Quoted from edgewerx:Here is my contribution to the harbor freight pinball mod. I tried two different mods before settling on this one.
Since this origin of this thread, it appears that the harbor freight lift cart has been updated slightly. Other than being changed from being painted yellow to gray, some of the sizes of the handles, drill holes and release cable have been altered slightly. I found issues in following the modifications found earlier in this thread a little challenging because of these issues.
1. Hinge Mod
This mod would have worked well, except for the release cable even after being re-routed was a little too short to fully extend the handle after it was attached. I considered just getting a longer cable from a local bike shop, but the hinges were already showing signs of bending so I decided to attempt the pipe-fitting mod.
2. Pipe-fitting mod
After purchasing all of the suggested parts from Lowes and took them home to discover that the threaded ¾ nipple would not fit into the handle receiver on the cart. With some force, i was able to force-thread one of the nipples into the opening though it wasn’t a secure fit. Once I attached the handle it easily came loose on one side. I suppose I could have messed around with this some more and found different pipe sizes to make this work, but I decided to try something different:
I made a trip to my local bike shop an picked up:
1. A new brake release cable
2. A kid’s bike brake lever
I affixed the brake lever to the pump handle receiver and attached the new cable to the hydraulic release under the cart. The brake cable’s length was about 12 inches.
Moving around the pinballs after getting them up in the air was easy and I used the machine itself to move it around instead of a handle. There was no worry of the machine coming off of the platform as long as I got it close to centered under the machine
I was able to move 8 machines out of my old house load the all up into a 16 foot box truck and get them into my new house. Hope this helps someone out there!
I just bought one last week, and I was having some trouble modding it--there was absolutely no slack in the release cable, and the release handle is now welded to the U-shaped aluminum handle.
Thanks for the tip--I'll probably have to do something similar, though I may opt to put the brake handle near the end of the U-shaped handle (if the cable doesn't fit in the existing handle). It seems like having the release handle close to the body of the lift would be a bit of a safety issue if the lift comes crashing down for some reason.
[edit]: After disassembling the release cable, I can probably just get away with replacing the cable with a longer one from a bike shop.