Great white
Well-known member
- Joined
- Nov 6, 2009
- Messages
- 175
Well, after 10-12 years (maybe more) my "Michelin aluminum low profile racing jack" has finally gotten to the point where it needs a rebuild.
Looks exactly like this:
That's not my actual jack, just a pic I found on the net. Mine looks a bit more......"used"
Bought it on sale way back when, I think it was at Canadian Tire. I don't think I paid much more than 120 CAD back then and it came with two heavy-ish looking Michelin jack stands (which I still use). 120 bucks went a lot further than it does now it seems.
Apparently, it's made by a company by the name of "Shinn Fu" (named after the founder of the Co.) which is Taiwanese and if you believe the anecdotal evidence, is about the only "oriental" built jack worth a damn. That seems to track since I got roughly 10+ years of service out of it before any issues cropped up. It also seems "Shinn Fu" currently owns "Hein-Warner", "Blackhawk" among other hydraulics and jack manufacturers.
It's also a tough old SOB. I've seen the front wheels slide sideways on asphalt without even slightly bending/racking the lifting arm. It may be all aluminum construction, but it's built pretty tough all the same. Somewhere out there, there's an Asian engineer that knows his stuff....
the Michelin branded jack has given me good service, having only started to weep about a year ago from the valve and the pump piston. Still lifts just fine, I'm just adding fluid far too often and it now marks it's spot wherever I leave it.
I can't stand oily spots on my floors. Besides looking bad (dust, dirt and whatever seems to run to an oil spot in my garage), it just creates a spot that you might slip on and with my broken back and neck, even that quick split second "jerk" when you step on a slippery spot can cripple me down for days.
It's labeled with part number "G-615", which is also apparently a "Craftsman 9-50239" and likely rebranded under other resellers as well. No illusions here, it's still a rebranded "import" floor jack.
I actually like it a lot. It is pretty robust for what it is and at the same time, it doesn't weight 2 tons like it would in steel. Side handles are also a nice addition when trying to position it right where I want it. I've used it regularly during the years (rarely sits more than a month) and its' always done the jobs I've asked. Whether its' dealing with a 3/4 ton crew cab diesel truck, my 63 t-bird, my mustangs, the wife's commuter cars, motorcycles, JD diesel garden tractors or just using it to hold an engine up while changing engine mounts, oil pans, etc. Low profile enough even for our Corvette and my **** is about one cheesburger high off the ground in that thing!
The old Michelin been an indispensable tool in my shop.
But like I said, no illusions: it's an import jack. SOP with these things is to "fly to fail", toss it and then get another.
So I start exploring options. Seems the ol' Michelin is better than I thought, at least compared to current import alternatives. I check out the Vevor stuff which seems to have the same features as the ol' Michelin.
Nope.
Prices are good, but closer looks reveal things like: Double piston which gives the Vevor "quick lift" but several video reviews shows it take a lot more force than my Michelin (once the weight is on). One even shows the lever/handle bending as he is cranking on it! Turns out its really just a thin steel tube. my Michelin is thick heavy aluminum that will probably break before it bends. The vevor is just "cheaped out" everywhere it seems.
Other models/brands are varying degrees of aluminum thickness, pump mechanisms, etc. Some things that are thick welded aluminum on the Michelin are cheap thinner steel stampings and on and on. The world has gone and gotten real cheapy/rip-offy when I wasn't looking it seems....
And so it goes: if it's a palatable price, it's **** once you look at it closer. Or if you find one that might not be totally horrible, you watch someone try and use it on youtube and you can tell it's **** (and that's not even listening to what they are saying). Seems you have to go $500+ to get something with the features and similar (to my eye) quality construction the old Michelin has.
OK, lets look at rebuilding my sickly old friend. We can surely fix "leaky and drippy", can't we?
It's grimy as heck inside so I drag it outside with a can of brake clean and hose it down. At least I can touch the mechanism now without getting greasy up to my elbows. I get the ram/valve section out of the frame and start to tear it down. Nothing complicated here, essentially a bottle jack on it's side with a bit of extra valving (overload, speed lift and work). I used to work in aerospace hydraulics, so this is a doodle for me.
