By Joe Gresh
One of the many red lines crossed on the way to becoming moto-saturated is owning a motorcycle lift. If a rider finds that he needs a lift then things have gone too far and he needs to reevaluate what the hell is actually up.
I’ve wanted a lift for many years but haven’t been able to justify the expense or space requirements a lift brings to the table. (ha!, get it? Table?)
This particular lift from Harbor Freight cost around $300 when it first appeared on my radar 30 years ago. At the time my shop was a 10×10 metal shed and there just wasn’t enough space to park the thing.
Turns out it was a good thing I didn’t take the plunge as my shed in Florida was flooded several times and the lift would have corroded away. (Ha! Get it? Plunge-flooded? I kill myself!)
My recent acquisition of a pair of Honda Dreams and subsequent crawling around on battered knees got me thinking about a lift again. I have the room now. Floods are unlikely where my shop is situated and the HF sale price of $399 defied quantitative easing, inflation-tracking and recent tariffs on China. In short, $399 seemed like a pretty good deal.
You definitely get your money’s worth in weight as the lift was a heavy bitch to load and unload. Plan on having a few strong backs to move the lift. The guys at Harbor Freight loaded it into the truck with a forklift but I don’t have any strong backs available at home. I had to slide the crate out of the truck and let it fall the last two feet from the tail gate. It wasn’t really a free fall, I had a floor jack mid-crate to act as a fulcrum when the crate cleared the tailgate. Think of it as a controlled crash landing. The crate took the fall in stride and its contents were undamaged by my rough handling. Plus the lift is a sturdy thing, it would take some doing to bend it.
The lift comes 99% assembled with only the wheels, tie down points and tire vise to bolt on. If you’re handy 1/2 hour should see the project through. There are a few niggling issues though.
Like most things from China Freight the lift needed a few modifications. It goes with the $399 price point.
China must have different size grease guns because all of the grease fitting were slightly undersized and didn’t fit a US style grease gun. Attempts to grease the various grease points just pumped gook all around the nipple. I replaced the China-sized nipples with US-sized nipples and the pressurized grease flowed to the desired locations with no ooze-out around the fitting.
The owners manual that came with the lift recommended checking the hydraulic oil in the ram. It was slightly low so I put in a few ounces of fork oil. That was the easy part. Getting the little rubber plug back into the ram housing was a struggle with the lift in the lowered position. I finally gave up and raised the lift for access. It was still a PITA to get the plug back in.
As delivered, the tire clamp installs in the wrong place. Down on the floor, it doesn’t provide much resistance to tipping leverage. There are many internet solutions for this issue but all of them required spending additional money. I figure at $400 you shouldn’t need to buy more stuff just to keep the bike from falling over.
The thriftiest way to fix the tire clamp is to relocate the thing on top of the tire stop. This gave me a chance to practice poor welding on a mission critical part. The sliding part of the clamp was lightly welded so I slathered on a bit more metal.
Once the clamp was in place I added a piece of angle iron to prevent jaw-spread, a common occurrence among older motorcyclists. Drilling two extra holes in the angle iron gave me another, more forward attachment point for tie down straps.
This all sounds like a lot of work but it took maybe 2-3 hours and that number includes thinking about things. I’ve got the Dream on the lift for its maiden voyage and it seems to be stable. I give the lift 5 stars for value and 2 deep vein thrombosis’ for HF still not quite getting it right after all these years. If you need a motorcycle lift and don’t mind tinkering and welding a bit the HF lift on sale is hard to beat.
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One massive sign of maturity in motorcycling is seeing the value of a van. The next is the value of a lift. I have one of these I bought lightly used. The key to keeping it from leaking is to let the lift rest on the bar stopper and bleed the pump pressure off right away.
The wheel chock kid is a good one too. Kudos. I’m still not 100% confidential when there is a heavy bike on there – but it works well for bikes under 500 lbs. I use straps and test rock the bike to be fully confident.
A very uplifting blog Joe. Weld done.
I never heard anyone complain about the wheel chock before. Nice work if you have a can of red rustoleum .
Maybe the old versions had a diff chock?
I don’t recall them having a drop out for rear wheel work. That’s a nice feature .