Potential Disaster Averted

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.

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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.

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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.

Good catch

Good job checking it out. Remains me of one I had when I first retired. I purchased a new 10k lb lift, modified it to carry a 18' deck boat and welded it to a 20' flat bed trailer. Over the next 4 years we towed it 80k miles around the country with a 42' motorhome. Towing the trailer, the boat, a motorcycle, and a Ford pickup truck. Total trailer weight was 12k and rig was 68' long. Good times.

Heard many awful stories from Marines stationed aboard carrier. Talked of sailors who were deck hands and literally were cut in half when those landing cables jets use snapped.
Thank God you found it, Mike.