I leave the valves alone. They're not leaking so I just leave them alone. I don't feel like messing up the overload and speed lift settings either. The only thing I do is pull out the speed lift valve, since I can at least adjust that without special tools if my count on the turns removing it goes sideways. I removed it to try and get as much of the old blackened oil out of the valve body as I can. It' black from all the worn o-ring bits. I make a mental note to myself that I need to change the jack oil more than once every 10 years.....
Cylinder and ram are in good shape. No scratches or gouges to speak off. Nothing that catches a nail or even looks bad. Barely even any buff marks.
Yep, it's all o-ring problems. Flattened, worn, etc. Nothing cut or torn. It's just plain worn out.
I gather the rings up and hit the local hydraulic shops. Metric o-rings, not a surprise. What is a surprise is no one has them! They all have SAE in stock, but they order metric ones as needed. The cup seal I didn't expect to find locally, but no metric O-rings? Keep in mind, I'm in Canada, metric is the order of the day here for most things.....
Oh well, off to the internet I go. They got everything ya could want on that there internet!
I find an assorted set of metric o-rings on amazon. Supposed to be nitrile, but they list most of the o-ring sizes I need and it comes with 4 new o-ring picks. Nitrile is just higher heat than buta-n so that's not important. Also, I can always use more picks! I'm always bending, breaking or loosing them.
But what about the cup seal? the original isn't cut or scored, but putting the old one back in just seems...wrong....when I've got it torn down to nothing.
Then I run across that HCRCNow website. Yep, they actually list a kit for my model floor jack. $35 USD isn't too bad for something you can't get anywhere else, so I go through the checkout process. Shipping (to Canada) doubles the price to $70 bucks, but that's USD. Exchange rates bring it up to $98 CAD.
For orings, a cup seal and a couple ball bearings.
Ouch.
Buuuut.....can't get the kit anywhere else (certainly not in country) and it's still a good $80 CAD less than buying a "lesser" import jack that is likely to just pee me off when I try to use it.
Now it's just wait for the kit to show up and reassemble.
I'll compare the kit o-rings to the bulk kit and see which matches up to which for future ref. But frankly, at my age, if a rebuild gets me another 10 or so years I'll be past the age where I'll be able to (physically) work on my own stuff anyways.
I'll try to snap some pics on reassembly because everyone seems to like pics these days....
Looks exactly like this:
That's not my actual jack, just a pic I found on the net. Mine looks a bit more......"used"
Bought it on sale way back when, I think it was at Canadian Tire. I don't think I paid much more than 120 CAD back then and it came with two heavy-ish looking Michelin jack stands (which I still use). 120 bucks went a lot further than it does now it seems.
Apparently, it's made by a company by the name of "Shinn Fu" (named after the founder of the Co.) which is Taiwanese and if you believe the anecdotal evidence, is about the only "oriental" built jack worth a damn. That seems to track since I got roughly 10+ years of service out of it before any issues cropped up. It also seems "Shinn Fu" currently owns "Hein-Warner", "Blackhawk" among other hydraulics and jack manufacturers.
It's also a tough old SOB. I've seen the front wheels slide sideways on asphalt without even slightly bending/racking the lifting arm. It may be all aluminum construction, but it's built pretty tough all the same. Somewhere out there, there's an Asian engineer that knows his stuff....
the Michelin branded jack has given me good service, having only started to weep about a year ago from the valve and the pump piston. Still lifts just fine, I'm just adding fluid far too often and it now marks it's spot wherever I leave it.
I can't stand oily spots on my floors. Besides looking bad (dust, dirt and whatever seems to run to an oil spot in my garage), it just creates a spot that you might slip on and with my broken back and neck, even that quick split second "jerk" when you step on a slippery spot can cripple me down for days.
It's labeled with part number "G-615", which is also apparently a "Craftsman 9-50239" and likely rebranded under other resellers as well. No illusions here, it's still a rebranded "import" floor jack.
I actually like it a lot. It is pretty robust for what it is and at the same time, it doesn't weight 2 tons like it would in steel. Side handles are also a nice addition when trying to position it right where I want it. I've used it regularly during the years (rarely sits more than a month) and its' always done the jobs I've asked. Whether its' dealing with a 3/4 ton crew cab diesel truck, my 63 t-bird, my mustangs, the wife's commuter cars, motorcycles, JD diesel garden tractors or just using it to hold an engine up while changing engine mounts, oil pans, etc. Low profile enough even for our Corvette and my **** is about one cheesburger high off the ground in that thing!
