On sale at Harbour Freight for $59.

Any reason this would be a bad choice for dropping a motor?

I bought one a couple years ago. Works super....with a few mods

interesting you should mention that...

i bought one 2 weeks ago to drop an engine today.

the jack on mine is defective - won't even hold itself up. had to go back to the good ol' floor jack - which worked perfectly.

i'll take the jck back as soon as i get a chance and i expect they'll make it good - but i lost 3 hrs today because a tool i wanted to depend on let me down.

in my case, its lift range was about 2" short of what i needed, which was easy to address by placing some plywood across the rails. the floor jack was 2" too tall - i had to remove the air cleaner to get the engine out past the rear crossmember.

sams club has one also for a little more

Bernie

i saw the sams one today and my dad and i almost bought it. still thinking about it actually

I attached 3/4 ply to the tops of the 3 lift sections.
Built a cradle with casters, then added plywood (permanetely)
to the lift to shim up to the bottom of the cradle....loose little
lift that way. When the engine is on the cradle/lift, it's stable enuff to dance on

I'd be worried that the lift mechanism would get in the way of the
transmission and trunk. I looked at that style and decided to get the
one from Sams for about $80. Used it about 2 weeks ago
to do my first engine drop all by myself. Worked great.

Below is a pict of the one I got. It works just like a jack.
The handle can stay down low out of the way.
All Aluminium and only about 5 inches tall when collapsed.

--- bill

I was in our local HF retail store last week. 75% of their stuff is junk IMHO.

I would not buy anything other than consumables, ie, paint brushes that I use when fiberglassing.