Help Me Find An Affordable Floor Jack.

Get the free jack, you can't beat the quality of an old US made jack. (unless you mean a bumper jack those things are scary) They can lift more than they are rated to, modern china jacks just barely lift what they are rated to and blow up over their rating.

My other comment is that all jacks are rebuild-able, just throw some new orings at them and new fluid if they aren't working so well. HF sells O rings assortments by the hundreds under $10. Write ups are on Garage journal for those interested.

For jacks I have and AL HF 1.5 ton that crapped out after a year (yeah rebuilding it at some point). It is an ok jack for a day at the auto x but doesn't lift high enough for a motor swap in some cases. So for a garage jack get one that lifts the car as high as possible, so that you can crawl or roll around under the car with more ease. Some of the steel floor jacks HF has do a pretty good job of this, just measure the clearance under your car to see if you need the low pro ones or not. I have a steel one that was $60 something with coupon and lifts about 20 inches or so

made from real metal.

The reason I don't want the 30 year old jack is that...first off, it's ridiculously heavy. I've have used newer steel jacks that didn't weigh as much as this one.

I actually worked on cars for a living for the last 10 years and i've had quite enough of lifting/pushing/moving "real metal" any more than i have to. If i have to load my 15 y/o crafstman by myself i will literally feel it for days,and im 28 y/o 6'0 and 200, most of it in the upper body. I usually ask someone to help me lift it and someone who looks like me looks funny asking for help lifting things. I feel like the prime of my life is well behind me when i try to lift an old floor jack made of "real metal". Sure, people with no pre-existing back injuries might get different results, but i've got to work with the body i've got left (and make it last another 60 years) and this body strongly dislikes unnecessarily heavy jacks.

If there was a readily available old jack made of real metal that weighed ~25 lbs and cost $59 (parts + labor) like my HF jack, i would be open to it!