car wheel dollies

Hey guys,

  In my wide 2 car garage, I've been parking three cars for many years. I've been doing so with the use of my floor jack, and 4 HF wheel dollies. Everything works great aside from the one time after one of our birthday parties for our kids when the floor jack slipped off of the cross member of the RX-7, and crunched the oil cooler a bit, and pushed the radiator cap into the underside of the hood. It's still labor intensive to jack up the car, and place or remove the dollies.

I now see that you can buy the fancy jack em up style Pittsburgh ones at HF for like $90 a piece, or $130 for the Daytona one. This might make my life a lot easier, but I wonder about the quality of these. The car I move on the dollies is the RX-7 which isn't very heavy. Should I buy the fancier Daytona ones or are teh Pittsburgh ones fine? Any experience, or words of wisdom are appreciated.

We have a set of the Daytona ones in the shop. I would rate them as "Fine".

They're heavy and not much fun to carry around. We got a cart for them, which means we now have a heavy cart of them to move around. 

They don't fit very large tires - say the back tires of a pickup. They just don't open far enough. Small things like an RX7 or any car should be fine. 

I bought a set of the fixed black HF ones 6 or 7 years ago and the casters were absolute crap, made it a huge pain to move vehicles around. Eventually gave them away to a buddy. Dunno if they've improved but I would seek out nicer ones today.

The old black "tray" style are really only good for up to maybe 1000lb per axle.  Otherwise, very hard to get the casters to caster (I had to use a large screwdriver).

I have the higher end (Daytona) roller style now.  Far easier to get on the car (don't have to jack), much easier to move the car (but it still takes a bit of bumping to get the casters turned).  One downside is they tend to stick out from the side of the car a bit more (the "pump" handle and casters are outside the wheel).

I have a set of the cheaper gray ones from HF.  I love them with a couple of caveats.  The casters could be better.  Heavy cars are sometimes hard overcome inertia, but once rolling even my half-ton extended cab shoves easily.  Light cars are a breeze.  Tire max width is 255 or 265 before it starts getting sketchy.  I've moved on 285's but wouldn't leave the car elevated on them.  The biggest thing is that the pump pedal sticks out from the side making the car wider.  You can't shove it up tight against a wall, for example.

This isn't your question but I have a set of the original GoJacks that I used for years.   They are absolutely great though they were too narrow (I want to say 9.5" wide rollers) and even a 245 would interfere with the jack frame.  I still use them from time to time for random things, like when my neighbor brought home a 2500lb contraption for polishing countertops.  

I'd only be moving the RX-7 around which is only about 2500 lbs. 

anyone have idea for decent priced casters for the black cradle  style rollers from HF , 

Has anyone made them more "off-road"  so they can roll over hard dirt.....

Stay safe

You could probably find industrial grade casters on Grainger or McMaster Carr website. The problem is good casters will be expensive and you need 16.

I have an older set of the black cradle steel dollies that I beleive are Larin brand.  They have some steel wheels and seem to roll fairly well with my Integra on them and fit the 205 hoosiers pretty well.  I have a different set of dollies that are similar to the furnature/moving dollies but have nicer castors where one per dolly lock- the car rolls a lot nicer on those but they are a fair bit taller. 

If you want casters, buy furniture dollies.  They are cheap, and there is no reason to only have four per dolly.

Massachusetts decided to have a tax free weekend like they tend to do most years. Went to the local Harbor Freight and bought these.

Of course the store we went to first only had 3, so we had to drive about 40 minutes to another store to get the 4th. 

Put them together last night and got them under the RX-7. 

All tucked in. These roll so much better than the wheel dollies I was using before, and I don't need to use the floor jack now. Pretty happy so far. 

Congrats! 

Even though this particular problem is solved.. i still want to agree with Pete that there's no reason to stop at 4 casters per dolly. You can buy a large pack of casters on Amazon for like ~$2/ea and just majorly increase your caster count as long as you've got flat surfaces to attach them to. 

The other thing is if the only hassle is getting the car on and off the dollies and you have a compressor in the garage, I would consider getting an air bag jack. They aren't super cheap but they're cheaper than 4 jacking wheel dollies and they go up and down quickly and are hard to damage a car with. 

Vigo (Forum Supporter) said:

Congrats! 

Even though this particular problem is solved.. i still want to agree with Pete that theres' no reason to stop at 4 dollies. You can buy a large pack of casters on Amazon for like ~$2/ea and just majorly increase your caster count as long as you've got flat surfaces to attach them to. 

 

The other thing is if the only hassle is getting the car on and off the dollies and you have a compressor in the garage, I would consider getting an air bag jack. They aren't super cheap but they're cheaper than 4 jacking wheel dollies and they go up and down quickly and are hard to damage a car with. 

Air bag jack? Go on. Never heard of such a thing.

i bought an old set of the black HF dollies a couple years ago. they didnt' roll or steer very well. step 1: spray bearings and axle with PB.  Step 2: finger-bang some wheel bearing grease into 'em.  Step 3: enjoy your new rolly-steery dollies.

AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:

i bought an old set of the black HF dollies a couple years ago. they didnt' roll or steer very well. step 1: spray bearings and axle with PB.  Step 2: finger-bang some wheel bearing grease into 'em.  Step 3: enjoy your new rolly-steery dollies.

Finger-bang is a funny term.

In reply to Mazdax605 :

that's why i say it. 

anyone have a link to the  casters on Amazon that you would replace the HF ones with ?

or pictures of how yours turned out !

Thanks

AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:

i bought an old set of the black HF dollies a couple years ago. they didnt' roll or steer very well. step 1: spray bearings and axle with PB.  Step 2: finger-bang some wheel bearing grease into 'em.  Step 3: enjoy your new rolly-steery dollies.

I do that to brand new ones before I assemble them - take apart the casters and apply grease to the axle and bearings.  Makes them work much better, but they are still steel wheels so a clean floor is something of a requirement.

In reply to Vigo (Forum Supporter) :

I always thought about some simple ramps to just drive onto the dollies.  Would need some way of securing them to the dolly to prevent some Three Stooges hijinks though

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

In reply to Vigo (Forum Supporter) :

I always thought about some simple ramps to just drive onto the dollies.  Would need some way of securing them to the dolly to prevent some Three Stooges hijinks though

and a way to stop the car without its tires touching the ground, because there *will* be some momentum

In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :

Not really all that much, especially given that unless you have a really high ground clearance vehicle, you're still going to have to jack one end.

I play with solid axle cars, a floorjack under the diff is way less work than jacking a suspension to full droop before the tires even come off the ground.  To the point that I sometimes think about making a hookey thingy to hold the front suspension compressed to make tire changing easier.  Just a J hook that can drop through the strut tower or something and grab the control arm.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

I ASSumed the ramps were on all four dollies

There are different kinds of airbag jacks. Some are 'just' big bags that are typically used for off-road recovery, and some of them look like actual vehicle suspension airbags mounted to a rolling frame.  Unless you planned to also stick it in one of your 4wds and take it somewhere, i'd probably get the floor jack variety for this use. 

examples

Vigo (Forum Supporter) said:

There are different kinds of airbag jacks. Some are 'just' big bags that are typically used for off-road recovery, and some of them look like actual vehicle suspension airbags mounted to a rolling frame.  Unless you planned to also stick it in one of your 4wds and take it somewhere, i'd probably get the floor jack variety for this use. 

examples

Those are pretty cool, but have to be more expensive than the $89 a piece I paid for the new dolly jack things.