Rebuilding a Hydraulic Floor Jack

This is a 1 1/4 ton hydraulic floor jack my father passed on to me.  He bought it new during the 1970s. It began to leak down a little a few months ago. The lift arm no longer rises when the handle is pumped up and down. (I was able to pull the lift arm up by hand and it settled slowly enough that I could make a photo with the arm partially raised.)

I checked to be sure it was adequately filled with fluid, but that was not the problem.  A few months before this problem, there were bubbles coming up through the vents at the filler plug.  At that time I raised the lift arm with the handle, released the jack's valve, and let the arm fall slowly several times to purge air from the system.  Finally, one day, the lift arm would not rise at all.  If filling with fluid and purging air from the system do not restore function, there is probably internal leakage, even though fluid is not leaking from the jack.  From what I have read, forty years of service is a reasonable time for a hydraulic jack to operate before it needs a rebuild. 

A word of caution: Rebuilding this jack presented several challenges that seemed almost insurmountable at the occurrence of each.  Rebuilding this jack was much more difficult than simply replacing a few "O" rings, and it required more than the very few hours some say are required for rebuilding a jack. Further, I had to make several special tools to get the job done. If you want to attempt rebuilding a jack and you are not a member of Instructables, I would encourage you to pick a password and a screenname, and join.  Doing that will allow you to download a PDF of this Instructable for printing, or to view at any time later on your computer, assuming you wish to consult what I have done as a guide. 

When putting fluid into a jack never use anything other than hydraulic jack fluid.  Do not use motor oil or brake fluid. Brake fluid makes the seals swell.  

At this link you will find one man's description of how he rejuvenated his twenty-five year old jack by flushing its insides with a solvent, letting it dry completely, and filling it with fresh hydraulic jack fluid. It could be worth a try. I did find one manual for a floor jack that said the fluid should be changed every year. The procedure is to place the jack over a large pan, remove the filler plug, turn the jack on its side and let it drain. Then fill it again.

Step 1 Parts Kit

Several firms sell rebuild kits for hydraulic jacks. I found Blackhawk Parts and ordered parts on-line. My jack came with the Fleet brand name. It was sold through NAPA Auto Parts.  It should have been easy to find my jack among the listings for Fleet jacks on the Blackhawk Parts web page and order the appropriate rebuild kit, but it was not.  So, I sent an e-mail to Blackhawk Parts with the name of the manufacturer and the model number.  It is good that I did.  The kit I need is not the one I would have thought, but is actually for a Lincoln/Walker jack. Although my jack has the Fleet name, it was actually made by someone else.  I paid about $45 for the parts kit, plus $11 shipping. That is a fairly typical price for a rebuild kit. 

Some suggest saving money by simply buying a few new "O" rings at a local hardware store, but that would not be a sufficiently complete rebuild. The photo shows the parts kit I received. There are 19 separate parts in the kit, including a number of "O" rings. Some are of neoprene molded to special shapes. There are also some steel balls and copper washers.

I decided not to open the parts kit until I was certain the parts it contains match what I see on my jack as I dismantle it.  I will have less difficulty exchanging an unopened parts kit than I would have trying to exchange a kit I had opened, in case the wrong one was shipped to me.  In the photo you can also see the paperwork that came with the parts kit.  It will help, too, if an exchange were necessary.  And, I do not want to risk losing any parts by opening the bag early and having something roll out.

 

Comments

[jamilks]

Phil,aloha from the Big Island~ Thank you for taking the time to document what is in essence a labor of love...love of the environment and respect for your father...You are correct in assuming that many would just replace this with a cheaper import, and while I am an avid recycler myself, there are times when I have to ask what my time is worth....'Course with the economy as it is now, it is worth less and less so it is more worth taking the time and expending the energy to fix things rather than replace them. I have an OLD 3 ton Sears/Craftsman brand jack which won't go up and I suspect the piston/valve....Reading your instructable encourages me to dive in....I'll just need to come up with model numbers and search the net for parts. Thanks again and keep up the good work!

[Phil B]

We spent ten days on the Big Island back about 2005 using a time share condo in Kona as our "base." Our hosts have been there many times and showed us just about everything. That visit became the cause for this Instructable on building a nut cracker that can handle macadamia nuts without crushing the meats.

Get in touch with Blackhawk Parts or someone similar. Blackhawk can probably tell you who made those jacks for Sears and can probably get the right parts kit to you.

Thank you for your comment.

[dani_101]

Hi Phil,

Im a grade 9 student and im having trouble finding exactly what parts are used to make up a hand-driven hydraulic car jack. Could you prehaps help me?

Thank you!

