PSA: Harbor Freight Jack Stands

[SD-KC]

If you're curious,I watched some YouTube videos on how these fail. It's interesting. Looks like the teeth slip out of the retainer. There's a channel called Murphy's Law Garage that has videos on the initial teeth slipping and the now weld failures.

[varg]

Yeah, but not completely. This is an organization, and their intermediaries, getting caught napping on QC more than just once. The upside is that they went beyond what they needed to for liability and consumer confidence reasons. If there was any earlier desire, or even after reported failure one, to do it right, how they could not have been doing daily or weekly batch testing prior to packaging.

lol! They don't pay people enough to care in the chinese factories these things come from.

[roguetoaster]

lol! They don't pay people enough to care in the chinese factories these things come from.

Yeah, the workers don't care, but management does, especially if you are a serious customer. Even in China overseas buyers have some level of control over products, and to not at least mandate regular outside sampling is inexcusable. That said, maybe they were, and the results were fudged, which is also a possibility, but like every failure of a product there are so many layers where anyone can flag a part or process, and not doing so, or failing to heed a warning is a failure of leadership. Clearly the prevailing culture in China makes this difficult, but companies that do business know this, and have to be factoring it in to their processes.

[Sh3rpak!ng]

I guess my main concern here is to understand if the failure mode is something I can obviously identify as an individual to then make a decision to return them the HF or not... From what I understand so far, the failure mode isn't necessarily related to the basic design but poor QC tied to a couple specific batches. I've got a total of 10 jack stands from HF x4 6 ton x4 3 ton and 2 others... for tools I use on a very regular basis it would not be ideal to get rid of them if I don't have to. But at the same time I certainly do not want to keep something that has any potential to severely injure me. Just want to make a rational decision that's all.

[varg]

Check the teeth, the locking pawls and the welds. If they're good than there's likely no reason to worry. If you're still concerned, buy some reputable stands of the tube and pin type or make some wooden block stands and rest easy. It's probably too much to ask for a company like HF to do reliable batch testing, and better off to not trust the cheapest possible safety equipment. My 2 HF jackstands are the big ones for trucks and in good shape, my other 2 are from who knows where but still seem fine to me. I still have the jack under the car too when I'm under it in most cases, so a jack stand and the jack would have to fail for it to fall.

[Sh3rpak!ng]

Found these on amazon. Similar ratchet type, but with an additional locking pin. Seems like a good safety improvement, and at that price point should be able to return all the HF stands and replace with these. Probably will do it.

[dstevenson]

Hi, so I assume the 3 ton jack stands are the typical smallest ones HF sells correct? It's easy to say:

1: Inspect them before use. Welds look fine until they break/fail
2: If you are looking for better quality, try and find stands that are not knocked off in China.

I think even the Heim Warner stands are from China. If anyone has a good quality jack stand please post the brand/price etc,

Thanks