car dolly

Are you talking about the dollies that go under each wheel to move the car around in the garage or a tow dolly?
 
I have the Harbor Freight dollies. I'm using them on a concrete garage floor and it is a real effort to move the car around. I expected them to work better.
 
I bought the HF dollies on sale, $69 each. They work great for me. I have 4 cars in my 3-car garage
 
The secret is in the casters. All of them have ball bearings for the swivel portion of the caster, but only a few of the more expensive ones have ball or roller bearings on the wheels themselves. Moving a car with the latter type is a breeze compared to those without wheel bearings. A middle of the road compromise are those with cast iron wheels without bearings which move noticeably better than those with rubber/plastic composite wheels without bearings but not as well as those with wheel bearings. While not strictly true in the case of all the offerings, the old saw holds true, namely you get what you pay for.

I speak from some experience as I have seven sets of them. The best were made by a company in New Jersey that has since stopped making them and the worst are the Harbor Freight versions.
 
Alan O'Connell said:
Does anyone know of a car dolly that actually allows you to move the car easily?
Click to expand...

I did quite a bit of research prior to investing in a couple of sets of these. I ended up purchasing eight from Harbor Freight. I have NO issues rolling any car around on my floor all by myself. The dolly's appear to be identical to the "Go-jacks" other than color and of course - price. They do have bearings both at the wheel (axle) and the caster as Dave rightly suggests as a necessity.
These are the type you can jack up the car with - no need to raise car and place atop the dolly.
As I recall these were about $80 each after I'd used the 20% coupon that HF has plastered everywhere :)

Pittsburgh Automotive 62234 1250 lb. Capacity Vehicle Positioning Wheel Dolly
1250 lb. Capacity Vehicle Positioning Wheel Dolly
Item #62234





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35fordtn said:
I went through this.. The Harbor Freight ones I have I can barely maneuver a car around. I bought 3 sets of the ones in the link below. I can easily move a hard with no effort on them. They are a bit more expensive.

http://www.amazon.com/Pentagon-Tools-5061-Tire-Skates/dp/B000UAK424/?tag=atomicindus08-20
Click to expand...

Likewise, I have just bought a set of these skates as well. They seem to work well for me, although I don't move my car around that often, nor for any great distance when I do move it. I find that most of the initial force required to begin movement is expended in allowing the rollers to align properly in the direction necessary for ease of movement. This initial movement probably has little to do with having bearings in the wheel axles, but depends more in having good swivel bearings allowing the wheels to rotate esily on their verticle axis. JMO..
 
We bought a set of them several years ago and put them together without looking at the instructions. They were terrible. Turns out that we had put them together with the bolt going in from the top and the nut and washer down below on the caster side. If you picked one up, and turned it upside down, the caster would swivel freely. However, when we put the car on them, the bottom end of the bolt was long enough to hit the caster to keep it from swiveling. We took them all apart and put them together with the bolts coming up from the casters and the nuts and washers up on top. Worked fine.
 
As with Kube, I researched these. I have used Gojak previously. Purchased (4) from HF.
Disassembled them, greased the roller bearings in the wheels, and the caster bearings.
Real easy to use. No problems. $$$ saved vs. Gojak. And cannot tell the differences
on a concrete floor. Use them on a F150 Super Crew, to the 49 wagon.
 
The Harbor Freight ones that I was referring to are the cheap ones without wheel bearings. The ones that Mike is referring to with the wheel bearings sound good, but then the price reflects the difference, just like the old adage.
 
If you want the best - these are it. A friend has a set like these and they are "trick"
 

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The smoothness and level of the floor makes a big difference. I have some from the UK equivalent of HF and they are not much good. But that is due to my floor being considerably less than perfect. If the floor was smooth and level I assume they would be good with the fettling as described above.

Mart.
 
I have a set of Go-Jacks that get regular use. Barely lean on the vehicle and it rolls. Smooth concrete flooring,
 
I use the cheapie HF dollies for my Model A's with no problem.
I took the wheels and bushings apart and packed them with heavy red chassis grease and re-assembled. 5 years later, still maneuver well, just me pushing.
I think the trick is to grease the heck out of them and they will roll just fine.
They were $39 a pair when I bought them.
 
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