The bitch tried to kill me

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Bluetribal said:
I always wondered if the tire under the frame would hold up in a situation like this. Glad you are OK and this is a good reminder to all of us, safety first...
And now I am questioning if I bought the 3 ton stands or the 6 ton stands. Going to have to check tomorrow.
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Well I finally took a look at my stands this weekend and I have Duralast ones from Auto Zone and they are made in China and are 5 ton stands. Thinking I just might upgrade. The one good thing about these are that they are a "U" pin with a coder pin that keeps them from wiggling out.
 
Haddock said:
I totally agree that there needs to be a more straight forward way to rate the stands. :mad:
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Jack and jack stand ratings should be safe working load plus breaking strength per stand.
 
Damn - now I've got to go check the rating and where Craftsman has theirs made. Sears online doesn't say where their jack stands are made. If the color combo is the same, I've got the 4 ton models. 12 ton has the same color scheme, but I doubt I spent that much on stands (still cheaper than your deductible I'd guess). All the Craftsman models have a similar ratchet/pin system like the one that failed on yours. Yikes!
 
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as I said in the other thread, IIRC, my Craftsman and HF both have the solid pawl.

The Craftsmans, 3 Tons Professional, were made in China also. Not surprisingly.
 
Haddock said:
Now those are jackstands :D. I actually looked at those as replacements, but they were too tall.


To answer questions, the tooth assembly failed. I'm not sure how other than it's bent downward. There's no way to get to it to look so when I'm up to it, I'm going to cut them apart and look.

The stand was placed under the frame right behind the mount for the control arms. It was only supporting one corner. I totally agree that there needs to be a more straight forward way to rate the stands. :mad:
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what did you mean by tooth assembly? the locking pawl or the riser with the teeth?
 
e9999 said:
what did you mean by tooth assembly? the locking pawl or the riser with the teeth?
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The pawl. The riser looks fine. It looks like the steel where the pawl attaches bent down. The pawl is still jammed in the teeth of the riser. The pawl is a solid piece of steel.

That was fun saying pawl that many times :D

IMHO it comes down to two things. As you have said here and on the other thread, the three ton stands are just too small, even if the math works. The second issue is quality control in the build of the stand and the quality of the steel.

There's really no way to know what controls there are in offshore brands, but you would think that companies like Sears and other large U.S. companies would do everything that they can to protect themselves from liability.

Harbor Freight isn't known for thier quality. They are known for being cheap. But, where they were made may have had nothing to do with the failure. There are a hundred things that may have happened over the years that I owned the stands to weaken them and it may have just been a one in a million fluke accident.

Just in case, I'm going to err on the side of caution and stick to domestic stands. It seems to me that with manufacturing in the U.S. being more regulated, the quality would be more uniform. My logic may be faulty though. As SOCALFJ said, anything can break.

My intention in posting what happened wasn't to get everyone to ditch thier stands. Just not to take for granted that because you are using safety equipment, you are totally safe. As I said in the other thread, we all don't need to run out to the garage and toss our stands. Just check them once in a while and absolutely use something larger than 3 ton stands. I hope it hasn't gotten too out of hand.

See. This is why I don't post much. Once I start, I can't shup up. :hillbilly:
 
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Checked last night - Craftsman 3 1/2 ton jack stands...made in China. :princess: even took a look at the Revereware kettle she uses for heating water for her tea...made in China. She's going to ditch it given all the horror stories about the crap in Chinese metals.

What's out there that's NOT Chinese made metal in jack stands?
 
Wow - glad you're alright!

I have 3 ton and 6 ton stands, but I will have to do something about these 3 ton stands, for sure.
 
Haddock said:
My intention in posting what happened wasn't to get everyone to ditch thier stands. Just not to take for granted that because you are using safety equipment, you are totally safe. As I said in the other thread, we all don't need to run out to the garage and toss our stands.
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Things that come out of the same factory tend to fail in the same way, the source of the problem could be poor engineering, poor material quality, or error of the assembly workers, if there is a fault in any of these it tends to be repeated over and over again,


Following that logic if I had a set of stands of the style you had fail they would be in the trash right now. no matter what color paint or what the labeled brand is if they look like they could have been made in the same factory I woudl trash them.

They were really cheap right? then not much lost tossing them out. decent stands are cheap enough and last a lifetime as long as you don't leave them outside.
 
Craftsman 12 ton stands - $120 IIRC from a quick glance yesterday.
 
Haddock said:
The pawl. The riser looks fine. It looks like the steel where the pawl attaches bent down. The pawl is still jammed in the teeth of the riser. The pawl is a solid piece of steel.

snip
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ah, so that's not what the guy was saying in the other thread about a bent piece of strip for the pawl then (his were 2 tons I think). It's really the horizontal pin/handle holding the wedge shaped pawl that bent if I understood you correctly? I can see that, if it's not thick enough or too soft.


I do indeed think that something made in the US has a better chance of being higher quality than the same thing made in China. Unfortunately, not that much simple hardware stuff left that's still made in the US and still affordable. Heck, we're not even making much steel anymore.
 
glad everyones ok

Tell you what, after I read this I told my bro in law that we are not going to try and install my lift and save money. Back I go to SD Trux :hhmm:
 
Hmm, I don't know if anyone has mentioned this, but if you get an attorney, you might have a case here especially if they do some investigating and find that others(like Brian in Oregon) have had this happen to them too.

Btw, glad you are okay.
 
nicholas said:
Geeze, thanks for the heads up. I have two sets of these HF jacks but mine are "6 ton", one set is unopened. I'm glad you mentioned this because I too thought they appeared to be strong. Has anyone heard of a 6 ton HF failure?

I'm going to take the unused set back to HF and get the costco ones since they are only 10$ more and seem to be a reputable brand.

Its good to hear that you made it out of that deadly situation with relatively minor injuries. Best wished for a full recovery.
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HF....'nuff said. I buy nothing from there that has anything to do with keeping me safe. That store just smells cheap. I'll get like a seal puller or something like that, but that's about it.
 
One more thing....you know, this would be a good opportunity for a "group buy" on some quality jack stands. hmm:hhmm:
 
JLH911 said:
One more thing....you know, this would be a good opportunity for a "group buy" on some quality jack stands. hmm:hhmm:
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Now that's a damn good idea ... :clap:
 
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I have 3 ton jackstands (similar to these) that my brother gave me for Christmas a few years back... I think he got it from Costco... Anyway they have the thick 1/2" steel pins to lock them in place which IMO makes them a little bit safer.
 
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