I recently needed to jack up a midsize car (Toyota Camry) to do some repair work, and thought it would be a good idea to get a new jack, since my old jack is, well, old (as in 30 or 40 years). So I took advantage of a super coupon and got an aluminum 1.5 ton jack from Harbor Freight. I wanted aluminum so it wouldn't be so heavy. Steel jacks are quite heavy for those of us over 60.
The short news is that this jack really performed excellently. At one point I had to leave the car up overnight. I had the car on the jack, with a jack stand almost touching the frame (in case the jack failed), and I put my old jack under the car also as a triple-redundancy measure. Next morning, the car was still a quarter of an inch above the jack stand. The jack had not gone down at all. My old jack, on the other hand, had lost about six inches and was sitting there useless. If it had had the weight of the car on it, no doubt the car would have been sitting on the jack stand. And without the jack stand, the car would have been on the floor.
Now, I know you're not supposed to leave a car on the jack like this, but I was just curious.
So, at this point with only a little use over a few days, kudos to Harbor Freight and its house brand, Pittsburgh Automotive for its 1.5 ton aluminum jack, racing style, rapid pump, low profile.
I like the fact that the release valve is integrated with the handle pumping position so that you don't need to remove the handle from the pumping position in order to lower the jack (as is the case with my old jack).
Item 60569, So far, I'm very pleased.
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