Customer Reviews

Westward 1MZK5 Service Jack, Scissor, 1 1/2 Ton

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I purchased this jack to replace the one missing from a used car.

The saddle is nicely shaped and allows secure placement under a structural component of the car. The handle is just the correct length to allow you to stay clear of the vehicle while jacking it up. The jack has a perfect range of height for a passenger car.

I bought this jack to be a multi purpose jack primarily for boat and utility trailers with loaded total weights of 3,500 pounds or so. Other scissor jacks that I have used (most recently the Subaru factory supplied jack that came with a WRX) have worked very well for this because they have very low minimum clearance and they are easy to use in awkward places. The Westward jack has 2 big problems for this purpose. First, the crank rod is very short - less than half the length of the Subaru jack for example, and for getting under a boat trailer axle and operating it safely - with a shredded tire - this is really a problem. Second and most surprising - the jack is VERY hard to crank up for some reason. In a direct comparison with a 3,400 pound car, the Westward is WAY, WAY harder to crank than the Subaru jack, and in fact it is so hard to operate that I really have doubts about whether the various fittings and connections on the jack are strong enough to be reliable. I'm 190 pounds and in pretty good shape, and I was not able to crank up the jack using the crank rod as designed - I had to place the crank rod sideways in the U-shaped connector to get the jack to go up.

Maybe this is a defective unit - I don't know. It looks OK, and lubricating it did not help. Maybe the pitch on the screw are too steep. Whatever - mine does not work well at all. I should return it - haven't gotten around to that yet.