The old Michelin been an indispensable tool in my shop.
But like I said, no illusions: it's an import jack. SOP with these things is to "fly to fail", toss it and then get another.
So I start exploring options. Seems the ol' Michelin is better than I thought, at least compared to current import alternatives. I check out the Vevor stuff which seems to have the same features as the ol' Michelin.
Nope.
Prices are good, but closer looks reveal things like: Double piston which gives the Vevor "quick lift" but several video reviews shows it take a lot more force than my Michelin (once the weight is on). One even shows the lever/handle bending as he is cranking on it! Turns out its really just a thin steel tube. my Michelin is thick heavy aluminum that will probably break before it bends. The vevor is just "cheaped out" everywhere it seems.
Other models/brands are varying degrees of aluminum thickness, pump mechanisms, etc. Some things that are thick welded aluminum on the Michelin are cheap thinner steel stampings and on and on. The world has gone and gotten real cheapy/rip-offy when I wasn't looking it seems....
And so it goes: if it's a palatable price, it's **** once you look at it closer. Or if you find one that might not be totally horrible, you watch someone try and use it on youtube and you can tell it's **** (and that's not even listening to what they are saying). Seems you have to go $500+ to get something with the features and similar (to my eye) quality construction the old Michelin has.
OK, lets look at rebuilding my sickly old friend. We can surely fix "leaky and drippy", can't we?
It's grimy as heck inside so I drag it outside with a can of brake clean and hose it down. At least I can touch the mechanism now without getting greasy up to my elbows. I get the ram/valve section out of the frame and start to tear it down. Nothing complicated here, essentially a bottle jack on it's side with a bit of extra valving (overload, speed lift and work). I used to work in aerospace hydraulics, so this is a doodle for me.
I leave the valves alone. They're not leaking so I just leave them alone. I don't feel like messing up the overload and speed lift settings either. The only thing I do is pull out the speed lift valve, since I can at least adjust that without special tools if my count on the turns removing it goes sideways. I removed it to try and get as much of the old blackened oil out of the valve body as I can. It' black from all the worn o-ring bits. I make a mental note to myself that I need to change the jack oil more than once every 10 years.....
Cylinder and ram are in good shape. No scratches or gouges to speak off. Nothing that catches a nail or even looks bad. Barely even any buff marks.
Yep, it's all o-ring problems. Flattened, worn, etc. Nothing cut or torn. It's just plain worn out.
I gather the rings up and hit the local hydraulic shops. Metric o-rings, not a surprise. What is a surprise is no one has them! They all have SAE in stock, but they order metric ones as needed. The cup seal I didn't expect to find locally, but no metric O-rings? Keep in mind, I'm in Canada, metric is the order of the day here for most things.....
Oh well, off to the internet I go. They got everything ya could want on that there internet!
I find an assorted set of metric o-rings on amazon. Supposed to be nitrile, but they list most of the o-ring sizes I need and it comes with 4 new o-ring picks. Nitrile is just higher heat than buta-n so that's not important. Also, I can always use more picks! I'm always bending, breaking or loosing them.
But what about the cup seal? the original isn't cut or scored, but putting the old one back in just seems...wrong....when I've got it torn down to nothing.
Then I run across that HCRCNow website. Yep, they actually list a kit for my model floor jack. $35 USD isn't too bad for something you can't get anywhere else, so I go through the checkout process. Shipping (to Canada) doubles the price to $70 bucks, but that's USD. Exchange rates bring it up to $98 CAD.
For orings, a cup seal and a couple ball bearings.
Ouch.
Buuuut.....can't get the kit anywhere else (certainly not in country) and it's still a good $80 CAD less than buying a "lesser" import jack that is likely to just pee me off when I try to use it.
Now it's just wait for the kit to show up and reassemble.
I'll compare the kit o-rings to the bulk kit and see which matches up to which for future ref. But frankly, at my age, if a rebuild gets me another 10 or so years I'll be past the age where I'll be able to (physically) work on my own stuff anyways.
I'll try to snap some pics on reassembly because everyone seems to like pics these days....
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