My Forken-something
 

A few weeks back, I set an ad out on CraigsList for a wanted to buy for assorted cheap parts to do a budget electric car conversion.

A few days ago, I got a call from a guy who is selling a forklift.

I got to go take a look at it today at lunch.

It is a Raymond 36V electric stand-on forklift. It is supposedly in working condition, but does not include battery pack.

The lift has a 7" diameter motor for the pumps and a 10" for the drive wheels.

Both motors look to be in good clean condition.

The weird part is that the forklift is at a crash-testing facility. I didn't even know we had one in town!

The sister forklift of this one was involved in a lawsuit. Lawyers sent this one to the facility to run over some crash test dummies and has been there ever since, not worth the cost to ship it back! So, they are selling it because it is just taking up space. (The facility already has a HUGE gas forklift they use for moving SUVs onto there test crash area...)

The unit also includes a 65 amp 36V charger.

The guy is asking $500 for it, including the charger.

It's gotta be worth more than that in scrap.
Besides the motors, it looks like there are all sorts of good levers, cable, hoses, and other bits useful for building things from.

The couple of catches are:

I need to haul it out - they won't deliver.
I have no place to put it right now other than my driveway.
How do I keep it from sinking into my driveway? Might be ok while it is this cold, but it will sink right into the asphalt as soon as it warms up at all.

I still don't know what vehicle I am going to convert. All I know it that it needs to be cheap, have as little rust as one can expect for the area, and must roll well!

I have some photos of the forklift HERE

All I need is $500 and a way to move it, and the forklift is all mine.

Any thoughts?

PS: If I put a FORKlift motor in an S10 pickup, I am calling it the SPORK!

DO IT! This sounds like a great deal. Perhaps you can set up some sort of platform to spread out the weight on the driveway from the wheels?

Get a crx, that would be fun, :) Or a civvy hatch!

Looking forward to some updates with purchased forked lifteders.

You should be able to tow that if you have a gasoline car. You may have to put the batts and the motor in your car (on a separate trip) to lighten the load, but a car should be able to tug that in most cases.

When i worked at a factory site we pushed around forklifts that ran out of propane to move them out of the way.

Congratulations with your find.
I was contacted about 3 forklifts for sale at $400 each, but no way to get enough money for one. i hope you have better luck.

Edit:
hell, just build a tank with that motor. :P

Here's a thought -
if you can't afford all $500 then offer him something like $200 for the forks and $300 when you pickup the rest.

take the forks and cash them in at the scrap yard, then come back for the rest of the lift.
http://members.lovingyou.com/images/smilies/rockin.gif

I will be able to dig up the cash.

The main thing is figuring out how to get it out of there.

I believe this thing weighs about 6000 lbs, but it is without the 2000 lb battery pack, which leaves only 2 tons for me to haul 30 miles.

I know a guy who does a lot of odd work. He has a fishing charter, Bobcats, big trucks, etc. I think I'll ask him what it would cost me for him to hitch this thing up on a truck and trailer.

The forklift is 4' wide, 8' long and 9 and a half feet tall.

I figure once it is apart, I will have lots of bits I can sell as parts or for scrap metal. The boom on this thing goes up close to 20 feet. That's gotta be worth something. Otherwise I could permanently mount it in my garage to make oil changes real easy! :rolleyes:

Would a sheet of thick plywood on my driveway be enough to spread the weight out and keep the lift from sinking into the asphalt? I always have to put down some scrap would whenever I jack up my car to keep from marking the driveway.

Some 4x4's should do the trick ;) I've seen large yachts with their keels supported by 8x8's - and I'll bet there's a lot more than 2tons down there :)

Wow. Neat machine. And motors, and wiring, and contactors, and controller and ...

I see you read about the forklift sinking into my driveway. After that, I parked it on some metal sheeting (sides of the battery compartment) AND plywood. That seemed to help. But note the forklift we had was 16,000 lbs without the battery.

Would they let you remove the motors, wiring & electronics at the crash test facility? If so, you could then call a scrap recycler to come pick up the bones from there.

No, I have to haul the whole thing out of there.

The guy told me right off the batt that it must be worth more just in scrap, but they don't want to have to screw around with that.

I think I just need to find somebody who will haul it for me, and drop it in my driveway. Then start taking it apart and playing with the parts.

I showed the photos of the forklift to my friend last night. He is an engineer for a manlift company.

He told me that the motors look pretty good. They appear to be good quality rebuilds, so they have had the cleaning, bearings re-done, etc.

He said that his company uses 9" Advanced DC motors running at 48 volts for their lift trucks.

He also recognized the charger. I don't remember what brand name he said it was, but he said it was a good one, and that $500 would be a great deal on the charger alone.

He also mentioned that because the motor has those big, open view ports for the brushes, the the motor will need to be protected from the weather with a belly pan or some other cover or enclosure.

Hurry up and buy it before it gets gone, sucka! We want a build thread, :)