Largest piece of tat?
I'd rather have one really good thing, rather than a bunch of crap. Unfortunately, I didn't choose my forklift. (Yes, I did say forklift: I'm a welder and fabricator.)

My partner and his dad found this...thing. It was only about $1200 Canadian (about 500 GBP. A good forklift should be about $10,000 used) and although it seems like a deal, any sane person would know why this one was so cheap at first glance.

The first thing to assault the eyes of any casual viewer is the paint job. Scratches in the bilious green coating reveal layers and layers of various coloured paint underneath, remnants of other owners with other colour schemes. But really, that's just esthetics.

Mechanically, there are some issues, too, unsurprisingly. To start off with, the thing's electric, and it didn't come with a charger, which led to me being stuck out in the yard with a dead forklift at the bottom of a hill. (For the record, I assumed it had come with a charger, or that they'd bought one. The gauge that shows the level of charge is broken, naturally.) I had to borrow a neighbour's larger forklift and tow it back inside. Oh, the indignity! It also leaks hydraulic fluid whenever you let it sit for five minutes or longer, and the forks won't stay tilted back: they slowly drift forward. Nice when you're trying to carry a load. But it won't lift anything heavy anyway; I still borrow the neighbour's forklift if I have to load anything large. It also has trouble making it up the hill into my shop even when it is charged, so if you take it outside to load a truck, you may never get it in again, particularly if you're carrying a load. I hate it. It would make a better boat anchor than a lift truck. Even my partner concedes it was a bad purchase and talks about getting rid of it, but who would buy the thing? Probably have to pay to get rid of it.

Do I get some sort of prize for having the biggest (and quite possibly shittiest) piece of tat?
(BlackArmadillo Avoided writing that article on, Mon 7 Jan 2008, 13:19, 3 replies)

Your prize is....
An amusing video you have probably seen before!
www.dailymotion.com/video/x225t_staplerfahrerklaus

And thanks for reminding me about this as I watched it again and cracked up!
( TGB checking Off Topic is still shit at, Mon 7 Jan 2008, 13:27, closed)

Nice
Yep we sell forklifts Linde brand (the Bentley of the Fork Lift World.) and the amount of people especially cheap arse brits who buy cheap old crap forklifts is really quite amazing then when they're piece of crap breaks down which they can't do with out, they expect us to fix it ASAP.

The reason it wont stay tilted is because the inner seals have gone in the tilt rams, just thought you might like to know. It's Worth about £50 scrap.
(3:16, Tue 8 Jan 2008, 15:04, closed)

Thanks
I know, because I had a friend who's a hydraulic engineer come and take a look at it (for free, thank goodness). I know how to fix it, too, but I can't be bothered to do all that work, frankly. It's actually not a bad make, though: it's a Clark. It's just very, very "well used", shall we say.

And thanks for the link: that's great.
(BlackArmadillo Avoided writing that article on, Tue 8 Jan 2008, 15:24, closed)