crown elec walkie pallet jack areas of concerns buying used?

   / crown elec walkie pallet jack areas of concerns buying used? #1  

disney

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Sorry if this is in the wrong section, didn't really know where to put it. I am considering an electric pallet jack to help move stuff around the shop. Manual pallet jack getting to be too hard to move w/out additional muscle. I don't know much about them, but figure that batteries would be expensive to replace. I would only need it to work for short periods of time, and then could always recharge it. Someone has an older crown wp2000 series, asking 1500$ with new batteries, but have not verified what batteries were installed.

So; what goes bad, that i should be looking for, and how to check/test for issue?

Thank you for any, and all help.
 
   / crown elec walkie pallet jack areas of concerns buying used? #2  
This is sort of a small AND a big topic.. depends how far into these topics you want to get?

So battery care is a huge topic. I assume this would have lead-acid batteries in it.
 
   / crown elec walkie pallet jack areas of concerns buying used? #3  
We had a crown at work for many years. Not sure how they'd work for small/little home use. The crown was a good one though and required little maintenance.
 
   / crown elec walkie pallet jack areas of concerns buying used? #4  
I meant to follow up on my vague comment and forgot for a week..

I have an old Yale that i think was a good investment for $250 needing batteries, but it's rare to find them that cheap.

Mine now needs a cylinder rebuild and also has an intermittent leaking solenoid causing it to leak down under weight some times but not others.

It is just another electric/hydraulic machine around to have to keep up with, so keep that in mind. A non-powered pallet jack is pretty darn reliable, but the extra usefulness of an electric pallet jack comes with all the possible maintenance/repair downsides along with its capabilities.

For example, I have lifted cars with mine in a silly and lazy way: use 2x4/4x4 blocks to lift car, click jackstand up, drop pallet jack, add another 4x4, jack it up further, click jackstand up, etc. I have used it to push broken cars into my shop with boards as well. I have used it to lift and maneuver my small 3000lb skid steer around in my shop when it was not running. I consider it a very versatile and handy tool with a little creativity, but it's very limited off-pavement. I had a solid-tire 4000lb forklift i traded away because it was so useless off pavement. The pallet jack is not THAT useless off pavement but still pretty bad. Maybe that's so obvious it doesn't need to be said.. but i said it anyway.

As far as batteries, if you don't need much runtime you can do the battery setup very cheaply. You just figure out what voltage it runs on, buy enough lawnmower or car batteries to add up to that voltage, and rewire it to suit however you have those batteries sitting in the battery compartment (basically, make the wires reach lol). As far as charging, if the unit comes with a charger you can continue to use it pretty much regardless of whether you've got, for example, 24v worth (4x) of GC2 deep cycle golf cart batteries, or 24v worth (2x) of group U1 riding lawnmower batteries. They will all work 'well enough' with a charger designed for the other if it's as 'dumb' of a charger as they usually are that works purely on voltage setpoints and doesn't monitor current or battery temperature.

If the unit DOESNT come with a charger, you can easily assemble one for about $50 out of 2 components: A desktop power supply, and a solar charge controller. Examples for 24v: Power supply $23 Charge controller $10

Regardless of the fact that they say 'solar' charge controller, they are just.. a charge controller. They will take all kinds of power sources within a certain operating window, and feed them to a battery in a controlled way based on adjustable voltage setpoints.

I have my entire house off grid with a bit over half a dozen solar controllers and about a dozen power supplies around here in addition to the batteries/inverters/panels so i can say from personal experience that building a DIY battery charger this way does work and gives you much greater control than any other battery charger of similar price/power.
 
   / crown elec walkie pallet jack areas of concerns buying used?
  • Thread Starter
#5  
I would like to thank everyone for their replies. Especially Mr. Vigo327. I almost wish the guy wouldn't have replaced the batteries, as I can get good used 12v auto batteries for next to nothing. Work has been keeping me too busy to allow time to try to purchase it, but I will see if still available.
 
   / crown elec walkie pallet jack areas of concerns buying used? #6  
Only problems I witnessed are operator error where twice they crashed off the lift gate in pitch black darkness...

They are not built to be launched.
 
 
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