The Bottle Jack

Welcome to NZ Beekeepers+
Would you like to join the rest of our members? Feel free to sign up today.
Sign up
5,764
6,323
canterbury
Experience
Commercial
The Bottle jack ..... this is a bit of a curved ball for Grant, and more of a questioned levelled at @tristan ........

A few years agp we bought a very expensive truck from a renowned truck builder in Germany.
It came with auto gearbox to avoid any driver error, a heated drivers seat, a very comfortable sleeper cab, not to mention cruise control, bluetoooth compatability and suspension to die for.

It also came with a 10 tonne capability Bottle Jack.

The bottle jack has never worked from day one.
Today I had a fiddle with it , and for the life of me could not get the darn thing to work. No pressure under pump, and despite fiddling, filling with oil, opening and closing valves , it is still not the jack you want to pull from the tool box when you've backed into a bank and bent the back light carrier and thought you'de just bottle jack it straight before you had to explain to the Boss why ....

I thought I might take the truck back and get a refund under warranty, except that the warranty is about done.

A bottle jack is a bottle jack . The darn thing should work, but it does,nt.
I am not happy .....
 
8,865
5,295
maungaturoto
Experience
Commercial
nothing like middle of the night with a load of bees on to find a tool doesn't work.

its a pump. check piston ring and one way valve.
also check the return valve (bit you unscrew to lower it) is actually sealing the return line.
i'm assuming its pumping, ie not rock solid like there is some crap blocking it.

reminds me of the pallet jack. it needed more oil. no oil fill port.
finally found a manual of a similar model. one of the main bolts is the fill port but they don't mark which one.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Alastair
5,764
6,323
canterbury
Experience
Commercial
The pump would never pump up from day one ..... it had no pressure, but plenty of oil.

There's a little screw at the bottom of the pump ..... I undid that and manually pulled the pump shaft out, then did it up. The jack was very 'springy', but when I released the prussure valve for it to go down, it did'nt ....
 
  • Like
Reactions: Grant
8,865
5,295
maungaturoto
Experience
Commercial
The pump would never pump up from day one ..... it had no pressure, but plenty of oil.

There's a little screw at the bottom of the pump ..... I undid that and manually pulled the pump shaft out, then did it up. The jack was very 'springy', but when I released the prussure valve for it to go down, it did'nt ....
sounds like a blockage in the oil passage.
 
  • Wow
  • Sad
Reactions: James and Grant
3,578
6,706
Hawkes Bay
Experience
Commercial
Bottle Jacks especially the big ones are pretty reliable. We used to use 2 for wax pressing and they were pumped up and down dozens of times a day for weeks on end. I have seen some that weren't entirely logical in their working and you had to have the to screw in exactly the right position but they are usually hard clockwise for up and counterclockwise for down.. I dragged one out from under the bench a few months ago and my guess it would be 20 years since it was last used and it worked fine, mind you it's British not one of those foreign jobs.
 
1,311
1,791
North Canterbury
Experience
Commercial
I dragged one out from under the bench a few months ago and my guess it would be 20 years since it was last used and it worked fine, mind you it's British not one of those foreign jobs.
If it’s anything like the British Mk1 Cortina in the shed there will be a nice wee puddle of oil under it
 
  • Like
Reactions: Grant
5,764
6,323
canterbury
Experience
Commercial
When eldest boy was at primary school he came home one friday afternoon singing a song they had learnt...
The chorus went like .... 'We'll fix it on the weekend, we'll fix it on the weekend'.

I pulled the bottle jack apart yesterday.
It was one of those simple life lessons.
I had no idea how the heck they worked, or indeed if they came apart, but stuck it in the vice and took the big wrench to it.
Hey presto, it all unscrewed, oil spewed out on the floor and I ended up with half a dozen bits sitting in the pool of oil minus an R clip that had sprung off into the Never Ever.

Seems like the seal on the ram is dodgy and the oil bypassing it, which would explain the lack of pressure. Funny that, brand new jack and a dodgy main seal.
We'll put a dollar seal in it and I might have saved myself the cost of a new jack, except that as a mate said, if you put in your charge out rate in at $100/hr times four, you could have bought eight Jacks.

But of course, there is the satisfaction that I might have 'Fixed it on the weekend'.
 
13
12
Dunedin
Experience
Semi Commercial
I had to buy a 10 ton bottle jack when I bought my wee truck back in '94. The trucks' tare weight was only 2.6 ton but I thought overkill would be best, especially when carrying the occasional 6 ton plus load. Back then the jack cost me just under $300. Was a Japanese brand and proved it's worth more than once whilst carrying a full load of honey. It was a pleasure to use, hardly any effort lifting the back end off the ground.
 


Top