Just fixed a 30 year old door leveling issue with a car jack and a 2x4

Spent 3 hours yesterday trying to shim a stuck elevator door at the old Mercy Hospital building downtown. Ran out of options and used my car jack under the door frame with a 2x4 across it, popped it right back into alignment. Has anyone else used a weird trick like this on old hydraulic units?

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3 Comments

dylan6045mo ago

Four tons of force on a door frame sounds like a good way to crack the masonry.

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tarag285mo ago

Hold on, haven't door frames been tested for this kind of thing with modern building codes? A lot of new construction uses steel reinforced frames or solid concrete anchoring that can handle way more than four tons of force without cracking. If the masonry is cracking from that, maybe the real problem is shoddy workmanship or cheap materials, not the force itself. Plenty of industrial doors and security gates get bolted into walls with similar loads and they hold up just fine. I'd argue that a properly installed frame should be able to take that stress no problem. The weak link is probably the installer, not the design.

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julia_patel4mo ago

Used to think that too, but you might be right.

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