If you’re a foreman running wheel bearing service in a bay near the Iowa-Missouri border and your Forward lift is dragging, worn, or throwing a fault right when you need it most, sourcing forward car lift parts fast is the whole job. Wheel bearing work means the vehicle sits loaded on the arms for a while, spinning the hub, torquing fasteners, and putting side load on the lift’s slide blocks and arm pins. When those parts wear out, you feel it in the shake of the platform before you ever see it on paper. We’re Auto Lift Services out of Ames, Iowa, and we install, service, and stock parts for Forward lifts and every other major brand, so this guide is built around what actually breaks and what to do about it.
Search by model or send us a photo of the worn part. We’ll confirm fit before you pay a dime, and most in-stock items ship the same day you call.
Why Wheel Bearing Work Is Hard on Forward Car Lift Parts
Wheel bearing service is deceptively rough on a lift. You’re not just holding a vehicle up in the air — you’re spinning the hub, hammering on races, and sometimes using a press or slide hammer while the car sits on the arms for extended periods. That repeated shock and side-loading transfers straight into the slide blocks, the arm pins, and the runway cable pins if you’re on a drive-on style unit. We hear from shops on both sides of the state line that a lift felt fine for years and then, seemingly overnight, started clunking or drifting during exactly this kind of job.
The truth is it wasn’t overnight — the slide blocks were wearing gradually the whole time, and heavier, longer-duration jobs like wheel bearing service are what finally expose it. We’ve had customers send us photos of the exact worn slide block in question, asking to just get that piece fixed without a full reinstall, and that’s usually a reasonable, affordable repair rather than a rebuild. Knowing which forward car lift parts take the abuse on your specific model helps you stock the right spares before a bearing job turns into a half-day delay.
Slide Blocks: The Part That Fails First
On almost every two-post Forward lift we service, the slide blocks (sometimes called guide blocks) are the first thing to show wear, and they’re a very common forward car lift parts request from shops doing repetitive, heavy work like wheel bearing service. These nylon or composite blocks ride the column and keep the carriage aligned as it travels up and down. Under normal use they last a long time, but side-loading from pressing bearings or leaning on a stuck hub accelerates wear fast.
The tell is a wobble or side-to-side play in the carriage, or a grinding noise on travel that wasn’t there before. We’ve fielded calls where a shop sent us a picture of the lift and we identified the exact slide block causing the play without even needing a site visit. The part itself is inexpensive and doesn’t require a full lift teardown to swap — most shops can get it done during a slow afternoon once the correct block is in hand. If you’re doing bearing work weekly, it’s worth keeping a spare set on the shelf rather than waiting on a backorder mid-job.
Arm Pins, Cable Pins, and Cross Beam Pins
Beyond slide blocks, the pins that hold everything together take a beating too. We’ve shipped orders that included cross beam pins and the smaller cable pins used on the runways, and it’s common for a shop to order several at once because when one pin is worn, the others on that same lift usually aren’t far behind. These forward car lift parts are cheap individually but critical — a worn pin lets the arm flex under load, which during a wheel bearing job means the wheel isn’t sitting level while you’re trying to torque a hub nut to spec.
We keep pins in stock for most common Forward configurations and can usually ship same day if you call before early afternoon. If you’re not sure exactly which pin size or style your lift uses, we can walk through it over the phone — tell us the model, roughly how old the lift is, and where the play or noise is coming from, and we’ll get you pointed at the right part number instead of guessing and ordering twice.
Concrete Slab Thickness and Rebar: Don’t Skip This Step
Parts only matter if the lift is anchored into a slab that can actually hold it, and this is where we see the most preventable problems on both sides of the Iowa-Missouri border. A two-post lift doing repetitive wheel bearing work needs a slab that meets the manufacturer’s minimum thickness — typically several inches of properly cured, unreinforced or lightly reinforced concrete without mesh wire directly under the anchor points. Rebar mats and heavy wire mesh can actually interfere with anchor bolts and reduce holding power if the anchors land right on top of the steel instead of into solid concrete.
We’ve walked into older shop buildings along the border where the floor looks solid but is actually a thin overlay poured over an older, cracked slab — that’s a real problem for anchoring, especially with the added stress of bearing service. Before you order new arm pins or slide blocks to fix a
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