Hello, everyone, it's been a while.   I have a question that I would like an opinion on.   I have one of the older cherry pickers that I bought way back in 1990.  It was a standard hoist that did not fold up.   Way back in 1995, I got the idea to modify it to fold up so it would take up much less space, similar idea to the ones with legs that fold up you can buy now.    Back then I added 2 more casters to the middle, then cut the legs off.  I went to a metal shop and bought square tubing that the legs slid into, and welded those on the base, then I also added two pieces on the back to hold the legs in storage position.  That is where I stopped.   It has held up all these years and never had a problem, and its had some big heavy engines on it.   
The problem was I have still never been happy with it.  The reason being, when you disconnect the jack it will pivot and set fine, but when you lower the boom down, it still sticks out pretty far.  In my mind I wanted it to fold up fairly flat.  The early booms did not have much of an raised area where it attaches to the pivoting point like the newer folding ones do.    I recently bought a piece of square tubing that I am going to weld onto the boom.  What this will do is have the effect of raising the height of the boom at level.   So, I feel the hydralic jack needs to be extended an equal amount.  First I thought about just raising the area where the jack is attached to the vertical post, but I am not in love with that idea.
Here is what I am thinking and what I want an opinion on.  I have come up with two ideas.   First one, just a simple piece of square tubing or round tubing to use as an extension of the jack.  The diameter of the jack piston is 1.003.  and the area where goes through the boom is wide enough that it would be no problem fitting.  I have always thought that area loose fitting anyway.   Or my second thought, was to buy a new hydralic jack, and cut the extension length that I need off the old jack and then slide a piece of thick pipe or square tubing over the bottom of that, that would then attach to the jack.   This would be roughly a 3" to 4" extension.   My concerns are the overall strength of this piece.    Thoughts???  

Yes, I have thought about just buying a new cherry picker as the price has come way down on them over the years.  I went and looked at the one HF sells, and even in folding mode, the boom does not fold down as vertical as I would like.  Also the metal on the newer ones seems much lighter.  

https://www.harborfreight.com/2-ton-capacity-foldable-shop-crane-69514.html

tubing to make the extension something like this
http://www.speedymetals.com/pc-3468-8242-1-12-od-x-219-wall-dom-steel-tube.aspx

tubing to join on a piece of jack to make a cap to fit on top of hydralic jack
https://www.speedymetals.com/pc-3483-8242-1-34-od-x-375-wall-dom-steel-tube.asp
 

Last edited by Greg B (6/02/2019 12:23 PM)