The review
The goal for any automotive repair shop is to provide customers quality vehicle service in a convenient timeframe. Typically, if a customer can wait a short for their vehicle to be serviced and not have to leave it at the shop for part of a day, it’s considered a win.
Brandon Henson, owner of Henson Auto Service in Greer, South Carolina, uses the RX12 Scissor Lift from Hunter Engineering mainly for tire and alignment services. He finds that the lift, paired with Hunter's Hawkeye Elite alignment machine, allows him and his technicians to complete a full, four wheel alignment very quickly.
“Most of our alignments ... literally take somewhere between 15 to 30 minutes,” he says. “You can have a car on the lift and up in the air in … one to two minutes.”
Henson’s Hunter lift is equipped with the company’s Fully Integrated Alignment (FIA) system, which syncs the lift and alignment equipment to streamline the alignment process. Henson notes that in addition to the Hawkeye Elite alignment machine, his shop also uses Hunter’s Revolution Tire Changer and Road Force wheel balancer.
“As far as the alignment machine with that lift, they’re made and designed to be used together so all of the functions go from one console to the lift itself, and back through the alignment machine, so everything functions flawlessly,” he says. “There’s a lot of automation that’s going on between the locking of the lift, unlocking of the lift, things like that.”
Alignments aren’t the only service the technicians at Henson Auto Service use the Hunter lift for, however.
“[Even though] it’s an alignment lift, we still use it as a service lift sometimes to do brake jobs [and] tire rotations,” Henson says. “And we do all of our service jobs on it as well - [such as] oil changes - because it’s so fast, and it allows us to do our alignment rollouts at [the same] time. We can do an alignment check, oil change, and tire rotation, and still have the car back up front in 30 minutes or so.”
In addition to enabling the shop to provide speedy service, Henson says the lift has proven reliable and easy to maintain as well, improving the shop’s efficiency by providing consistent uptime and quick, in-house maintenance.
“I’ve had that piece of equipment now ... [at least] three years, and I’ve never had a major malfunction, ever,” he says. “We keep up with maintenance ourselves - it’s very easy to maintain.”
After using the lift steadily for several years, Henson couldn’t be more pleased with its performance, versatility, and durability.
“That machine has been pretty much flawless,” he says. “It’s one of the backbones, if not the backbone of the shop.”
