Restoration of a Hydraulic Floor Jack

A while back, my good friend Elena was cleaning up her yard. A classic garden shed full of vintage surprises clearly didn’t fail in bringhing to light interesting objects, from various tools to a (probably) 60s era motorbike. Among some stuff she was not interested in keeping, there was this hydraulic floor jack that, apart from some rust and dirt, did not seem to be in excessively bad conditions.

The most critical component I thought would be the oil cylinder that actuates the lifting arm, so I tested it before anything else. I lifted up the front of my dad’s SUV to give it some fair load, and I left it there for a couple of minutes to see if the piston and all the gaskets were in good enough conditions to still hold the pressure and the weight. Fortunately, this was the case, so I proceeded to unmount the jack in its every bit and get ready to clean off all the rust.

It took an awful lot of WD-40, scraping, and sanding, but the result was indeed pretty satisfying. For the less corroded parts I only cleaned them off with soap and sanded away any chipped off bits on the painted surface. A bit of acrylic spray paint and they looked brand-new.

At this point, the only thing left to do was re-greasing all the bearings and shafts, and reassembling it all together.

Voilà! Brand new!