A couple years ago the hydraulic cylinder on my cherry picker died. When I went to Harbor Freight to get a new one, I realized that the on sale air over hydraulic version was only a couple bucks more than the manual version. I had already bought one of these air over hydraulic rams from Harbor Freight for my JD2 tubing bender so I knew they worked well, and at that price why buy manual right? I can tell you that the $40 upgrade was well worth it. It still works manually, but there is nothing cooler than hooking an air hose up to this thing and then flipping the lever to have it lift on its own. This thing makes pulling and installing engines an amazingly easy deal. In this video, the builder finds himself going for something automatic as well, and goes for electric. You have to see this thing to believe it, as a ton of thought went into it, and we think we might need one of these to add to the shop’s collection.

At first when I saw this one, I thought it was missing some of the functionality of a tradition cherry picker, but the truth is there isn’t any reason it can’t do all the same things. It does have a lot of adjustability, ease of use, and clearly plenty of power to lift big stuff.