Shop Fox Mobile Base

[Fred Floyd]

I bought a Shop Fox mobile base for my Shop Fox Moulder. After an hour or so of assembly, it's together and at least the table part of the moulder is on the base. when I tried to push the base around the floor, the swivel wheels in the front would not swivel and they barely turned.

Add some penetrating oil to get things rolling.

Still the same problem. The axle of the swivel casters has about 1/4" of clearance between the supports. Anyway nothing is binding if the jacks are let down. The casters swivel without a lot of effort.

The floor of the garage is clean, so that should not be a problem.

Anyway, has anyone else experienced this problem? Is this an assembly problem? Quality control problem?

Help!!!!

[Craig Stueve]

DAMHIKT but check to see if the wheels are hitting the bolts that they are mounted with. I suspect that a washer or two used to shim up the bolt will take care of your problem.

Craig

[Ron Rosenberg]

The manual for my shop fox base shows the swivel wheel bolts going in with nuts on the wheel side, but they DO hit that way. Switch them around if that's what you did.

But FAR better is to replace the absolutely garbage casters. I got a set of 3" casters from Woodcraft. I ended up using just the wheel and bolt mounted onto the stock hubs that came with the base - which is when I saw that the original casters are just rubber with an inner sleeve riding on the bolt threads - NO bearings at all! Total garbage. The casters I got have true bearing hubs and now my saw moves FAR more easily and smoothly.

I had to use the stock swivel hubs too, unfortunately, because the swivels are also lousy; the swivels with the new casters are MUCH better. They have a wheel and swivel lock too but there's no way to use them; I even ripped the lock out and cut the hub down but the wheel itself still hit the base when it swiveled back. So I was forced to use only the new wheels/bolts and toss the mounts.

But believe me, it is well worth it; I got the new wheels for something like 12 bucks each for the swivels, and the non-swiveling ones are even less, and since I couldn't use the swivels I could have just gotten 4 of those. I was really disappointed in the shop fox base after all the glowing reports; although I will say the base itself IS nicely done.

PS another minor problem is that the base locks - those bolts that push the rubber pad into the floor, raising the front up to stop movement - have some play in them. The bolts move within the sleeve, so when they're engaged the table can shake a little. But that I can live with, its well within bounds.

PPS I originally had an HTC base - it had two front casters with a lever that pushed the casters down. When up the front rests on two rubber pads. The shop fox IS a better base IMO; more solid, obviously stronger, and I never felt completely comfortable with those plastic pedals that cammed the casters down. Lotta weight on that plastic!

[Fred Floyd]

All Good stuff. I emailed Grizzly. They are sending another pair of the swivel casters. There is some hope they will be better. Based on what I heare here, I put washers in to "shorten" and now I have complete clearance, but the wheels still don't roll and the swivel doesn't swivel.

I, too, like the basic design of the mobile base, but these wheels REALLY SUCK.

[Fred Floyd]

The Wheels arrived via UPS this afternoon. I put them on and the problem went away. This is my first experience with Grizzly Customer Service. I had a problem, they fixed it ... and in a timely manner.