If you’re a weekend mechanic in northern Missouri eyeing a used Forward two-post lift for the home garage, the seller’s price tag is the least important number on the listing. Before you hand over cash, you need to know whether your slab can actually hold the thing, and whether forward car lift parts are even available if something’s worn out or missing. We’ve fielded plenty of calls from guys who bought a lift off Facebook Marketplace, dragged it home, and then found out the arm pins were shot or the anchor bolts didn’t match anything sold anymore. Auto Lift Services stocks and sources forward car lift parts out of Ames, Iowa, and we ship into Missouri regularly, so we’ve seen this story play out more than once.
Find cylinders, arm pins, cables, and chains for Forward lifts and other major brands before you commit to a used purchase.
Why Exhaust and Driveline Access Changes What You Need
A lot of hobbyist buyers picture a lift purely for oil changes and tire rotations, but if you’re doing exhaust work, transmission swaps, or driveline repairs, the demands on the lift are different. You need full arm swing without the arms fouling on a mid-pipe, and you need lock positions that hold at the height you actually work at, not just the top and bottom. Worn arm restrictor pins or a stripped locking mechanism won’t show up in a two-minute test raise, but they matter the moment you’re wrestling a driveshaft loose at chest height.
This is exactly where forward car lift parts availability becomes a real question rather than a hypothetical one. Older Forward models used sheaves, chains, and cylinders that were common across a run of years, but not every part crosses over cleanly between generations. Before you buy, get the model number and serial number off the column tag and have someone check whether the arm pins, locks, and safety mechanisms are still supported. If a seller can’t tell you the model number, that’s a flag worth taking seriously, not a detail to skip past.
The Slab Is the Deal-Breaker, Not the Lift
We say this on every install call: the lift is only as good as the concrete underneath it. Most home garages in northern Missouri were poured for a car to sit on, not for a two-post lift to anchor into and lift 9,000 or 10,000 pounds off-center. Manufacturers typically want a minimum of four inches of properly cured concrete, and many specs call for closer to four and a half or five inches under the columns, with no mesh-only reinforcement substituting for real structural rebar.
Before you buy a used lift, go look at your own slab, not just the lift. Pull up any old paperwork on the pour, or have a contractor core-check the thickness near where the columns would sit. Mesh wire in a driveway slab is not the same as rebar in a garage floor rated for a lift, and anchors set into a thin or cracked pad will pull out under load — that’s not a parts problem, that’s a foundation problem, and no amount of forward car lift parts fixes bad concrete. We’d rather tell you to wait and pour a proper pad than sell you parts for a lift you can’t safely anchor.
What to Physically Inspect Before You Buy
Walk up to the lift with a checklist, not just your wallet. Check both cylinders for weeping fluid at the rod seal — a reseal or rebuild is doable, but it’s a cost to plan for, not a surprise to discover after delivery. Look at the equalizer cable or chain runs for fraying, kinks, or uneven tension between the two columns; mismatched cable tension is one of the most common issues we see on used two-post lifts, and it’s also one of the most common forward car lift parts orders we fill.
Check the safety locks on both columns by hand — they should engage cleanly with no hesitation, and the release mechanism should move smoothly without binding. Inspect the arm pins and pads for cracking or excessive wear, since worn pads can let a vehicle shift mid-lift. Ask the seller directly whether they have the original owner’s manual or install paperwork; that document usually has the model and serial number you’ll need when you call us for parts, and it tells us the load rating and column spacing so we quote the right hardware the first time.
Lead Times Are Real — Plan Around Them
One thing we tell every buyer: don’t assume forward car lift parts sit on a shelf ready to ship same-day. Cylinders in particular can run a four to six week lead time depending on the model, and specialty items like chain sheeves or certain lock kits sometimes need to be special-ordered rather than pulled from stock. If you’re buying a used lift with the intent of running it right away for a project, ask about part availability before the purchase, not after you’ve already scheduled the exhaust job around it.
We’ve had customers call about a backordered part on a drive-on lift and have to push their whole shop schedule back weeks waiting on it. That’s fine for a commercial bay with other lifts to fall back on — it’s a lot more painful for a hobbyist with one lift and one weekend to get the car back on the road. If you know going in that a cylinder or a set of cables might need replacing, order early and treat the wait as part of the purchase timeline, not an afterthought.
Freight, Delivery, and What Your Driveway Needs
Getting the lift itself, or replacement components, to a rural northern Missouri address is its own logistics question. Full lift columns ship freight and need a forklift or a couple of strong friends and a pallet jack — most residential deliveries don’t have a loading dock, so plan for how it comes off the truck. Smaller items like cylinders, chains, and hardware kits ship standard ground in most cases, though we can arrange overnight or two-day air if you’re in a bind and need the shop back open.
Ask the seller, or ask us, whether the lift components come apart into manageable pieces or whether you’re looking at one large crate. A driveway with a steep grade or narrow gate access can turn a simple delivery into a half-day project. We’d rather walk you through this before the truck shows up than have you standing in the driveway trying to figure out how to get a column off a lift gate by yourself.
Matching Parts to the Actual Model
Forward built several different two-post configurations over the years, and the parts are not universal across all of them. A stack adapter, an arm pin, or a chain sheave that fits one generation may not fit another, even if the lifts look nearly identical sitting side by side in a garage. This is why we always ask for the model number and serial number before quoting forward car lift parts — guessing wastes everyone’s time and sometimes results in a part that arrives and doesn’t bolt up.
If you’re buying used and the tag is missing or unreadable, take clear photos of the column base, the arm assembly, and the cylinder before you call anyone for parts. We can often identify a model from those photos alone, or at minimum narrow it down enough to order the right stock. Skipping this step and ordering blind is how buyers end up with a part sitting on a shelf that doesn’t match their lift.
Get a Second Opinion Before You Sign
The single best move a hobbyist buyer can make is getting an independent set of eyes on a used lift before money changes hands, even over the phone with photos and a video of it cycling up and down. We can often tell from a short video whether the cables are tracking evenly, whether the locks are engaging properly, and whether the cylinders look original or already rebuilt. That fifteen-minute conversation can save you from buying someone else’s problem.
We’re not going to tell you every used Forward lift is a bad idea — plenty of them run for decades with basic maintenance. But we’ve also seen buyers get burned by hidden slab issues, mismatched forward car lift parts, and lifts that were quietly retired by a shop for a reason nobody mentioned in the ad. A quick call before you buy costs you nothing and might save you a lift you can’t actually use in your own garage.
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