[Phil B]

From your description you must have a bottle jack. I understand you are asking which parts kit you would need to rebuild the jack more than what parts go into a hydraulic bottle jack. I would click on the link I gave for Blackhawk parts and ask them. They are very helpful. Send any information you can find about make and model. Send some photos with your inquiry. If anyone can help you, they should be able to do so. Thank you for asking. If you are asking what parts go into the make up of a hydraulic bottle jack, they would be very similar to those in my floor jack, except there may be fewer steel balls. One of my steps shows an exploded diagram of a bottle jack.

[mattSP]

great instructible Phil. Thanks for sharing it.

[Phil B]

Thank you, Matt. I hope you can use it. I wish I had been able to say, "This job is simple as A, B, C!" But, it was a little more complicated than that. Still, a jack you would rebuild may be easier to take apart than mine was.

[NaturalCrafter]

I had to read it and learned something new. Though we don't have a jack we did inherit a huge vice which I have no idea what you would use one that big for in the home..So I like to just see how things are put together. Thanks for the great instruction.

[Phil B]

Thank you. A huge vise anchored to something very heavy or to something set into a concrete floor so it cannot move would have been a help for rebuilding this jack. I managed by bolting the bottle jack unit back into the jack's frame and using the frame for leverage. You may yet need to rebuild a jack one day. Thank you for reading my Instructable. I like to know how things work and to see what other people have done, too.

[Skipper333333]

Nice instructible! I'm a hydraulic specialist and I don't think I could explain the procedure as well as you did!
Check out IFPS.org
Alan Hale

[Phil B]

Dear Alan,

Thank you for your gracious comment. I hoped someone like you might see this and comment, especially in case I might have given totally false information, and you would correct me. This is my first intrusion into hydraulics, other than replacing a couple of brake lines on a previous family automobile and bleeding air from the system afterward. As I mentioned in the Instructable and in response to a previous comment, I needed to rebuild my jack; but, could not find all of the information I felt I needed. I wanted to document what I did, should I ever need it again, and also make it available to anyone else in the situation in which I found myself.

Thanks again. I hope to run into you on this site again.

Phil

[red9er]

it is of little importance, but brake fluid doesn't make seals swell. i am currently taking an auto brakes repair class and you're thinking of antifreeze and tranny fluid. my instructor in his earlier year worked on mercedies-benz and he specifically said, if u put tranny fluid in the brake lines, the seals will swell, and u'll have to overhaul the entire system and replace the seals.

[Phil B]

Thank you for the information. It was a warning I read in someone's post about hydraulic jacks. I once poured some power steering fluid into the braking system of my car absentmindedly by mistake and had to spend a couple of hundred dollars to get things made right again. Since that time I have been more on guard about what bottle I grab.

[red 9er]

lol i bet that was fun :P and any one else reading this, liquids in ur car can not be mixed and matched! they r formulated and designed for different jobs, even if 2 different liquids are glycol based, there are different substances in some not found in others, like a seal swell additive.

[Phil B]

As I said, it was an absentminded mistake.

[technosasquatch]

perfect timing, I need to repair my father's jack. Also a super through instructable!

[Phil B]

Thank you. I made it for people just like you. I wanted it to be thorough. As I mentioned, I had trouble finding good detailed information on the Internet and wanted to make available what I wish someone had published earlier so I could have made use of it. Please take notice of the mention I made that information about the size of the balls in the check valve (photo text boxes in steps 8 and 13) contains errors in the PDF version, but has been corrected in the on-line version of this Instructable. Basically, the smallest ball is used in the safety overload valve. The medium ball is the first ball to go into the iron block that is the base of the bottle jack unit. A short spacer (or possibly a spring) is on top of that, followed by the largest ball. There is another spacer or spring followed by the screw cap.

I always pray that my Instructables will be a blessing to someone who needs them. Thank you for letting me know about your need. Please report back when you are finished. I would enjoy hearing how it went for you.

[rimar2000]

Awesome, Phil!

I confess I did not read fully, this is a full super instructable.

[Phil B]

Thank you, Osvaldo. It is good that you did not read all of it. This Instructable is for the person who wants to rebuild a jack. There is no reason to read every word until you are faced with a jack that no longer works. Then all of the details will be very important and very interesting.

There are very few helps available for the person who needs to rebuild a jack. I am hoping this will be found by those who need it.

Rebuilding my jack was more difficult than I expected from what I had read. I needed to make several special tools. Several times I thought I had encountered a roadblock I would not overcome. A couple of times I thought I had ruined a critical part and would need to send the whole thing to the junk.

Doing this took quite a lot of time over at least a week. Still, I am finding small, silly mistakes.

Thank you for looking.