Every few weeks somebody calls us from a farm shop driveway or an auction lot with their phone in one hand and a tape measure in the other, asking whether the lift in front of them is worth buying. That conversation is why we put together a real used car lift buying checklist — not a generic list of bullet points, but the same questions we ask ourselves before we agree to move, install, or warranty a secondhand column. We’re based in Ames, Iowa, and we install and service lifts across the state every week, which means we’ve also been the ones telling someone their bargain two-post needs more in parts than they paid for it. This checklist is meant to keep you out of that phone call.
Before you buy used, price the parts it needs. Search cables, cylinders, arm pins, lock assemblies and slider blocks by brand and model so you know the real total cost of that used lift.
Start With The Data Tag, Not The Paint
The first line on our used car lift buying checklist has nothing to do with how the lift looks. Find the serial or data tag — usually riveted to the inside of a column, sometimes on the powerside near the motor mount. That tag gives you the manufacturer, model number, capacity, and serial. Without it you are buying an anonymous piece of steel, and anonymous steel is nearly impossible to get parts for. We field calls constantly from people who bought a two-post with no tag and no paperwork, and the honest answer is that we can sometimes identify a lift from photos of the carriage and arm design, but not always, and never with certainty about capacity.
A readable tag also tells you whether the lift was ever ALI certified, which matters if you’re a commercial shop dealing with an insurance inspector. Take a clear photo of the tag and send it to us before you commit — we can usually tell you within a few minutes whether parts are still available, whether that model had known weak points, and whether the capacity claim on the seller’s listing is real. A 9,000 lb lift advertised as a 10,000 lb lift is common in resale listings, and capacity is not something you want to guess at when a loaded dually rolls onto the arms.
Cables, Chains, And The Parts That Fail Quietly
Equalizer cables and lifting chains are where used lifts hide their real condition. On a two-post, run your hand along every accessible foot of cable while wearing a glove — broken strands catch. Look at the swage fittings and the threaded ends for corrosion, and check whether the adjustment nuts have been run all the way out, which usually means the cables have already stretched past their useful service life. Frayed, kinked, or heavily rusted cables are not a deal-breaker on price, but they are a mandatory replacement, and a set of cables plus labor turns a cheap lift into a mid-priced one fast.
Sheaves matter as much as cables. If the pulleys are grooved, seized, or wobbling on their pins, they will chew a brand-new cable set in a season. On four-post lifts, check all four cables at the sheaves under the runways where they collect grit and moisture, and on a lift that spent years in a gravel-floor pole barn, expect the worst. We also look at slider blocks, arm restraint gears, and lock ladder teeth. A rounded-off lock tooth is a safety issue, not a cosmetic one. Price the replacements before you negotiate — that’s the whole point of running a used car lift buying checklist instead of eyeballing it.
Hydraulics: Cylinders, Hoses, And The Power Unit
Ask the seller to cycle the lift under load if there’s any way to do it safely, or at minimum run it empty up and down twice while you watch. What you want to see is smooth, even travel with no drift after the motor stops. A lift that settles an inch over ten minutes has a cylinder seal, a check valve, or a fitting leaking, and while seal kits are affordable, a scored or pitted cylinder barrel is not — that’s a full cylinder replacement plus fluid and bleeding time.
Look under the power unit for the tell-tale dark stain on the concrete. Pull the reservoir cap and check the fluid: milky means water intrusion, and gritty means somebody ran it dry or ignored a failing pump. Inspect every hose for cracking near the crimps and for the flattened spots that come from being pinched during a previous move. Motors are usually the least of your worries, but confirm the voltage and phase — we get a lot of Iowa buyers who score a great deal on a three-phase lift for a single-phase shop and then discover the swap costs more than they saved. Our full used car lift inspection checklist walks through the hydraulic side in more detail.
Concrete, Ceiling, And Whether It Fits Your Shop At All
The best-condition lift in the world is worthless if your building can’t take it. Before you buy, measure your slab thickness — core sample or drill test if you can — and know your concrete PSI. Most two-post lifts want four to six inches of properly cured concrete at 3,000 PSI minimum, and older residential garage slabs in Iowa frequently come in thinner than that, especially near expansion joints and edges. New concrete work is a real expense that belongs on your used car lift buying checklist right next to the purchase price.
Then measure height. Clearfloor two-post lifts need meaningful overhead room for the crossbar and hose runs; a baseplate model trades floor clearance for lower ceiling requirements. Measure door width, garage door track height, and the path from the driveway to the final location, because a 2,000 lb column doesn’t turn corners well. We’ve had customers who did everything else right and then discovered their overhead door opener sat exactly where the crossbar wanted to be. Sketch it on paper with real numbers before money changes hands, and call us at 800-674-9302 if you want a second set of eyes on the layout.
Paperwork, Manuals, And Anchor History
Ask three questions: does it come with the original installation manual, do you have the anchor bolts, and how many times has it been moved? Manuals matter because torque specs, shim procedures, and lock adjustment vary by model, and a downloadable generic PDF is not a substitute. Anchors should never be reused — plan on a fresh set regardless of what the seller says — but the fact that the seller kept them tells you something about how the lift was maintained.
Move history matters more than most buyers realize. Every relocation means the columns get unbolted, dragged, sometimes dropped, and re-anchored into fresh holes. A lift on its fourth home has base plates with elongated anchor holes and columns that may no longer be plumb-true. We also ask about service records. A shop that has receipts for cable replacements and annual inspections is selling a different product than a guy who bought it at auction two years ago and never touched it. There’s a good breakdown of what documentation to chase in our used car lift buying guide.
Doing The Math: When Used Actually Saves Money
Here’s the part of the used car lift buying checklist most sellers won’t help you with. Add up the purchase price, the teardown and transport, new anchors, whatever cables or cylinder work the inspection turned up, any concrete work, and professional installation. Then compare that total against a new entry-level two-post from a brand we actually stock. In our experience, a well-maintained lift from a known brand with clean hydraulics and recent cables lands somewhere around half the delivered cost of new — that’s a genuinely good deal. A neglected no-name lift with mystery parts availability routinely lands within a few hundred dollars of new, and you inherit all the risk.
The brands that hold up best on the used market are the ones with long parts support: Rotary and Challenger on the commercial side, BendPak and Atlas for home and light-duty garages. We stock parts for all of them, which means a used Rotary two-post with worn cables is a repairable machine, not a project. An off-brand import from a company that folded in 2011 is a different story. Run the numbers honestly and the checklist tells you what to do. For a shorter version to print and carry, see our car lift buying checklist.
How We Help Iowa Buyers Close The Deal
We’re not a broker and we don’t take a cut of your private-party purchase, so our advice on used equipment is genuinely neutral. What we do is install, service, and stock parts — which means we see the aftermath of both good and bad used buys, and we’re happy to talk you through a listing before you drive four hours to look at it. Send photos of the data tag, the cables at the sheaves, the power unit, and the base plates, and we’ll tell you what we’d want fixed.
If the deal makes sense, we can handle the relocation and installation, pull fresh anchors, torque to spec, adjust the locks, bleed the hydraulics, and run a load test so you know it’s right. If the deal doesn’t make sense, we’ll tell you that too, and point you at new equipment that costs less in the long run. Either way, using a real used car lift buying checklist before you commit is the single cheapest thing you can do in this whole process. Call 800-674-9302 or email us and we’ll take a look at whatever you’re eyeing.
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