I purchased a zippo 2500 kg two post lift over Christmas which I am refurbishing, it's a nice old screw lift. Unfortunately information on this is lacking

It has been outside for a while so I have had to remove rust from parts of the lifting screws, slight pitting but nothing overly serious and it will only get light use so what grease should I use?

Heavy duty marine grease with EP additives or maybe something with graphite included, I do not think standard lithium wheel bearing grease is really up to the job.

Does anyone here have any knowledge in this area?

Thanks Mark

Mark, I should be able to sort you out some info/manual on this lift. I believe you should not use anything with graphite in as it will accelerate load nut wear.

PS- have you got a model number or year of manufacture?

[Edited on 25/1/13 by Proby]

That would be great thanks

Zippo s?21, may be SK or SH
Type 1511
Made 1985
2500 kg

Bloody heavy that's for sure and very wide.

I would also be interested on setting up the bearings on the screws, there is a castle nut on top of the towers which allows me to either carry all the weight on the top or bottom bearings or maybe you share, at present it will just load the bottom bearing as a gap between the spacer and nut.

Regards Mark

[Edited on 25/1/13 by mark chandler]

One bearing nut is the safety nut it shouldn't carry load unless something goes wrong with the load nut.

If the main nut is bronze I would avoid greases with a lot of EP additives, moly grease should be fine.

As BT said, you have a load nut (which obviously carries the load) and a safety nut. The load nut wear is measured by the distance between load and safety nut whilst levering excess movement to the maximum. Many manufacturers set the gap consistently between the two nuts (as a reference point), then wear can be monitored by keeping an eye on the distance between the two regularly. There should never be any load on the safety nut unless the load nut has failed. I'll try and dig some info out on the zippo's, I will definitely have safety nut settings, if nothing else.

I have two large nuts per screw, they both turn nicely with no discernable slack between them by eye, it has a tapered pin to turn the safety nut so you can easily see differences between sides.

It was from a working garage that shut down because of rent increases and was removed for future use so would have been looked after, just a pity they left it open to the elements and not covered over when removed.... Left on the back of a large recovery lorry for a year still it was cheap so even if I need new nuts and screws I am still £££ in

I've worked in a few garages that have had 2 poster lifts but not that type, some have had a small reservoir that held oil(possibly EP90) my own Stenhog used Molibdenum disulphide grease on the lifting screws, it also had a tool to measure the clearance on the lifting nuts that was just a piece of steel which fitted between the nuts , if it didn't the lift nuts were worn.