Yes, first off
thank God everyone is ok!
As an aside, one thing I've noticed here the last few odd months of my self-imposed limited participation in the Forum
is how sometimes folks get a little caught up in minor bug-tussles with one another over topics of the day.
I mean, I've been known to engage in such myself and all, mind you...but now, more as a sometimes-interested
bystander reading the proceedings, I realize it's often who I recognize as the "good guys" involved.
I also have come to understand these back-and-forths ain't as serious as I used to take them sometimes, too...
That said, to this thread in specific:
I could feel for
@Krooser in this one as the "corrections" started flying back in response to his sharing of his
story and could almost predict the defensive posture a fella gets into when all the critics ("experts"?)
reply with all the ways
they'd have "done it better" or how his rig was inferior or whatever.
All I'm saying is perspective is everything for me these days - and it's certainly been an eye-opener personally
when interacting with this forum in recent months, so I
get it.
All that said, y'all DO look after one another better than most groups I've encountered in this life.
Human nature, eh? What a hoot.
Oh, about the cherry picker?
No expert here, but when I got my current one over 15 years ago, my brother decided I'd taken too many risks
with the incredibly old, rusted hulk of a mess I'd been using (when it broke picking up a big block, I'd just stick
it back together with some more sloppy welds usually) and bought me a brandy-new one from the local big box
Chinesium emporium.
He made sure I knew it wasn't their
cheapest model, just the next-to-cheapest one.
One thing I found annoying at first (and damn odd, since I'd never seen it before) was that odd little caster wheel
located on front of the base of where the mast is bolted on. It's adjustable for height, but it seemed to always be dragging
and getting in the way, so I usually just kept it backed off the floor - thinking that it couldn't
possibly be worth anything
in the process.
Silly me - the Chinese never tack on crutches on things that don't need them, turns out - which I got a slight taste of
the first time I went to pick up the 440, cast iron bell + innards and the 18-spline....
That was the first time I'd felt the shiny new hoist actually strain some, enough to make me uncomfortable.
The legs aren't extendable on the dang thing, so to keep the load inside them a bit, I had to keep the boom at
the "1000 lb" pin indicator (which we all know is pushing things a bit) so
what the heck, I thought -
might be
time to deploy that little wheel after all?
(See that little wheel on an adjustable square tube back there?)
I'll be danged. Turns out, that little rascal DOES do "something" and the Chinese no doubt put it there to make up for
other design shortcuts (like non-extendable legs, perhaps?).
The rig got noticeably stronger, less wobbly - and I was able to install the whole mess in one shot by myself one
evening when the wife was out of town.
Boy, was she mad when she got back home - admittedly, rightfully so - but nothing got dropped and nothing fell on
me (for a change).
Token smug look the next day, once I could manage to walk back out to the garage:
Footnotes:
1. Yes, you'll see the apparently VERY important "straps" on the lift, as others have mentioned.
2. Yes....before you smart-asses ask, copious numbers of JACK STANDS were employed in the exercise.
3. No - under no circumstances am I stating that this lift is "any count", nor are my methods approvable.
Best of luck to Krooser in his project and as Dennis said, I'm just lurking to learn around here...
