I bought a shop crane last year. It's one of the $200 1-ton units from
Harbor Freight. I've been pretty happy with most of the stuff I've
ordered from them, but this thing is pretty worthless.
The casters sit *under* the tubes, requiring at least 8" of clearance
to slide underneath. It won't fit under most cars. It twists and warps
alarmingly at about 900 pounds. All four casters swivel, and it goes
where it wants. The pivots for the main arm and jack are grade-zero
Taiwan bolts. The flat washers were (so help me!) cast iron. And the
whole thing is made of weird-bastard metric tubing, making it difficult
to modify.
For $50 or so more you can get a much better one (from practically
anywhere) that will fold up out of your way for storage, has fixed
casters at the open end, and will slide under a car. I recommend you
pass by the HF crane and spend the few extra bucks for something better.
HF also has a "heavy duty" four-caster engine stand. I have the fancy
one, which was delivered by mistake. It's pretty heavy duty, but
strangely made. The vertical post is so far forward that most of the
weight of the engine is on the front wheels. I wouldn't want to use it
for an inline six. It's useable, but the cheap bottom-rung three wheel
stands work just as well and take less space.
====dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us========================DoD#978=======
can you help me...help me get out of this place?...slow sedation...
ain't my style, ain't my pace...giving me a number...NINE, SEVEN, EIGHT
==5.0 RX7 -> Tyrannosaurus RX! == SAE '82 == Denizens of Doom M/C '92==
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