottle jack. A sealed jack doesn’t care about the local environment.

If you ever have to use a hi-lift in a muddy, cold, dirty, or wet environment return it to a climate controlled case after each use. Never place it on the ground. That it bring a power washer and lube with you. A hi-lift massage therapist or pedicurist might help too.

I’m not sure why the hi-lift hasn’t become a museum piece.

 

I haven't used one since the mid 1980s. We had some at my father's shop for various tasks. As I recall, the bases were a bit small for the load they were able to life. As a result, they weren't all that stable. We might have welded some steel stock to the base plates to make them more stable.

Also, if you didn't make sure that the pins were fully seated, the jack could run away and the handle would flail like something from The Three Stooges. Only it was with enough force to kill you if it hit you in the head.

Other than that, they could lift a lot of weight. We might have even used them to straighten some metal poles that got bent.

 

The hi-lift does strike me as more of a cheap shop tool. It doesn’t have the sort of engineering I would expect of a tool that is intended to be used is extreme outdoor conditions. I suspect it just gained a following in dry state off-road areas because of its versatility and the it became a legend. TBQH, I have never seen one used in anger in my area, albeit I have seen them on the hoods of jeep mall crawlers many times.

Mostly people use winches and tow straps around here. If you get caught in a pinch, you have your stock jack.

 

I never thought of them as cheap, but then again I never had to pay for them. In retrospect, I should have snagged one when the business was being liquidated. It would be good for doing yard work around the house. I think that farmers and ranchers probably use them as well.

 

A branded 48” hi-lift is around $100 in my area, which I think is quite cheap for such a large chunk of steel. Knock offs are even cheaper. I bought mine at fleet farm which is basically a farm equipment store that has increased their customer base.

Keep in mind that the main shaft appears to me to be cheap mild steel with a rattle can paint job. You not the smaller mechanical parts in the jacking thingy appear to be tool steel type quality.

 

Where did it rub? Try to polish off the rust. You may end up bringing the affected area in question down to the best base layer (corrosion coat, bare metal, etc), clean it, and hit it with the same color oem touchup paint or Dr. color chip paint.